diff --git a/content/posts/2020-03-13-happy-1st-birthday-cosmos.md b/content/posts/2020-03-13-happy-1st-birthday-cosmos.md index 8b5a1dd..b556f41 100644 --- a/content/posts/2020-03-13-happy-1st-birthday-cosmos.md +++ b/content/posts/2020-03-13-happy-1st-birthday-cosmos.md @@ -7,17 +7,18 @@ draft: false One whole year ago today, the Cosmos community made history with the successful [decentralized launch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OALEhpn7ccM) of the Gaia blockchain, also known as the Cosmos -Hub. After being "two months away" from launch for about 16 months, I can't even +Hub. After being "two months away" from launch for about 16 months, I couldn't even begin to describe the joy of seeing our incredible community of validators launch Gaia into the world. I checked block explorers many times each day, in complete awe that this software we had spent years building was actually running in a production economic environment; that it was making blocks every ~6 seconds; that it hadn't completely fallen over. I was elated; in love. -# Past +# The Past I started working with Jae on Tendermint in early 2015. -If Jae was the crazy visionary, I was his first follower. +If Jae was the crazy visionary, I was his [first +follower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ). Of course, I also crafted the vision into my own, a future of sovereign, self-sufficient, sustainable and interoperating communities. @@ -35,24 +36,23 @@ not be more relevant. I have significant faith that the current global crisis will set us on a trajectory towards more local, self-sufficient, sustainable communities. -# Present +# The Present -Meanwhile, the Cosmos community could not be stronger. Forget the price. +Today, the Cosmos community could not be stronger. Forget the price. Everywhere I look I see amazing groups of people building amazing things, with relentless passion and -inspiring compassion. The community we've grown together is an inspiration to +inspiring compassion. The community we've grown together over the last 5 years is an inspiration to technological movements the world over and is a shining example of the success of open-source and of public economic networks. And this is only the beginning. Of course, we've had some stumbling blocks. The [recent drama with All in Bits](https://medium.com/@interchain_io/sustainability-of-the-cosmos-network-a-statement-from-the-interchain-foundation-c96ef0975f5) -(ie. Tendermint Inc) has shown us what we already knew - governance matters, and -the CEO of a company needs to be held accountable, especially to the company's -employees. -But no matter. We're working hard on decentralizing functionality that used to +(ie. Tendermint Inc) has demonstrated what we already knew - governance +matters, and CEOs needs to be accountable to their employees. But onwards and upwards! We're working hard on decentralizing functionality that used to reside at All in Bits into new entities, and it couldn't be going better. Many of the engineers that left All in Bits are hard at work on Tendermint and IBC -through a new subsidiary of the Interchain Foundation (ICF) in Berlin: +through a new subsidiary of the [Interchain Foundation +(ICF)](https://interchain.io/) in Berlin: [Interchain GmbH](https://interchain.berlin/). Meanwhile, other members of the community like [Regen Network](https://regen.network) and @@ -63,23 +63,25 @@ ICF](https://medium.com/@interchain_io/highlighting-organizations-in-the-cosmos- there are many independent entities stepping into leadership roles in the Cosmos ecosystem. I couldn't be more excited about the highly decentralized form this community is taking, and am very much looking -forward to continue working with all these entities as we shepherd the Cosmos +forward to continue working with all these entities as we shepherd Cosmos into the future. I also have a new entity now, which I'm incredibly excited about: [Informal Systems](https://informal.systems). Informal has been in the works since last -summer, and officially spun out from the ICF in January. While I'm the CEO, the +summer, and officially [spun out from the ICF in January](https://medium.com/@interchain_io/past-present-future-icf-r-and-d-introducing-informal-systems-e50d14383f05). +See our [official launch +announcement](https://informal.systems/2020/02/24/introducing-informal/). While I'm the CEO, the company is structured like a co-operative - every employee gets one vote in all major corporate matters. We're hoping to establish a new model for sustainable technology companies. Hopefully the team doesn't vote me out too soon :). Meanwhile, our primary focus is bringing the rigour of formal verification to Cosmos. Our team includes some of the world leaders in formally verifying -Byzantine fault tolerant consensus protocols, and they're now full time working +Byzantine fault tolerant consensus protocols, and now they're working full time on applying their expertise to Cosmos. We hope this work helps establish Cosmos as the most rigorously engineered blockchain ecosystem in the -world, and sets an example for how distributed systems software can and should be engineered. +world, and sets an example for how distributed systems software can and should be built. -# Future +# The Future The Cosmos Hub is one year old today, but this is just the very beginning. There is such an @@ -95,14 +97,14 @@ Launching IBC is the first step of a multi-year transformative process. Once it's live, there is a whole world of blockchain interoperability to explore: pegs to other chains, virtual machines, privacy preserving and scalability technology, alternative currencies and economic designs, -and other transformative real world applications. For a bit more detail on each +other real world applications, and much more. For a bit more detail on each of these, see the end of this post! # Conclusion -The Cosmos Hub has been live for a year. It's hard to believe how far we've come -and how much we've accomplished and grown as a community, despite the various -set backs and stumbling blocks. We're stronger than we've ever been, and there's +It's hard to believe how far we've come +and how much we've accomplished and grown as a community. +We're stronger than we've ever been, and there's an unbelieveable amount to look forward to. I'm beyond grateful to everyone that has participated in this community and helped make this vision a reality, and can't wait to work with you all in the years ahead to completely transform the @@ -125,7 +127,7 @@ we can enable the value locked in the tokens of those platforms to explore alternative environments. Bitcoin and Ethereum pegs are under active development, and we may see them deployed later this year. I suspect this will unlock tremendous value -for these platforms, and for Cosmos. I hope to see pegs to built to many other +for these platforms, and for Cosmos. I hope to see pegs built to many other blockchains as well, like ZCash and Tezos. ## Virtual Machines @@ -136,7 +138,7 @@ We're seeing [Ethermint](https://github.com/chainsafe/ethermint) mature significantly, and may see the first production deployments this year. The combination of an Ethereum peg, Ethermint, and IBC will allow Dapps to move off the Ethereum -chain into their own blockchain, without losing the capacity to interoperate. +chain onto their own blockchain, without losing the capacity to interoperate. [Aragon is already planning for this](https://blog.aragon.one/aragon-chain/). This may lead to huge scalability wins for Ethereum, but also entirely new economic designs to be reckoned with. While DeFi is @@ -151,7 +153,7 @@ their tech. Securing Javascript is one of the greatest challenges of modern software development and they are the people to do it. They're also doing it on Cosmos, because Cosmos provides the best foundation for interoperability between heterogenous chains. The launch of the Agoric platform will bring a -whole host of new capabilities to Cosmos and attract hoards of new developers by +whole host of new capabilities to Cosmos and attract hordes of new developers by leveraging the existing adoption of Javascript. Then there's [CosmWASM](https://www.cosmwasm.com/), the project adopting WASM to @@ -166,8 +168,8 @@ There's more VMs too, like [Kadena's Pact](https://github.com/kadena-io/kadenamint) and the work to port Libra's MoveVM to run on Tendermint. There will likely be more as well. The combination of IBC and -virtual machines will unlock all kinds of new opportunities for decentralized -finance, governance, and general coordination and will become a cornerstone of +virtual machines will unlock all kinds of new opportunities for DeFi, governance, +and general coordination and will become a cornerstone of the new global digital infrastructure. ## Performance, Cryptography, Privacy, Security @@ -181,9 +183,9 @@ like polynomial commitments and aggregate signatures, but we're also exploring non-cryptographic improvements by reassessing data structures and protocol flows. -The Tendermint team, under the new GmbH, is taking stock of the entire codebase -and evaluating opportunities to improve the architecture and optimize protocols, -and with the help of the Informal team, make them more verifiable. +The Tendermint team, under the [new GmbH](https://interchain.berlin/), is taking stock of the entire codebase +and evaluating opportunities to improve the architecture, optimize protocols, +and with the help of the [Informal team](https://informal.systems/), make them more verifiable. While this work has already been mostly completed for the fast sync protocol, attention will likely turn to the consensus and mempool protocols next. These changes will dramatically improve the maintainability of the codebase, @@ -193,7 +195,7 @@ implementations and upgrades. There's also the new state sync protocol under development, which will allow new nodes to quickly sync the state. See the recently published [2020 -Roadmap](https://medium.com/tendermint/tendermint-2020-roadmap-b4709134cff1). +Roadmap for Tendermint Core](https://medium.com/tendermint/tendermint-2020-roadmap-b4709134cff1). As new cryptographic primitives mature and demonstrate their security, we'll see them increasingly incorporated into the Cosmos ecosystem to provide @@ -202,30 +204,31 @@ signatures to compress commits, random beacons to provide secure randomness, or zero knowledge commitments to improve cross-chain security, there's so much to explore in the recent explosion of cryptographic techniques. One of the major use cases of IBC -is to enable production experiments with new cryptography, to test -them in the wild with live economics, to allow them to prove themselves before +is to enable production experiments with new cryptography to test +them in the wild with live economics and to allow them to prove themselves before scaling their use even further. I hope to see that kind of experimentation begin -in earnest soon - there's no end to where it may go. +in earnest soon - there's no end to the opportunity for experiments here. And then there's privacy. Right now Cosmos chains are a lot like early Ethereum in -that there's virtual no privacy mechanisms. But with all the recent advancements +that there's virtually no privacy mechanisms. But with all the recent advancements in zero-knowledge techniques, that's likely to change very soon, as folks start exploring integration of those techniques with the Cosmos technology stack. -There's so many unique designs to explore here, and significant opportunity to -improve the privacy story of Cosmos, for financial applications, governance, and +There's so many unique designs to explore here, and significant opportunities to +improve the privacy story of Cosmos blockchains, for financial applications, governance, and more. ## Alternative Economics and Real World Applications -The whole reason I'm here is because the modern socioeconomic contract is broken -and we need to establish a new one. A new global economic order that +The whole reason I'm in this space is because the modern socioeconomic contract is broken +and we desperately need to establish a new one. A new global economic order is +needed that acknowledges the finiteness of the planet's resources, abandons the classical "growth at all costs" mentality, and adopts a more sustainable approach to growth and development founded on the principles of organisms and sustainable systems. -You can hear me rant about these things in talks about [Stakeholders and -Statemachines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luh7m7YHRts). +You can hear my musings about this topic in my talk about [Stakeholders and +State Machines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luh7m7YHRts). With the impending release of IBC and the Cosmos virtual machines, it becomes much more @@ -233,7 +236,7 @@ practical to begin experimenting with these kinds of systems; universal basic income, mutual credit unions, lending circles, local currencies, and so on. Not to mention simply enabling low-cost economic arrangements between stakeholders that were previously prohibitive due to lack of coordination -technology. This is why I'm so excited about the Regen Network and the +technology. This is why I'm so excited about the [Regen Network](https://regen.network) and the transformative impact they may have on agriculture and ecological stewardship. I'm looking forward to an explosion of Cosmos-based experiments in such