Education

Cosmos - $ATOM

Updated: Jul 30, 2024

Published: Jul 9, 2019

Multiple tokens will operate on the Cosmos Network in the future as every blockchain will have its native token. The first one is ATOM, is native to the Cosmos Hub blockchain.

Introduction

The Cosmos Network bills itself as the Internet of Blockchains. It will be composed of a variety of blockchains connected via the Cosmos Hub, the first blockchain launched on the Cosmos Network, and the Interblockchain Communicator protocol (TCP/IP). The Cosmos Hub launched on March 13th 2019, it was largely developed by All In Bits Inc., while the project as a whole is supported by the Interchain Foundation.

Initial Allocation of ATOM

A fundraiser was held in 2017 by Cosmos. The initial target was $10 million, which was achieved during the first minute of the launch. For that reason, the target was extended to $17 million which was achieved within half an hour.

The initial allocation of ATOM tokens was suggested as follows by the Interchain Foundation: - 5% to initial donors - 10% to the Interchain Foundation - 10% to the All In Bits Inc. - 75% to private and public fundraisers

Tendermint BFT

Tendermint BFT is a consensus algorithm discovered decades ago by academics and revived

by Jae Kwon, the founder of Cosmos, in 2013. It is used as an addition to the usual Proof-of- Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm to create the consensus algorithm used by Cosmos, called

Bonded Proof-of-Stake (BPoS).

Tendermint BFT supposedly solves the environmental threat issues posed by Bitcoin’s Proof- of-Work (PoW) while maintaining a similar security profile, using a Byzantine Fault Tolerance model.

Cosmos Network Architecture

The Cosmos Network focuses on a problem faced by top blockchains: scalability. For that reason it is composed of “hubs” and “zones” called the Hub & Spoke Architecture. Hubs, such as the Cosmos Hub, connect all of the zones. Each zone is an “application-specific blockchain”, they can be considered sidechains.

Zones have a single connection with the hub to be interoperable with all other zones. So far, the Cosmos Hub is the first and only hub on the network. However, anyone can fork the Cosmos Hub and create a new hub. This scalable and interoperable model represents what the developers are calling the “Internet of Blockchains”.

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Cosmos SDK

The Cosmos SDK is the modular software development kit that developers can use to build their own “application-specific” sidechain. An example of a well-known blockchain that has used Tendermint and the Cosmos SDK is BinanceChain, the blockchain used by Binance DEX.

Image c/o Cosmos Medium