Much like communities, companies and nation-states, each existing cryptocurrency is born with the seed of some cultural ideal. Bitcoin is decidedly libertarian, with a slight anarchist leaning. Ethereum is less a political statement and more an avant-garde academic exercise in distributed systems, computer science and contract theory. Dogecoin is a testament to the capacity for humans to bond over the absurd, a phenomenon more commonly known as “being social”. Steem offers a more structured version of this same behavior, with a basis in content production and curation.

EX UNITAE VIRES — FROM UNITY COMES STRENGTH. Last May, during Consensus 2017 we gave out a limited edition of Cosmos Atom as a memorabilia for developers. This coming May, at Consensus 2018, we will again be giving these out.

And so on, down the line. But there are many more viewpoints in the world, each doubtlessly wanting a unique experiment in the intersection between governance, culture and economics. It would be a tragedy for all these experiments to be so rigidly siloed from one another by great chasms of incompatibility.

Clearly, what is needed is something that can integrate the states of existing blockchains. Something that can interface in a sane manner with everything from novelty rewards points to currencies issued by nation-states. Something for formalizing relationships between systems, without compromising independence. Something with extreme flexibility without compromising security.

Mechanisms like atomic swaps between chains can certainly help to link communities. However, where there are no technical issues, they often suffer from a need for mature liquidity markets and active participants on each side. Thus the “altcoin” ecosystem is an alchemical soup of enthusiasts experimenting in various ways. Many possess new designs and convictions, yet often each stands alone, siloed by the lack of a general inter-blockchain communication system.

Ethereum sought to address this problem, somewhat indirectly, by inventing a new platform for computation. Ethereum allows arbitrary financial systems to be written against a common virtual machine using a common development environment. Presuming all new cryptocurrencies launch on Ethereum, they will have some capacity for interoperability.

Ethereum is in fact a wonderful idea. Its design decisions are motivated by important considerations such as the need for a simple specification and guaranteed determinism. However, it neglects elements such as the difficulty of designing a secure general purpose programming environment. This means Ethereum has its own sovereignty problem, as it excludes developers who want access to the platform but want alternatives to the current state transition machine.

Ethereum also doesn’t address the problem of turning fiat currency into fungible tokens, short of having banks and government bodies issue currency on Ethereum itself. While many institutions are investigating the Ethereum blockchain, there are both scalability and governance concerns which ultimately restrict full-scale adoption. This may impede integration with existing systems and currencies.

The purpose of Cosmos is to unite and facilitate interoperability between blockchains, forming the Internet of Blockchains.

Enter Cosmos, the “Internet of Blockchains”. Cosmos is a network and a framework for interoperability between blockchains. It consists of a web of hubs and zones, where each zone is effectively an independent blockchain with an arbitrary cryptocurrency design (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, ZeroCash, CryptoNote, your local banking institution, etc.). Each hub is a multi-asset cryptocurrency that facilitates interoperability between some set of zones.

Cosmos thus introduces a new kind of market dynamic that formalizes the friction points between various cryptocurrency offerings. It demolishes barriers to interoperability by enabling competition between hubs to contribute to the economic security of each hub itself. Validators who misbehave will be abandoned for better behaving ones. The result is a heterogeneous network — an Internet of Blockchains — adapting for each community and each locale according to its needs, all while retaining a backbone of interoperability. The goal is keeping barriers to entry low while holding stewards of the system accountable.

Cosmos’ potential is building synergy and unlocking the power that exists in every cryptocurrency. As operators in one particular echo chamber of consensus systems design, Cosmos believes interoperability is the key to unlocking the collective developments of this industry. With the Internet of Blockchains, companies and individuals can utilize the services of one chain, without abandoning their existing investments in another. This creates a world that is fairer, more functional and better secured. This is a call for an end to echo chambers, and the beginning of bridge-building.

Ex Unitae Vires…