Cosmos was once the king of interoperability thanks to its revolutionary Tendermint consensus mechanism and Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) standard. However, several years after its release, the Cosmos ecosystem has grown without needing the ATOM token. Let’s analyze the value proposition of ATOM, its newfound competitor Ethereum, and if the Cosmos ecosystem has a chance of ever taking off.
Cosmos was founded in 2016 by Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman. They were part of the Tendermint team, which developed a software development kit that provides the core functionality of a blockchain, such as consensus and networking. The Cosmos SDK utilized Tendermint to create a modular framework that allows developers to build their blockchains with custom features and applications without starting from scratch. The SDK’s standardization also enables cross-chain communication through the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, which allows different blockchains to transfer tokens and data with each other.