- Interoperability company Skip has been bought by the Interchain Foundation, a Swiss non-profit that is assisting in the development of Cosmos, to take charge of its “product, protocol, and go-to-market strategy work.”
- After years of conflicting views, Skip hopes to modernize the traditional Cosmos Hub at the core of the multi-chain ecosystem.
- Political disputes and infighting have frequently hampered Cosmos’ progress.
One of the biggest changes the Cosmos ecology has ever seen is currently taking place.
In an effort to concentrate product development and unify the Cosmos ecosystem, the Interchain Foundation, the premier development organization for Cosmos, said on Tuesday that it is purchasing blockchain solutions company Skip, which has now changed its name to Interchain Inc. With co-founder Ethan Buchman stepping aside from his role as a leader of the Swiss non-profit, this move represents a departure from decentralized leadership and puts the ICF in a position to refocus on expansion and firmly establish the Cosmos Hub as the hub of the ecosystem.
The purchase of Skip represents a turning point for Cosmos and the Interchain Foundation. We are rethinking how the ICF operates by partnering with Skip’s unmatched execution and their connection to the larger ecosystem. This is a radical change, not just in terms of structure but also in our dedication to bringing Cosmos’ core components—the Hub and the Stack—together in order to realize the Cosmos vision with fresh focus and purpose.
Cosmos, a blockchain ecosystem with a strong emphasis on interoperability, has long struggled with fragmentation and conflicting project future visions. The ICF has long followed a distributed product development approach in which critical network components were created and maintained by people or groups known as “stewards.”
Interchain will bring these capabilities “in-house” as part of the growth-oriented acquisition, bringing the developer experience of working using Cosmos’ open-source, modular frameworks and “blockchain-in-a-box” software packages together.
Cosmos, which debuted in 2019, invented the idea of a “appchain” environment. The goal was to create a multiverse of networks that could readily talk with one another and share security by giving everyone the infrastructure they needed to start a blockchain with a specific purpose.
The Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol, which facilitates easy token swapping across application-specific chains, and native Interchain Security, which enables these chains to combine the security characteristics that give blockchains their resistance to censorship, are the main components of this system. The Cosmos Hub, which has contributed more or less to the “Interchain Stack” concept at different points since its inception, is what ties these appchains together.
Cosmos has mostly succeeded in becoming one of the first networks to introduce a new blockchain or decentralized application. Cosmos’ blockchain-building software suite, the Interchain Stack, is currently used by hundreds of appchains with tens of billions of dollars in value. These chains can readily share assets and liquidity because to Cosmos’ shared design.
Cosmos’ tools were used to launch some of the most popular cryptocurrency networks, such as the now-defunct Terra blockchain and Binance’s native BNB Chain. The corporation first used Cosmos to construct its doomed Libra/Diem project when Meta was still known as Facebook. Additionally, after finding Ethereum to be too costly to utilize, networks like as the decentralized derivatives market dYdX have decided to switch to Cosmos.
Conflicting interests
However, as network maintenance became more decentralized over time, Cosmos also experienced years of political and technical conflict. Although the precise beginning of the infighting cannot be pinpointed, Tendermint, the business that managed Cosmos’ initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017, split into multiple geographically separated entities in 2020. (Tendermint subsequently changed its name to Ignite.)
The value of ATOM, the native token of the Hub, is arguably the most obvious indication of Cosmos’ lack of unity. By market value, ATOM was a top-10 coin years ago, but of days it hardly makes the top 50. Over the years, prominent figures in the Cosmos ecosystem have contemplated the introduction of rival tokens in an attempt to redesign or dismantle the current Cosmos Hub.
One example of this chaos at the top was when Cosmos co-founder Jae Kwon chose to use a network fork to introduce a breakaway currency called Atomone in the midst of disputes over the amount of token inflation required to maintain the security of the Cosmos blockchain. Kwon has walked back and returned to the idea several times throughout the years.
Although many blockchain initiatives claim to aim for distributed leadership, Cosmos’ diverse group of businesses, non-profits, and influential opinion leaders, who frequently hold divergent opinions about how to bring the “multiverse” to life, has frequently resulted in internal conflicts and technical setbacks that affect the general public.
Going forward
In a way, the Skip acquisition is an effort to make it clear that Cosmos has been and can continue to be a major pioneer in the cryptocurrency space, according to Cincinnati. “End the ambiguity surrounding the focus of the ICF” is the stated goal of the action. The future is now lot more clear to us,” Cincinnati said.
Organizational fragmentation and a lack of foundational core capabilities have long been problems for Cosmos. At the core of the ecosystem, a hub blockchain is crucial for coordination, routing, canonicalization, driving liquidity, supporting chain launches, and fostering overall chain growth.
I’m thrilled to leave the board and transmit the torch now that the ICF has the best leadership available. Cincinnati said that three new board members will be chosen by the Foundation Council, which is in charge of the ICF.
The Skip Protocol was established in 2022 and has grown to be a major supplier of infrastructure in the Cosmos universe. It offers a set of technologies designed to strengthen cross-chain transactions, increase appchain interoperability, and simplify the challenges of blockchain bridging.
They have a proven track record of delivering high-quality products that solve actual problems for developers and users in the Cosmos. In contrast to the ICF, Skip enjoys widespread affection within the Cosmos ecosystem and maintains close ties with teams who have been moving farther away from the Cosmos.
The center of centers
The recently renamed Interchain Inc. is reintroducing the Cosmos Hub and ATOM token as essential elements of the Cosmos vision as part of the effort to unify Cosmos’ infrastructure. To enhance the developer experience and user onboarding, the firm and ICF will work to “internalize” the Interchain Stack development process and “treat it as a full-service bundle.”
The Hub will develop into a real hub, facilitating the growth of Cosmos applications by linking them to users, liquidity, and services. As a result, the expansion of Cosmos apps will propel expansion to the Hub, generating a flywheel to boost the ecosystem.
The expansion of individual appchains and the ecosystem as a whole will be facilitated by transforming the Cosmos Hub into a real hub for security and liquidity. The Interchain team did, however, also state that it hopes to expand support for additional native virtual machines and programming languages, such as Rust.
Additionally, the team will assist in the development of the eagerly awaited IBC v2, or “IBC Eureka,” a condensed version of the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol that is projected to debut in 2025 and will enable native Ethereum.
According to the researchers, combining all of this will enable significantly faster iteration cycles while enhancing Cosmos’ use and dependability. Additionally, it will allow Interchain Inc. to expand the Interchain Stack to new architectures and environments, including restaked services, sovereign rollups, and L2s.
It’s unclear how stakeholders and network users will react to this disruption and whether investors will be persuaded to continue funding an ecosystem that is frequently more renowned for its drama than its progress. One of the worst-performing tokens during Monday’s broader market decline, ATOM was down about 20% in the 24 hours prior to publication, according to CoinGecko.
The community must support this course as well, so I do believe that this is still an open question.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
