ATOM: a Cross-chain Pilot on the Internet of Blockchains
Astro Boy (鉄腕アトム) is the most famous masterpiece written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka, a celebrated Japanese manga artist. This manga franchise tells the story of the young android Astro Boy (nicknamed Son of Science) who stayed active to improve the well-being of humans in the future 21st century.
The protagonist’s name "アトム" is derived from the English word “ATOM”. The character is named Astro Boy in English.
In the original manga, Astro Boy has seven special abilities, one of which is flight. Being propelled by rockets located at his feet, he can travel freely in the universe. The crypto that we will focus on today is also called ATOM, the native token of the Cosmos public chain. Moreover, it has also got some special abilities that allow the crypto to fly freely in the blockchain world.
Cosmos is a forward-looking, innovative cross-chain project initiated by the Tendermint team in 2016. ATOM is the most important token of Cosmos. Many of you should be familiar with Cosmos as it frequently appears in crypto news. Additionally, a lot of crypto users remember Cosmos as the “Internet of Blockchains”. That said, what exactly is Cosmos? What are the superpowers of ATOM? Let’s answer these questions in more detail.
In recent years, all sorts of blockchain projects have achieved exponential growth, but these chains represent information silos, which makes it challenging for them to transfer information between each other. This has also become a problem facing the whole blockchain space. At the moment, two cross-chain projects stand out from their peers: Polkadot and Cosmos.
The word Cosmos means the universe, and the project also has a unique view of the universe: the world cannot be dominated by one blockchain, and we must strive for a world where multiple chains and cryptos coexist. As such, Cosmos also pursues a cosmic goal: it aims to bring together the separate chains to form a complete ecosystem that will look just the same as the real universe.
Cosmos mentioned in its whitepaper that Cosmos is a brand new blockchain ecosystem with better scalability and interoperability. Before Cosmos, blockchains were siloed and unable to communicate with each other. They were hard to build and could only handle a small number of transactions per second. Cosmos solves these problems as it pursues new technological visions.
Strictly speaking, Cosmos, born to address the cross-chain issue of data, is a decentralized network of independent parallel blockchains, each powered by BFT consensus algorithms, which enables the cross-chain communication of information across different blockchains, thereby giving rise to a complete ecosystem.
Put it more simply, Cosmos addresses the problem of blockchain silos by building a bridge to connect the independent crypto blockchains, which is why we call it the “Internet of Blockchains”.
It should be noted that, according to Cosmos, “coins” can be separated from “chains”. It has got a core technology called Tendermint that enables the cross-chain transfer of tokens. In addition, Tendermint is one of the earliest PoS consensus engines based on Byzantine Fault Tolerance in the blockchain space.
To put it even more bluntly, Cosmos is a bridge that connects different cryptos.
Cosmos provides two basic modules: Tendermint Core and Cosmos SDK. The former is the underlying consensus mechanism and network communication protocol that help developers quickly build new blockchain networks (similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum). Cosmos SDK, on the other hand, is a general framework for building blockchains. While using Tendermint Core, developers can also adopt Cosmos SDK to build the application layer of their blockchain, thereby creating basic functions such as accounts, transfers, staking, governance, and cross-chain communication protocols.
Some of you might get confused by the tech side of Cosmos. In a nutshell, Cosmos provides developers with development tools that allow them to easily develop public chains on Cosmos and connect with existing public chains. Therefore, Cosmos has also become the preferred platform in many practical use cases.
Having illustrated the magic of Cosmos, let’s now check the specific blockchain problems it solves.
1、Scalability
PoW (Proof-of-Work) protocols are slow, expensive, non-scalable, and harmful to the environment — a problem that Cosmos solves with Tendermint BFT, the Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus engine that powers its PoS (Proof-of-Stake) consensus.
2、Ease of use
Blockchain applications are complex and difficult for developers to understand. Cosmos SDK addresses this issue because it is a modular framework for building interoperable, application-specific blockchains.
3、Interoperability
Blockchain economies are isolated, and assets cannot be moved across chains. The IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol solves this problem. IBC is a blockchain messaging protocol similar to TCP/IP. In the Cosmos Network, the connection between blockchains is backed by the IBC protocol, which uses the Tendermint consensus to allow heterogeneous chains to transfer value (i.e. Token) or data to each other.
Let’s now turn to ATOM, a pilot that moves freely on the Internet of blockchains. Speaking of ATOM, we must first introduce Cosmos Hub.
Cosmos intends to create a blockchain universe consisting of multiple Hubs, and the first one launched in the Cosmos Network is called Cosmos Hub, the token of which is named ATOM.
Validators in Cosmos function like miners who provide mining rigs. In this network, non-validator nodes delegate ATOM to validators for voting to receive a proportion of the ATOM reward. When a validator is attacked or does evil, he would be punished and weakened by the system via certain mechanisms.
Of course, there is a priority sequence among the many Hubs. In particular, Cosmos Hub is the first and most essential Hub in the entire Cosmos ecosystem. Simply put, Cosmos Hub can be regarded as the core of the operation of the entire Cosmos system, while ATOM is the native token of the core Hub. Meanwhile, other Hubs also have their native tokens.
Generally speaking, ATOM is essentially a type of token, and each ATOM holder may participate in the on-chain governance of Cosmos Hub and fly freely on the Internet of blockchains.
To be more specific, ATOM holders can stake their tokens to receive staking rewards while participating in on-chain governance. Meanwhile, they also provide security for the Cosmos Network in an indirect way, and such security-related validation work is also essential to the final success of Cosmos.
Picture this: If Cosmos Hub becomes more valuable in the future, then the security of the Cosmos Network will also be worth more. As such, more people would think that earning annual returns of 7%-20% via Staking is a great investment.
Therefore, the firm consensus among investors is, without a doubt, the most crucial factor that makes ATOM valuable. We have every reason to believe that ATOM will further succeed if the Cosmos Network flourishes in the future.
That being said, it has been reported that the blockchain fees will not be built into the Cosmos system. How profitable will Cosmos be? Will this affect the market prospect of ATOM? Let’s wait and see.
