Thread by @ticojohnny

This is a follow up to a post I made back in 2021, there've been a lot of folks that’ve been asking about quality fundamentals posts and how some of these block chain technologies stack up in the real world, it certainly feels like the right time to talk about $ATOM.

I've been listening to all of the @cosmos_voice podcasts since the beginning and taking notes, I went back and read all of the old @Cosmos blogs, posts and articles, accumulating information on the Telegram groups, Discord channels, Reddit, Githubs, Mediums.

Piecing together pieces from Conversations with @Jack_Zampolin and @chjango's Interchain.FM, every gem that’s ever been dropped from @Cryptocito, @L1am_Crypto, @Wickex2, @ConeyDaddy, @ZoltanAtom, @Adriana_Kalpa, @johnniecosmos. It became quite fun.

Becoming engaged with the Cosmos community happened so quickly, the space is welcoming. When I made that post about some insight gathered about Cosmos, I felt like I could share with it all. Still, I wake up everyday realizing that there’s so much more that I have yet to learn.

I started working behind the scenes with @catdotfish to help moderate channels and built some structure to existing channels. It's important to welcome, educate and do what we can to make sure that users have a quality experience. Keeping up to date with everything is momentous.

I started to initiate and moderate some AMA's with some key people in the ecosystem and started to get to know and follow along on many of the developers' Twitter pages. It became a morning routine to see what was going on in the Cosmos.

I recently attended the live meet up hosted by Cryptocito with @zmanian, @buchmanster, Jack and @billyrennekamp. I was also fortunate to meet most of these people in person at #cosmoverse, Lisbon, @zcpeng, @gregory_landua, @deeeedle, @ToschDev, @defitimes, @alessiotreglia,

https://twitter.com/_/status/1474364969470857217

Between these two events, I've been inspired to sort of capture some of this enthusiasm into words, these are my personal views: a little write up on why I personally believe the Cosmos Hub would stand out from the rest.

I suppose it wasn’t as obvious to some people, I accumulated and learned through 2021, and I still can't even put it together with how many projects were being built in the @CosmosEcosystem. I’ll admit I’m a relative newcomer.

I held some tokens but I didn’t really experience “crypto” for a while. It wasn’t until the Cosmos space made #DeFi affordable, authentic and fun that I really got into the what-looks-like-it-could-be-the-future of #blockchain technology.

In the video hosted by Cryptocito, Billy spells it out bluntly, “Even if ATOM does nothing else, ATOM created the Internet of Blockchains,” these early investments of ATOM speak for themselves, IBC validator infrastructure, zero knowledge, EVM capabilities, interchain concepts.

Still, ATOM could do so much more. There aren’t many other value accrual mechanisms other than a blockchain-techs’ integration, where it's integrated and what it is integrated into. What does it’s community do there? Is it just hype, or is there real working technology?

@zamanian puts it perfectly, “We have one of the biggest ecosystems in all of Crypto, with a tested and true decentralized consensus, incredible documentation, and interoperability. Value accrual has happened this year, air drops help, but also consider the rapid growth of DEXes.

Worth noting, @osmosiszone went to market and did kick-start DeFi in Cosmos, but @zmanian adds, “The ATOM community provided the fiat on and off ramps, it was ATOM that drove the biggest liquidity pools, it was Cosmos Hub validators that launched the chain and debugged relayers."

"We are playing the long game here, Ethan and I were here working on this long before most of the blockchains were even a glint in anyone’s eye.” There’s a lot of symbiosis that happens when the blockchains and the independent teams within Cosmos work together to meet ends.

Back in 2021, the most exciting parts of the roadmap were the Stargate Launch (Inter Blockchain Communication Protocol), the DEX interfaces being built in the space (@osmosiszone, @emerisHQ, @sifchain.

The first Smart Contracts focused platforms for the space (@ArchwayHQ, @JunoNetwork, @agoric). The Ethereum bridge, @gravity_bridge which was and still is seemingly just around the corner. We were excited for “shared security” (which is now called Interchain Staking).

Now we know a little better, it’s obvious that with IBC, we have this powerful technology that is future-facing. With such a feat to work out it was unlikely that we'd see Interchain Staking coming to the hub in 2021, it’s another very involved and frankly novel development task.

Interchain Staking is certainly one of the most exciting possibilities in expanding the scope of the Cosmos Hub. There will be independent blockchains, with full security as if they were on the hub itself. The Cosmos Hub will no longer live a super conservative lifestyle.

Interchain security will allow the Cosmos Hub to be more aggressive, exciting and adventurous. Different applications need different levels of security. Some applications will need tons of active security, others will only need it when a transaction happens.

This version of shared security system on the Cosmos has a probability of being more tangible, more scalable and more mature than other shared security systems. Allowing different security levels means more diversity of dApps.

https://twitter.com/cosmos/status/1432796724985221122

All of this implies more interesting rewards for staking the ATOM token, there’s a likelihood that delegating on the Hub results in validating for chains on interchain staking, earning ATOM stakers multiple rewards from validating different chains using the Cosmos Hub’s Security.

Another piece worth noting is that the #Ethereum bridge built by @AltheaNetwork will likely adopt interchain security as soon as it is available. There are already some users in mind for the first implementation of Interchain Security that will launch at the instantiation.

I believe both @InterlayHQ and @axelarcore are working on a #Bitcoin implementation for #Cosmos and when we see these instances easily accessible on multiple DEXes in the Cosmos, there will be truly an explosion of Interchain Community within Cosmos.

The Cosmos Hub is the birthplace and logical center of IBC for alot of reasons, @jack_zampolin puts it like this, "The way we are choosing to build out our ecosystem is fundamentally different than some other projects that are more focused on the centrality of this center chain…

…and not allowing other things to grow on their own, we’ve built this open source software, and we said if you guys want to use it go for it, and there’s this huge community that’s developed around that, that will of course and always has brought value back to the ATOM."

Jack believes that a potentially better and longer term method to drive value to the hub is going to be "hub routing" and concepts like the "chain naming service" to help chain interactions: routing packets and enabling connections between different points in the interchain.

Interchain Smart Contracts will require service discovery, the hub should play the role of helping that service discovery and helping to route those packets through the interchain. Which seems like a good transition to talk about the User Experience of Cosmos.

None of us really knew that we wanted Interchain Accounts, except for maybe a few, @dogemos' medium.com/chainapsis/why…

But, the more you play with the Cosmos, the more obvious it is that just a few small improvements in user experience would make the network UI incredibly clever.

One of the biggest draws to “Interchain Accounts” is the sheer ease of use that will be enabled in the Cosmos Ecosystem. As you might know there are many core teams developing pieces of the user experience of Cosmos that will all fit together over the next few months.

We have many additional UX improvements already on the way, @Keplrwallet is the first IBC-enabled wallet, the @MetaMask of Cosmos, if you will. Using Keplr is already a breeze but they are always out meeting the needs of the ecosystem, like Juno's new CW20 token minting.

https://twitter.com/dogemos/status/1466694619467743239

@emerisHQ (which is still in beta) intends to add auto-compounding, dex aggregation and an airdrop page in conjunction with many other use(r)ful applications to the Cosmos Ecosystem. Emeris is also the place to view your entire inter-chain portfolio in one place.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1471218648891154434

@IBCwallet deserves some praise as well, they designed the first mobile wallet for IBC and have worked hard to continually stay updated and integrate pieces of the Cosmos into its user interface, such as @starname_me, and the Gravity DEX and Osmosis.

https://twitter.com/CosmostationVD/status/1445992403152736260

When I first originally wrote this thought process down, there were only roughly a dozen chains that were just getting ready to connect with IBC. Updating now, we stand at an incredible 29 chains connected to IBC, with copious amounts of new chains coming into the ecosystem.

In no particular order, @Cosmos, @Sifchain, @irisnetwork, @akashnet_, @cryptocom, @BitSongOfficial, @Sentinel_co, @SecretNetwork, @osmosiszone, @junonetwork, @terra_money, @cronos_chain, @ComdexOfficial, @PersistenceOne, @emoney_com, @ChihuahuaChain, @StargazeZone,…

…@Ki_Foundation, @regen_network, @cyber_devs, @ixoworld, @likecoin @starname_me, @_MediBloc, @BitCannaGlobal @microtick_zone, @InjectiveLabs, @ShentuChain, and @lum_network.

I love that this took almost two full tweets to get out.

I list these coins first because they put in the efforts to make their platforms IBC-compatible first, and solidifying the concept of an Internet of Blockchains. Every one of these chains is their own sovereign network built with the @cosmossdk or @StarportHQ.

Each is a fully functioning blockchain with its own unique parameters and concepts, not to mention novel use-cases, so many more words to get into what each does, take the time to research and you’ll see some incredibly novel blockchain technology applications.

It doesn't even mention the tokens that intend to enable IBC this year, @kava_platform, @odinprotocol, @agoric, @Umee_CrossChain, @BandProtocol, @SwitcheoLabs, @Fetch_ai. Our NFT scene is likely to explode pretty soon too with @pylonstech, @uptickproject and @StargazeZone.

The Synergies are underestimated:
CW20 Style Tokens
Interchain Smart Contracts
Stablecoins
DEXes
DAOs
Wallets and finance solutions
Oracles
Inexpensive DeFi
Synthetic Tokens
Collateral/Loan Systems
Liquidity Farms
NFTs
DVPN Frameworks
Cloud Computing

A core part of the ATOM value accrual story is that the size of the IBC economy is about to explode, there are many pieces of this atom picture that were conceptualized in the ATOM white paper that are just now finally seeing fruition.

“Culture here has always been much more long term focused and much less short term focused. We spend money, time and effort on engineering, building out core functionality that’s going to support entire ecosystems, and nurturing building those ecosystems."

"That work is inherently long-term.” Jack states. Lots of people want things to "moon" and move fast, and some people say that ATOM Tokenomics are not solid, but that’s because they’ve been designed with years (and not months) in mind.

There’s also promising innovation just around the corner with @EvmosOrg and their #EVM environment. A great place for innovative AMM implementation and novel Smart Contract applications with an environment that is quick, transactions are inexpensive and composability is key.

Many EVM dApps will likely be forked from @ethereum onto Evmos and possibly from other EVM-compatible chains, they will need assets to hold in their dexes, in their treasuries and lending protocols and ATOM is perfectly positioned to be a massively dominant asset in this economy.

If you take a look at @Uniswap, it's easy to come to the conclusion that people that want to invest $10-100 will likely choose to not make the trade because they'll be burning half their investment in Ethereum fees; I mean, I personally don’t want to do that. Definitely not.

In 2021, you could immediately conclude that that is why Pancake Swap and the Binance Smart Chain had gained so much adoption. That still rings true, and as we know even slippage and tolerance are still big issues, especially if you’re trying to trade on short time frames.

The DEXes within Cosmos give you the ability to invest in pools for high yields in a totally fair and decentralized fashion. Osmosis has been perfect evidence of that with Sifchain and Injective showing us other interesting bridged possibilities outside of the IBC network.

There still seems to be no one answer to any DEX. Part of the multi-chain vision approach is that everything is a valid approach. Some use cases will ask for different priorities: security vs ease of use, scalability vs specific use. There are lots of varying use cases.

We're not even getting into the Hub's plans for #LiquidStaking or @Sunnya97's #superfluid for @osmosiszone. That's a whole thread of its own, and I don't totally get it yet. 😅

It's probable, if not likely, that all existing AMM’s and DEXes are currently under-developed and still have plenty of room for experimentation, we are literally witnessing an explosion of innovation and ingenuity in the Cosmos.

Cosmos is not about pitching a story, the technology exists. The original plan was simply to bring value to its users, and now that they are here, bring more utility to its users. From there, we'll see where the value flows from that utility.

It's a pretty straight forward game plan, for a very long game: focus on building things that are useful, if the network has utility, value will come. We found what the hub specializes in, the next step is to utilize every ounce of what that specialization is about.

At the end of the day, i’m just an ATOM stalker (misspelling intentional). I follow it, I stake it, I pool it, I read about it and I watch and pay attention. We'll have some cool new toys pretty soon and it's been fun already. Of course, this is not financial advice. DYOR. :]