Open, Decentralized Networks
Reflecting on open, decentralized network technology
Note: The Cosmos ecosystem is constantly growing and expanding. This article content is now outdated. For the latest content, see https://cosmos.network/.
General Purpose Technology
On the dawn of the launch of the Cosmos Hub, the first blockchain in the Cosmos Network, we at the Interchain Foundation (ICF), wanted to take a moment to reflect on the technology and networks we are building.
The mission of the ICF is to promote and advance research and development in open and decentralized networks, with a particular focus on the Cosmos Network. The Cosmos Network is a highly ambitious project, comprising a global interoperating web of sovereign Byzantine Fault Tolerant Replicated State Machines. To achieve this goal, the ICF has been focusing on allocating capital to develop diverse and general purpose technologies that are easy to use, build on, fork, and experiment with. Projects such as:
- Tendermint Core, the world’s leading implementation of a BFT replication engine, supporting state machines in *any* programming language, with community supported drivers in JS, Python, C++, Java, Rust, Erlang, Elixir, Haskell.
- Cosmos SDK, an object-capability-secure framework for building BFT replicated state machines in Golang.
- LotionJS, the simplest framework for building BFT replicated state machines on the planet. Written in Javascript.
- IBC, an open-source protocol enabling one replicated BFT state machine to authenticate another, and hence to communicate with it in a decentralised way.
- Signatory and KMS, a pure Rust multi-provider digital signature library that can be used for validators on any network, and a key-management service specifically for Tendermint validators.
- Cosmos Ledger App, digital signatures on arbitrary depth inspectable JSON structures, designed for use by any Cosmos chain.
That said, the success of the technology depends first and foremost on the larger community of users, operators, and developers. To date, we have funded the development of accessible general purpose technology so that you, the community, would use it. So you would test it, experiment with it, fork it, and improve it. So that you would create many thousands of state machines, validator sets, and tool kits, and launch so many more blockchains all through it. So that you would evolve it all in strange and wonderful ways.
We are immensely grateful for the ~150 external contributors and the many more users of Tendermint Core, the Cosmos SDK, and other related repositories. We look forward to further collaboration between people, organizations, and their blockchains.
Cosmos Hub Experiment
On this foundation of general purpose technology, the software for the first blockchain in the Cosmos Network has been built: the Cosmos Hub. As discussed in a previous post, the Cosmos Hub is set to launch in three phases. You are about to begin phase one: Network Stability.
For the Cosmos Hub to come on-line, more than ⅔ of the bonded voting power of the initial validator set must come on-line with the same genesis file. The ICF recommends a particular genesis file and software version, but there is no guarantee a network will ever start from it — nodes and validators may never come online, they may disregard the ICF’s recommendation and choose different genesis files, they may modify the software in arbitrary ways. Such outcomes and many more are outside the ICF’s control and completely in the hands of the community. The Cosmos Network is yours, and it’s on you to bring it to life.
The purpose of the Cosmos Hub, of course, is to help coordinate the budding ecosystem of Cosmos blockchains by providing a highly available, high-security validator set to enforce the rules of blockchain interoperability. That said, the initial release has no support for interoperability; its native token, the ATOM, will not even be transferable!
It is merely the most advanced implementation of a BFT Proof-of-Stake state machine known to-date, with complex protocols designed for use in public economic settings. Activation of interoperability and transferability will require the community to coordinate to upgrade the network in backwards incompatible ways, to complete the remaining phases of launch.
This is all to say that the Cosmos Hub, and the larger Cosmos Network it is seeding, are enormous, unproven, high-risk experiments, the success of which depend critically on the larger community of users, operators, and developers. While the ICF intends to continue to support research and development to make technical fixes and improvements to the software and protocols, it is ultimately the community’s responsibility to operate and evolve the network, to prevent it from failing, and to make it succeed.
It is your responsibility, as participating community members, to do the following:
- Protect your private keys
- Verify everything: software versions, genesis files, dependencies, keys, and everything else!
- Operate devices and software securely
- Monitor the network
- Be alert for security issues, and report them if you find them
- Read, improve, and contribute code
- Cooperate with others to competently evolve the network
- Develop applications, tools, and services for the network to make it useful
- Defend the network from unfathomable bugs and insufferable attacks.
We have arranged for extensive testing of the software, with automated simulators, public decentralized testnets, and the world’s first adversarial Proof-of-Stake competition. We have also arranged for the code to be reviewed thoroughly, through a bug bounty program and engagements with top tier security firms. But no amount of testing can ever approach the reality of a mainnet launch.Thus, the software remains highly experimental, and any interaction with it remains highly risky. Please review again the risks outlined in the original fundraiser terms and conditions.
Before you interact with the network, please review how to protect yourselves, and review the security advisories in the blog post on preparing for launch.
In these early days, we can expect to have issues, updates, and bugs, and we have documented possible forms of network failure. The existing tools require advanced technical skills and involve risks which are outside of the control of the Interchain Foundation and/or the Tendermint team (see also the risk section in the Interchain Cosmos Contribution Terms). Any use of this open source Apache 2.0 licensed software is done at your own risk and on a “AS IS” basis, without warranties, representations or support of any kind, and any and all liability of the Interchain Foundation and/or the Tendermint team for damages arising in connection to the software is excluded. Please exercise extreme caution, and don’t risk more than you can afford to lose!
We look to you now to bring this network to life, to protect it, to evolve it, and to nurture it to realize its grand potential — as a foundation for the new token economy, an interoperable network of blockchains.
Godspeed.
