A Blockchain to Connect All Blockchains, Cosmos Is Now Officially Live

Published on by Coindesk | Published on

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Cosmos, a highly anticipated blockchain itself designed to improve the interoperability between any number of other blockchains, has officially released a live software.

With the mining of its first block at 23:00 UTC, the project has launched Cosmos Hub, the first in a series of proof-of-stake blockchains intended to make up the Cosmos ecosystem.

At present, users of the network will not be able to swap tokens between blockchains or otherwise connect to Cosmos Hub with existing blockchain networks until validators officially vote to activate what is called the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol.

Having debuted the concept for the blockchain interoperability platform back in summer 2016, Cosmos later raised over $16 million in an initial coin offering in 2017.

Tendermint Core - the blockchain networking and consensus mechanism underlying the Cosmos Hub - is another key tool that Manian envisions will help "Fundamentally remove barriers to innovation" in the blockchain space and ultimately help "Compose an entirely new system of finance."

For now, Cosmos users are not allowed to transfer their holdings of the native network currency - ATOM tokens - just yet.

Thereafter, a secondary vote will be held to connect new blockchains also called "Zones" to the Cosmos Hub and begin swapping heterogeneous cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens.

Manian told CoinDesk there are 70 validators at Cosmos Hub launch committed to securing the network.

"Now with Cosmos being another very valuable chain with staking and delegation, it's going to place a major emphasis on cross-network reputation for validators."

While Union Marketplace has quietly collected around 230 validators across all its various staking networks as it gears up for launch, Coplan expects the Cosmos launch, in particular, will inspire more players to experiment with these types of services.

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