Cosmos Announces Major Revamp In New Whitepaper
The Cosmos (ATOM) team announced a new whitepaper to revamp the project. Cosmos was introduced in 2016 as a novel blockchain network architecture to address the usual issues of blockchain technology including energy inefficiency, poor performance, and immature governance mechanisms. Cosmos is a network of several independent blockchains or zones.
The first zone is the Cosmos Hub which hosts the ATOM cryptocurrency and its staking and governance capabilities. All zones within the Cosmos network communicate with each other with an inter-blockchain communication (IBC) protocol. The Cosmos Hub hosts all inter-zone token transfers and isolates each zone from the failure of other zones.
Cosmos also has an Interchain Account system which allows blockchains to securely control accounts on other chains. The Interchain Account allows users to access all compatible chains through this single account.
Cosmos’ original whitepaper focused on creating this “Interchain”, a network of networks. Now that the foundation has been laid, developers are proposing the transition to the next phase of the Cosmos Hub. To bring a use case for the ATOM currency, ATOM will be the preferred collateral within the Cosmos Network.
The updated paper proposes two new app-specific functionalities to accelerate interchain growth: The Interchain Allocator and Interchain Scheduler. It also describes a new Liquid Staking feature that will soon allow premier vendors to issue liquid staking assets. The process of issuing more ATOM has also been outlined in two phases, transition, and steady state. The transition state will start the moment that Cosmos shifts to the new monetary policy and last 36 months. Issuance will be significantly increased for the first nine months (10 million ATOM per month) of the transition phase and then significantly reduced afterward. During the steady state phase, 300,000 ATOM will be issued per month. The paper includes a safety measure in which the original monetary policy will resume should the staking rate ever fall below.
