At Gateway to Cosmos, Prague was the Center of the Blockchain Multiverse

At Gateway to Cosmos, the premiere Cosmos blockchain conference held in Prague last week, we witnessed the door to the blockchain multiverse opening. Just like in the last Marvel film with Doctor Strange, Cosmos is a gateway to parallel worlds that can communicate with each other. These parallel worlds are blockchains created from the mother chain known as Cosmos.

Incompatibility and information transfer between individual blockchains are critical points that developers address. Blockchain 3.0, as Cosmos is called, allows programmers to seamlessly build new blockchains without the need to create so-called bridges between them. The whole project aims to create an internet of blockchains — a network of blockchains and applications built on them capable of communicating with each other in a decentralized way.

Bridging Cosmos to other blockchains

Interoperability has long been a crucial concept in the blockchain space. Almost every day, new blockchains or copies of the old ones are created, and sooner or later, there is a natural need for them to be able to communicate with each other. Although Cosmos functions within this ecosystem, it needs help translating into other languages and constantly transferring information to other networks.

Axelar, one of the event’s main partners, introduced a new way to ensure secure interaction with any asset or any decentralized application on any blockchain. They make it possible to, for example, send an NFT from Ethereum to any Cosmos blockchain and vice versa. In this way, all the leading blockchains are to be connected via the Axelar, with a bridge to Bitcoin in the pipeline for the near future.

DAOs are the centerpieces of decentralized projects

The exciting idea is that a truly decentralized solution should always begin with the emergence of DAO — a decentralized autonomous organization created according to rules encoded as a computer program on the blockchain. Jake Hartnell, the co-founder of Juno and DAO DAO, has demonstrated that no particular investor or VC needs to be behind a functioning organization. His projects are cleanly built and sponsored by the communities.

The risk is that the programmable rules on which these structures stand still do not have adequately established best practices to ensure fair and efficient long-term governance. On the other hand, diversity within DAOs could be one potential solution, similar to in modern political systems. Juno addresses the issue by creating subgroups — so-called “subDAOs.” This can be likened to a corporate structure where each entity has its responsibilities (CoreDev DAO, Event DAO, Hack DAO). As a result, each qualified part of the community makes specific decisions, and all of these individual components together make up the whole organization.

It’s time to start building

Every blockchain faces the challenge of engaging developers to start building new applications on them. User experience has long been an Achilles’ heel in this industry. At the same time, creating an active community of developers is a critical factor in the rise or fall of individual blockchains.

Dean Tribble, the co-founder of Agoric, a blockchain-based on the Cosmos SDK, presented a solution that could prove to be a gamechanger. The point is not to persuade developers to learn a new programming language, like Solidity for Ethereum. The point is to allow them to build on what they already know. We are talking about enabling 10 million existing developers to build Smart contracts in JavaScript. Thanks to Agoric, application programming on the blockchain will become accessible to “ordinary people.”

The overall message of the conference, “It’s time to build,” encouraged developers and teams around the world to start creating their solutions on Cosmos. The main organizer of the event, Rockaway blockchain fund, brought together blockchain founders, toolmakers, application programmers, investors, and other ecosystem entities in one place. The lectures intertwined with the hackathon and workshops, giving everyone the opportunity to get answers on the spot.

The mission of the Cleverlance Blockchain 42 team was to deepen our knowledge of the Cosmos ecosystem and associated tools and, above all, to gain new experience with Agoric and other Cosmos chains. After several days immersed in the conference, we can confidently say that our mission was accomplished, and our team is pushing forward, further into the depths of the Cosmos. Our childhood dreams of becoming cosmonauts are coming true. Stay tuned for more news and updates from the blockchain space;)