ENSv2 was recently announced, an ENS Labs proposal to extend the ENS protocol to a Layer 2 network and re-envision the architecture from the ground up 🥳 

 joined ENS Radio for a discussion and Q&A on the next generation of ENS, ENSv2 🦾 

ENS Labs recently cohosted a brunch with 

The Talent Protocol team shared a video recap to showcase what went down! 

Last week ENS Labs General Counsel and CISO 

 attended the ENS Water Cooler to connect with the community and answer questions! 

 has rolled out an ENS integration that allows users to easily claim a .snid.eth ENS subname through Starknet wallets✨ 

, a self-hostable public-good ENS Avatar resizing/optimizing + caching service that allows deterministic avatar loading for all dApps 🔥 

 App can now be used to get summaries and breakdowns of ENSv2 🤖 

Utilize the ENS subgraph on The Graph Network to access the directory of ENS names and ownership records as well resolve addresses and much more! 

 shared notes from the ENS DAO Ecosystem Working Group Meeting where Nick answered questions about ENSv2 💫 

 put out a 101 thread regarding ENSv2 👀 

That wraps up another great week in the ENS ecosystem!

Your support means a lot to us and we're eager to bring you more updates soon 🤝

Welcome to Ethereum Name Service's Community channel aggregated by CoinMarketCap.

This week in the ENS ecosystem 🧵 
ENSv2 was recently announced, an ENS Labs proposal to extend the ENS protocol to a Layer 2 network and re-envision the architecture from the ground up 🥳 
The ENS Labs executive team @nicksdjohnson, @KhoriWhittaker and @_jefflau joined ENS Radio for a discussion and Q&A on the next generation of ENS, ENSv2 🦾 
ENS Labs recently cohosted a brunch with @TalentProtocol 🤝

The Talent Protocol team shared a video recap to showcase what went down! 
Last week ENS Labs General Counsel and CISO @aurbelis attended the ENS Water Cooler to connect with the community and answer questions! 
.@Starknet_id has rolled out an ENS integration that allows users to easily claim a .snid.eth ENS subname through Starknet wallets✨ 
.@JontesTweets introduced a new ENS service, http://avatarservice.xyz, a self-hostable public-good ENS Avatar resizing/optimizing + caching service that allows deterministic avatar loading for all dApps 🔥 
The @BrianknowsAI App can now be used to get summaries and breakdowns of ENSv2 🤖 
Utilize the ENS subgraph on The Graph Network to access the directory of ENS names and ownership records as well resolve addresses and much more! 
ENS DAO Steward @AlexSlobodnik shared notes from the ENS DAO Ecosystem Working Group Meeting where Nick answered questions about ENSv2 💫 
.@BanklessHQ put out a 101 thread regarding ENSv2 👀 
That wraps up another great week in the ENS ecosystem!

Your support means a lot to us and we're eager to bring you more updates soon 🤝

 team joined ENS Radio this week to discuss their protocol and the Talent Passport as well their ENS integrations! 

, a community advocate we partnered with for a series of ENS Water Cooler Spaces, hosted his first space last Friday with 

 put out another ENS video roundup which highlighted announcements, integrations and creations that have occurred in the ENS ecosystem over the past two weeks! 

Namespace and Blockful are hosting an ENS + Chainlink event, during Belgrade Blockchain Week at 

 Newsletter #61 is out now along with a TL;DR 🦾 

That concludes another exciting week in the ENS ecosystem!

This week in the ENS ecosystem 🧵 
The @TalentProtocol team joined ENS Radio this week to discuss their protocol and the Talent Passport as well their ENS integrations! 
.@garypalmerjr, a community advocate we partnered with for a series of ENS Water Cooler Spaces, hosted his first space last Friday with @nicksdjohnson and @KhoriWhittaker in attendance 🎉 
ENS DAO Steward, @limes_eth put out another ENS video roundup which highlighted announcements, integrations and creations that have occurred in the ENS ecosystem over the past two weeks! 
Namespace and Blockful are hosting an ENS + Chainlink event, during Belgrade Blockchain Week at @ethbelgrade 
ENS Labs' very own @LucemansNL is hacking out at ETHBerlin 🫡

https://x.com/LucemansNL/status/1793911017002733774
The @ENS_DAO Newsletter #61 is out now along with a TL;DR 🦾 
That concludes another exciting week in the ENS ecosystem!

Your support means a lot to us and we're eager to bring you more updates soon 🤝

What Is ENS?

An Ugly Culture War Has Broken Out in Crypto. Why?

Podcast: The Bitfinex Hack... Rapped Up (Sorry)

Crypto News, Feb. 8: Industry's Toxicity Exposed

'I Felt Shocked': Transphobic Abuse Sent on Blockchain

## What Is Ethereum Name Service (ENS)?

[Ethereum Name Service (ENS)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum-name-service/) is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. ENS converts human-readable Ethereum addresses like john.eth into the machine-readable alphanumeric codes you know from wallets like [Metamask](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/metamask). The reverse conversion -- associating metadata and machine-readable addresses with human-readable [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) addresses -- is also possible.

The goal of Ethereum Name Service is to make the Ethereum-based web easier to access and comprehend for humans - similar to how the Internet’s Domain Name Service makes the internet more accessible. Like DNS, ENS also uses a system of dot-separated hierarchical names called domains with domain owners fully controlling their subdomains.

ENS launched with a highly successful retroactive [airdrop](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/airdrop) in November 2021 that rewarded users who had registered addresses before the project launched its token. However, in February 2022, it faced criticism over apparently [homophobic tweets](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/ens-in-crisis-as-leader-s-unacceptable-tweet-emerges) by its director of operations. 


## Who Are the Founders of Ethereum Name Service?

ENS was initially a part of the Ethereum Foundation, but spun off as a separate organization in 2018. Its Lead Developer is Nick Johnson, a software engineer from New Zealand that previously worked at Google and the Ethereum Foundation. The ENS team is nine people strong and its treasury is governed by a 4-7 [multi-signature](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/multisignature) root with the following members:



* Nick Johnson - ENS
* Sergey Nazarov - Chainlink
* Dan Finlay - Metamask
* Taylor Monahan - MyCrypto
* Aron Fischer - Colony
* Jason Carver - Ethereum Foundation
* Martin Swende - Ethereum Foundation

Although ENS has no investors, it is supported by the Ethereum Foundation, Binance_X, Chainlink, Ethereum Classic Labs, and Protocol Labs.


## What Makes Ethereum Name Service Unique?

Ethereum Name Service has a one-of-a-kind value proposition due to being the first service that transfers the Domain Name Service to the decentralized Web3. 

ENS is not a company but an open-source project that calls itself “an open public utility that belongs to the company.” Essentially, it aims to become a piece of infrastructure as vital to Web3 as the DNS is to the internet. Moreover, ENS does not have a single point of failure thanks to blockchain technology and is, by design, more censorship-resistant and secure.

One of the main obstacles to the mass adoption of blockchain technologies has been their accessibility and ease of use, which ENS aims to remedy. Instead of using machine-readable albeit inconvenient alphanumeric codes, users can receive any crypto or [NFT](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/non-fungible-token) to a short and easy-to-remember link. This simplifies the user experience and makes blockchain technology less technical.

Under the hood, ENS is built on two [smart contracts](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract). The first is an ENS registry recording domains registered on ENS and stores the following information about each of them:



* The domain owner
* The domain resolver
* The caching time for all records under the domain

The second smart contract is the resolver. Its purpose is to translate the machine-readable addresses to domain names and vice versa and match each domain to its corresponding user, website, or address. 


## Related Pages:

Check out [Chainlink (LINK)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/chainlink/) — an oracle solution used by many protocols.

Check out [Terra (LUNA)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/terra-luna/) — a popular layer-one blockchain.

Learn more about Ethereum Name Service in our [deep dive into ENS](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-ens).

Get the latest crypto news and latest trading insights with the [CoinMarketCap blog](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/blog).


## How Many Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Coins Are There in Circulation?

ENS is the [governance token](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/governance-token) of Ethereum Name Service and is used to govern the protocol and influence decisions on pricing its .eth addresses and the price oracle. Token holders can also delegate their tokens to the [DAO](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-autonomous-organizations-dao) for voting. The [total supply](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/total-supply) of ENS is 100 million, and the [circulating supply ](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/circulating-supply)is just over 20 million at the time of writing. ENS is distributed as follows:



* DAO Community Treasury (50%): 10% at launch, linear vesting over four years.
* Airdrop to .ETH holders (25%)
* Contributors (25%), with four-year linear vesting including:
    * Core Contributors: 18.96%
    * Select Integrations: 2.5%
    * Future Contributors: 1.25%
    * External Contributors: 1.29%
    * Launch Advisors: 0.58%
    * Keyholders: 0.25%
    * Active Discord Users: 0.125%
    * Translators: 0.05%


## How Is the Ethereum Name Service Network Secured?

ENS runs on [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/), which is secured by a [proof-of-work consensus mechanism](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/proof-of-work-pow) that requires miners to mine new Ether. A set of decentralized nodes validates transactions and secures the Ethereum blockchain. Thanks to the decentralized nature of Ethereum, and over 10,000 [nodes](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/node) securing the network, ENS does not have a single point of failure and cannot be hacked as such.

Ethereum Name Service has also partnered with different wallets like Coinbase Wallet, Trust Wallet, My Crypto and others. 


## Where Can You Buy Ethereum Name Service (ENS)?

ENS is available on [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/), [OKX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okx/), [Bitget](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitget/), [Mandala Exchange](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/mandala/).

If you want to learn more about how to start buying cryptocurrencies, you can read more in [our guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/).

Binance

Ethereum Name Service

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

SolFlare

Backpack

Phantom

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

Uniswap

Pepe

Blur

MANTRA

AIOZ Network

Echelon Prime

Livepeer

DeXe

Axelar

Curve DAO Token

Synthetix

OmniCat

RefundCoin

XEN Crypto

EscoinToken

IX Swap

Mask Network is a protocol that allows its users to send encrypted messages over Twitter and Facebook. It essentially acts as a bridge between the internet and a decentralized network running on top.

Mask Network was initially launched in July 2019, with its first use case of allowing Facebook and Twitter users to encrypt posts on the social media platforms. It then raised $2 million in a funding round in November 2020, co-led by HashKey and Hash Global, and a further $3 million funding round in February 2021 with participation from Digital Currency Group and Fundamental Labs.

Now, Mask Network offers the ability to fund Gitcoin grant campaigns directly from Twitter, as well as plans to offer peer-to-peer payments and decentralized storage functionality. It is a decentralized portal that also allows users to use DApps like crypto payments, decentralized finance, decentralized storage, e-commerce (digital goods/NFTs) and decentralized organizations (DAO) over the top of existing social networks without migrating, creating what is referred to as a decentralized Applet (DApplet) ecosystem.

Mask Network

Synthetix is building a decentralized liquidity provisioning protocol that any protocol can tap into for various purposes. Its deep liquidity and low fees serve as a backend for many exciting protocols on both Optimism and Ethereum. Many user-facing protocols in the Synthetix ecosystem, such as Kwenta (Spot and Futures), Lyra (Options), Polynomial (Automated Options), and 1inch & Curve (Atomic Swaps), tap into Synthetix liquidity to power their protocols. Synthetix is built on Optimism and Ethereum mainnet. The Synthetix Network is collateralized by SNX, ETH, and LUSD, enabling the issuance of synthetic assets (Synths). Synths track and provide returns on the underlying asset without requiring one to directly hold the asset. This pooled collateral enables an array of on-chain, composable financial instruments backed by liquidity from Synthetix. Some of the most exciting upcoming releases from SNX are Perps V2, which hopes to enable low-fee on-chain futures trading through the usage of off-chain oracles, and Synthetix V3, which aims to rebuild the protocol to achieve its earliest goal, being a fully permissionless derivatives protocol. Learn more about Synthetix on their blog or by joining the SNX Discord.

The platform aims to broaden the cryptocurrency space by introducing non-blockchain assets, providing access to a more robust financial market.

Ethereum-based DYDX ($ethDYDX) is a governance token that allows the dYdX community to truly govern the dYdX Layer 2 Protocol built on Ethereum ("dYdX v3"). ethDYDX is currently undergoing a migration from Ethereum to the dYdX Chain. More information is available here. If you want to migrate ethDYDX to dYdX Chain DYDX, to enable staking, security and governance of the dYdX Chain you can follow the how-to-bridge guide here.

If you want to read about the new token utility for dYdX Chain DYDX you can read the blog here

ethDYDX (dYdX) is the governance token for the layer 2 protocol built on Ethereum. By enabling shared control of dYdX v3, ethDYDX allows traders, liquidity providers, and partners of dYdX to work collectively towards an enhanced dYdX v3.

Built on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine, layer 2 is used for trading of cross-margined perpetuals on the platform. The scaling solution allows dYdX to increase transaction speed, eliminate gas costs, reduce trading fees and lower​​ minimum trade sizes on the protocol.

A total of 1,000,000,000 ethDYDX have been minted, and started to become accessible over five (5) years, on August 3rd, 2021, at 15:00:00 UTC.

dYdX (ethDYDX)

Lido DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which provides staking infrastructure for multiple blockchain networks.

Most notably, the platform provides a liquid staking solution for Ethereum, allowing users to stake their ETH and receive stETH (Lido staked ETH) tokens in exchange, which represent the user's staked ETH and staking rewards.

Lido DAO is secured by a mix of decentralized governance, audited code and smart contracts. The Lido protocol runs on Ethereum with help from smart contracts that process user deposits and distribute staking rewards, among other functions. Several third-party security firms have audited Lido’s smart contracts in order to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.

The platform’s native token is LDO - which also serves as the governance token for Lido DAO. Holders can participate in governance proposals and vote on key decisions such as board adjustments, new integrations and platform updates. LDO holders have the right to determine the development and operation of the platform.

Lido currently supports staking for Ethereum and Polygon only with the recent sunsetting of Solana.

Lido DAO

Curve is a decentralized exchange for stablecoins that uses an automated market maker (AMM) to manage liquidity.

Launched in January 2020, Curve is now synonymous with the decentralized finance (DeFi) phenomenon, and has seen significant growth in the second half of 2020.

In August, Curve launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), with CRV as its in-house token. The DAO uses Ethereum-based creation tool Aragon to connect multiple smart contracts used for users’ deposited liquidity. Issues such as governance, however, differ from Aragon in their weighting and other respects.

Optimism (OP) is a layer-two blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism benefits from the security of the Ethereum mainnet and helps scale the Ethereum ecosystem by using optimistic rollups. That means transactions are trustlessly recorded on Optimism but ultimately secured on Ethereum.

Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $500 million in TVL. It is home to 97 protocols, the biggest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Users can begin their journey on Optimism by adding the chain on their Metamask and bridging tokens like ETH to the L2. On May 31, 2022, Optimism conducted a highly anticipated airdrop of its OP token.

Optimism

Immutable positions itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. According to Immutable, its blockchain does away with Ethereum’s limitations like low scalability, a poor user experience, illiquidity, and a slow developer experience. Instead, users benefit from instant trading and massive scalability while enjoying zero gas fees for minting and trading NFTs without compromising user or asset security.

Thanks to this technology, users will be able to create and distribute assets like ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens on a massive scale. Chris Clay, the game Director of Gods Unchained, a project already building on Immutable, stated that Immutable allows Gods Unchained to implement a new meta-system that was previously impossible. In this fashion, Immutable aims to create a world-class experience for users and developers alike.

Immutable

Compound is a DeFi lending protocol that allows users to earn interest on their cryptocurrencies by depositing them into one of several pools supported by the platform.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Compound.

When a user deposits tokens to a Compound pool, they receive cTokens in return. These cTokens represent the individual’s stake in the pool and can be used to redeem the underlying cryptocurrency initially deposited into the pool at any time. For example, by depositing ETH into a pool, you will receive cETH in return. Over time, the exchange rate of these cTokens to the underlying asset increases, which means you can redeem them for more of the underlying asset than you initially put in — this is how the interest is distributed.

On the flip side, borrowers can take a secured loan from any Compound pool by depositing collateral. The maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratio varies based on the collateral asset, but currently ranges from 50 to 75%. The interest rate paid varies by borrowed asset and borrowers can face automatic liquidation if their collateral falls below a specific maintenance threshold.

Since the launch of the Compound mainnet in September 2018, the platform has skyrocketed in popularity, and recently passed more than $800 million in total locked value.

Compound

Filecoin is a decentralized storage system that aims to “store humanity’s most important information.” The project raised $205 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017, and initially planned a launch date for mid-2019. However, the launch date for the Filecoin mainnet was pushed back until block 148,888, which is expected in mid-October 2020.

The project was first described back in 2014 as an incentive layer for the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a peer-to-peer storage network where users pay for data storage and distribution services in $FIL. Filecoin is open protocol and backed by a blockchain that records commitments made by the network’s participants, with transactions made using FIL, the blockchain’s native currency. The blockchain is based on both proof-of-replication and proof-of-spacetime.

Filecoin is open-source and decentralized, which means that all governance is in the hands of the community. On the Filecoin platform, developers have the opportunity to create cloud file storage services like Dropbox or iCloud. Anyone can join Filecoin and start storing their data or earn money by providing space for someone else's funds. The creators of Filecoin opted for their blockchain technology to run the network and their token with their own consensus.

$FIL is the native currency of Filecoin that powers the entire network and all processes. Clients pay for transactions in FIL tokens. Miners place FIL as collateral, guaranteeing their services.

The developers claim that Filecoin solves the problem of inefficient file storage and retrieval. Customers can find the right solution with an efficient set of tools and its core development, IPFS.

Filecoin

The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying data for networks like Ethereum and IPFS, powering many applications in both DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. There is a hosted service in production that makes it easy for developers to get started building on The Graph and the decentralized network will be launching later this year. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS and POA, with more networks coming soon.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of The Graph.

To date, over3,000 subgraphs have been deployed by thousands of developers, for DApps like Uniswap, Synthetix, Aragon, AAVE, Gnosis, Balancer, Livepeer, DAOstack, Decentraland and many others. The Graph usage has been growing at over 50% MoM and hit over 7 billion queries during the month of September 2020.

The Graph has a global community, including over 200 Indexer Nodes in the testnet and more than 2,000 Curators in the Curator Program as of October 2020. To fund network development, The Graph raised funds from community members, strategic VCs and influential individuals in the blockchain community including Coinbase Ventures, DCG, Framework, ParaFi Capital, CoinFund, DTC, Multicoin, Reciprocal Ventures, SPC, Tally Capital and others. The Graph Foundation also successfully completed a public GRT Sale with participation from 99 countries (not including the U.S.). To date as of November 2020, The Graph has raised ~$25M.

The Graph

Arweave is a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data. Describing itself as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," the network primarily hosts "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web with a number of community-driven applications and platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Arweave.

The Arweave network uses a native cryptocurrency, AR, to pay "miners" to indefinitely store the network's information.

The project was first announced as Archain in August 2017, later rebranding to Arweave in February 2018 and officially launching in June 2018.

Arweave

Launched in 2017, Livepeer is the first live video streaming network protocol that is fully decentralized. The platform aims to become a viable blockchain-based, economically efficient alternative to centralized broadcasting solutions for all new and existing broadcaster companies.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Livepeer.

As stated in the official Livepeer whitepaper, the live video streaming and broadcasting industry is growing at a rapid pace, and the company is looking to ride this wave and introduce decentralization to the environment. Livepeer aims to streamline the broadcasting process by allowing producers to submit their work on the platform, taking care of reformatting and distributing the content to users and streaming platforms.

Mina Protocol is a minimal “succinct blockchain” built to curtail computational requirements in order to run DApps more efficiently. Mina has been described as the world’s lightest blockchain since its size is designed to remain constant despite growth in usage. Furthermore, it remains balanced in terms of security and decentralization. The project was rebranded from Coda Protocol to Mina in October 2020.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Mina Protocol.

The Mina network has a size of only 22 KB, which is miniscule when compared to Bitcoin’s 300 GB blockchain.

Mina

ApeCoin is an ERC-20 governance and utility token used within the APE Ecosystem to empower and incentivize a decentralized community building at the forefront of web3.

ApeCoin holders govern themselves via the decentralized governance framework controlling the ApeCoin DAO, and vote on how the ApeCoin DAO Ecosystem Fund should be used. The APE Foundation administers proposals agreed upon by ApeCoin holders.

ApeCoin

Flow

Aptos is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that employs a novel smart contract programming language called Move, a Rust-based programming language that was independently developed by Meta (formerly Facebook)’s Diem blockchain engineers.

Aptos’s vision is a blockchain that brings mainstream adoption to web3 and empowers an ecosystem of DApps to solve real-world user problems.

The PoS blockchain can achieve a theoretical transaction throughput of over 150,000 transactions per second (tps) through parallel execution.

In March 2022, Aptos raised $200 million in a seed round led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Other crypto heavyweights like Tiger Global and Multicoin Capital took part in the funding round. Fast forward to July, the startup raised another $200 million in a Series A round with participation from Dragonfly, Apollo Global, Franklin Templeton, Animoca, Jump Crypto and others.

Two months later, Binance Labs made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Aptos.

On Oct. 18, 2022, Aptos announced the mainnet launch, while the Aptos genesis occurred on Oct. 12, 2022.

Aptos

LRC is the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency token of Loopring, an open protocol designed for the building of decentralized crypto exchanges.

In 2020, the average daily trading volume of the entire cryptocurrency market fluctuated in the approximate range of $50-$200 million. Most of that trading is conducted on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges — online platforms operated by private companies that store users’ funds and facilitate the matching of buy and sell orders.

Such platforms have a number of downsides common to all of them, so a new type of exchange — decentralized— has emerged to try to alleviate these disadvantages. However, fully decentralized exchanges are not without their own flaws.

Loopring’s purported goal is to combine centralized order matching with decentralized on-blockchain order settlement into a hybridized product that will take the best aspects of both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

LRC tokens became available to the public during an initial coin offering (ICO) in August 2017, while the Loopring protocol was first deployed on Ethereum mainnet in December 2019.

Loopring

Aave

The Internet Computer blockchain incorporates a radical rethink of blockchain design, powered by innovations in cryptography. It provides the first “World Computer” blockchain that can be used to build almost any online system or service, including demanding web social media, without need for traditional IT such as cloud computing services. As such it can enable full end-to-end decentralization.

Internet Computer

In a nutshell, Cosmos bills itself as a project that solves some of the “hardest problems” facing the blockchain industry. It aims to offer an antidote to “slow, expensive, unscalable and environmentally harmful” proof-of-work protocols, like those used by Bitcoin, by offering an ecosystem of connected blockchains.

The project’s other goals include making blockchain technology less complex and difficult for developers thanks to a modular framework that demystifies decentralized apps. Last but not least, an Interblockchain Communication protocol makes it easier for blockchain networks to communicate with each other — preventing fragmentation in the industry.

Cosmos’ origins can be dated back to 2014, when Tendermint, a core contributor to the network, was founded. In 2016, a white paper for Cosmos was published — and a token sale was held the following year. ATOM tokens are earned through a hybrid proof-of-stake algorithm, and they help to keep the Cosmos Hub, the project’s flagship blockchain, secure. This cryptocurrency also has a role in the network’s governance.