Cosmos (ATOM) is a decentralized network that connects independent blockchain systems, created as an alternative to the Proof-of-Work protocol.
What is Cosmos?
Cosmos, whose whitepaper was published in 2016, has been defined as a blockchain ecosystem that can scale and work with each other. Cosmos was created by Jae Kwon, Zarko Milosevic and Ethan Buchman and was released in 2017. The Cosmos network is also referred to as the “Internet of Blockchains (IoB)”.
Before the creation of Cosmos, blockchains used to be incompatible and insensitive (silo) to the surrounding factors, without communicating with each other. Strong and intense efforts were required to create the blockchain and enable the blocks to be transacted quickly. Cosmos solves such blockchain-related problems with new techniques.
Cosmos emerged as a new formation against the fractionalized cryptocurrency world and demonstrated the interoperability of different blockchains. The goal of Cosmos is to enable cross-chain transactions. It does this by enabling different blockchains with rules to interact with each other.
Blockchains can maintain their autonomy, process transactions quickly, and communicate with other blockchains in the ecosystem thanks to Cosmos. This vision of Cosmos is achieved through a set of open source tools designed to allow people to quickly build private, secure, scalable and interoperable blockchain applications. Each user has the right to create additional tools on this platform to take the developer ecosystem to a higher level.
What is ATOM Coin?
ATOM Coin is the token of the Cosmos network, created to solve the problems such as expensiveness, environmental damage and slowness created by the Proof of Work protocol. ATOM, the governance token of the Cosmos blockchain, is a stachable cryptocurrency. Binance Smart Chain can also be traded on Polygon and Ethereum.
ATOM Coin is used to pay transaction fees on the Cosmos platform. Also, Cosmos network validators can join hubs by staking ATOM, reducing their share.
ATOM Coin is not a mined token, but staking is possible. ATOM Coin entered the market with an ICO study that allowed it to raise $17.3 million in ETH, BTC and USD. 75% of ATOM’s total supply at that time was sold as an ICO.
How Does Cosmos Work?
The creators of Cosmos have basically developed a two-stage system for blockchains to interact with each other. The first stage is the “Tendermint Core”, which acts as a blockchain development platform, and the second stage is the “Inter-Blockchain Communication” (IBC) layer, which provides connection centers.
Thanks to the IBC component, independent blockchain systems can communicate. The Cosmos ecosystem deploys transaction and verification centers to properly execute all these interoperable blockchain components. As the production algorithm, it is based on the proof of ownership (PoS) model.
By Cosmos, separate blockchain systems are divided into certain regions. It is connected to each other by centers called Cosmos Hubs that undertake transaction and verification tasks. These centers verify transactions and ensure cross-chain compatibility.
