Welcome to the Cosmos Network forums! 
Use this category for topics that don’t fit neatly into any other existing category.
If you are new to Cosmos you will want to visit these important pages to learn more about Cosmos, there are many questions that can be answered by looking through the FAQ, Milestone and Funding pages.
If you have more questions please feel free to join the discussion on an existing topic or create a new one. Please try to avoid creating many new topics that can easily be answered by the links below. Always remember to abide by the Code of conduct when posting and creating topics.
Community links
This category is intended for general inquiries. Below you will find a list of links to other community channels :
Getting started
What is Cosmos ?
Cosmos is a project with an ambitious mission: To create a network of distributed ledgers (blockchains) that will solve long-standing problems in the cryptocurrency and blockchain communities.
The Cosmos network consists of many independent, parallel blockchains, called zones, each powered by classical Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols like Tendermint. Some zones act as hubs with respect to other zones, allowing many zones to interoperate through a shared hub. The architecture is a more general application of the Bitcoin sidechains concept, using classic BFT and Proof-of-Stake algorithms, instead of Proof-of-Work.
For more infos on Cosmos, please read our FAQ, visit our website and read our whitepaper
What is the Cosmos Hub ?
The first blockchain in the Cosmos network is the Cosmos hub. The Cosmos hub connects to zones via the novel IBC (inter-blockchain communication) protocol and keeps a record of the total number of tokens in each zone. Because all inter-zone token transfers go through the Cosmos hub, you can transfer tokens from one zone to another, quickly and securely, without the need for a liquid exchange or a trusted third party between zones.
The Cosmos hub can connect to many different kinds of zones, as long as each zone speaks IBC. As a result, Cosmos can support a variety of currencies and scripting languages like those found in Bitcoin, Ethereum, ZeroCash, CryptoNote, and more.
What is Tendermint ?
Tendermint is a general-purpose blockchain consensus engine. It allows developer to easily deploy blockchain applications in any language. Most blockchains in the Cosmos network will be built on top of Tendermint, since Tendermint is natively compatible with IBC (inter-blockchain communication protocol).
If you want to learn more about Tendermint, please visit the website and read the documentation
I don’t really understand, can you ELI5 Cosmos for me ?
A blockchain is a decentralised ledger that allows its users to interact trustlessly with each other. Blockchains come in different flavours. There are public blockchains to exchange value like Bitcoin, public blockchains to deploy and execute decentralised programs like Ethereum and private blockchains for consortiums to share a ledger while maintaining high level of privacy and control. However, current blockchains suffer from 3 major issues : scalability, interoperability and developer experience.
- Scaling: Scaling is an open issue for blockchains. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin support only a fraction of the transactions seen daily on payment networks like Visa or Mastercard. Tendermint Proof-of-Stake allows blockchain to process thousands of transaction per second, and Cosmos allows blockchain to scale even further by connecting them together.
- Interoperability: Cosmos can interoperate with multiple other applications and cryptocurrencies thanks to the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), something other blockchains can’t do well. By creating a new zone, you can plug any blockchain system into the Cosmos hub and pass tokens back and forth between those zones, without the need for an intermediary. These blockchains can be completely independent, meaning that they can exchange value without giving up on their sovereignty. In Cosmos, private blockchains can interoperate with both public and private blockchains.
- Developer experience: Developing a blockchain from scratch is a daunting task. One of Cosmos goals is to smoothen this process so that developing blockchains and decentralised applications becomes easy and fast. To that end we offer a diverse suite of tool ranging from ABCI-applications that can be deployed in any language to the Cosmos-SDK, a golang framework to deploy public proof-of-stake blockchains and Ethermint, the Ethereum Virtual Machine deployed on top of Tendermint.
In short, Cosmos is a network of interoperable blockchains that aims to solve the current issues of the blockchain ecosystem and pave the way for the financial system of tomorrow.
I want to learn about IBC, the ABCI, the Cosmos-SDK, Ethermint, and so much more, can you please provide me with useful links ?
But of course.
Documentation
Developers
Validators
Other
Please check our blog and our twitter for the latest news.
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