Original title: "Why does the Cosmos ecosystem never get attention?"
Original author: Cryptocito, co-founder of Stakecito
Original translation: Aelx Liu, Foresight News
ATOM (Cosmos Hub), whose price has been falling, is not equal to Cosmos.
I saw a tweet from Rooter, co-founder of Solend and Suilend, asking: "Why has Cosmos never received the same attention as Solana?" Here are my thoughts:
Cosmos is often mistakenly thought to be just Cosmos Hub, which means that as long as the price of ATOM does not perform well, Cosmos has "failed."
In fact, the Cosmos ecosystem is very diverse and dominates entire verticals, or at least has strong competitors in various fields.
Fetch, Cronos, Injective, dYdX, Thorchain, MANTRA, Akash Network, Celestia, Saga, Dymension, Sei, etc. have all received great attention in their respective areas of expertise.
Cosmos Ecosystem Project Evolution
All of the above are Cosmos chains. The difference is that they are sovereign chains that can be autonomous, with their own ecosystems, foundations, marketing strategies, brands, etc.
Even larger chains like Polygon or BNB chain have partially adopted Cosmos' technology. (Translator's note: Polygon PoS uses Tendermint consensus, and BSC uses Cosmos SDK.)
There are also some big upcoming projects, such as Babylon, Berachain, or Nillion, which also use Cosmos technology. Some of these projects are more publicly identified as "Cosmos projects" and others are not, but it doesn't matter. (Translator's note: Although Berachain was built using the Cosmos SDK, it has always opposed being called a "Cosmos project")
So the first point as to why Cosmos is considered unattractive is that it is still often considered synonymous with the Cosmos Hub and ATOM.
Secondly, unlike organizations like the Solana Foundation or the Ethereum Foundation, the Interchain Foundation does not play a central role in coordinating marketing, developer onboarding, community initiatives, and development — at least not yet.
The advantage of this is extremely low reliance on a single organization, but the disadvantages are lack of consistency, difficulty in coordination, fragmented vision, and difficult division of responsibilities.
Solana is moving very fast thanks to the Solana Foundation. The Solana Foundation has taken a very proactive approach, hosting large conferences like Breakpoint, funding global Superteams, and strategically incentivizing all market participants to join and be educated about Solana.
This is awesome, in fact, we are working to replicate that model for the Cosmos ecosystem. This is very challenging without funding.
Third, it’s important to note that the core of Cosmos is that chains are interoperable while maintaining sovereignty, which means there is no “unified currency” to rule them all.
The entire ecosystem has no single base chain or token to support it, and this is not because they “forgot” it, but because this is the nature of Cosmos.
I was not present when ATOM launched in 2019, but I was told that this was a conscious design decision - not to directly tie IBC adoption to the value of ATOM, but to let the market decide.
Cosmos’ principles make it very adaptable, which is great for long-term sustainability, but less so for short-term hype.
Terra has proven the appchain theory in extreme cases. Tendermint, now Comet BFT, has been around for a long time and is widely adopted. IBC has proven to be resilient, has never been hacked, and is integrated by many projects.
That being said, I still expect ATOM to do well and hold its ground, as it helped get this $30 billion ecosystem off the ground and proved its technology, while still remaining in the top 40 by market cap after 5 years of existence.
Areas I think need improvement are:
Rebrand Cosmos to "Interchain" Improve developer onbording process; copy the model of the Solana Superteam The Interchain Foundation should play a more proactive role.
The Interchain Foundation is currently going through some structural changes, and will likely take more steps from now on.
There is a lot more to consider and a lot to figure out, but this is my general opinion.
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