According to data from Coingecko, among the top 100 projects by market value, the Ethereum ecosystem accounts for 25 (including second-layer and second-layer related ecosystems), the Cosmos ecosystem accounts for 12, and the Bitcoin ecosystem accounts for 12. 4. In addition to BNB, there are only 2 stable coins in the BSC ecosystem, and none in the Solana ecosystem.
Those who don’t pay attention may not realize that the Cosmos ecosystem continues to dominate the list. Several projects that were hotly discussed in the community some time ago, such as Celestia, Injective, Sei, etc., are actually from the Cosmos ecosystem. It is said that the ecology where high-quality projects gather together is worthy of our attention and exploration. This article will give you a brief overview of the Cosmos ecology.
This topic is actually a bit cliché. It was discussed before dydx moved to the Cosmos ecosystem. However, here is a brief overview:
Choose the Cosmos chain for gaming to get better performance, independence, flexibility and autonomy. These advantages allow developers to better build application chains.
Of course, these benefits also mean that the value capture of Cosmos itself has always been a problem. Although the development of ecological projects is booming, the impact on Cosmos itself is very small.
Injective
As an early derivatives track project on Cosmos, Injective later went through a series of iterations and positioned itself as an L1 solution for DeFi and derivatives. Injective began offering plug-and-play modules, including order book and derivatives trading modules, allowing developers to easily launch financial applications.
Additionally, Injective features smart contract capabilities that enable developers to build complex applications. The performance of Injective last year can be said to be ridiculously strong, beyond everyone's expectations. The current market value has reached 35. Compared with it, dydx can be said to be in the sky and on the ground. However, its performance in terms of ecology and derivatives data is mediocre. Most of the benefits are cooperation between institutions and market makers.
< strong>Celestia, as the first modular blockchain network project, focuses on data availability (DA), which separates the core functions of the blockchain and improves scalability. When Celestia was first launched, modular blockchain related issues aroused widespread discussion in the industry. After the launch of its Token some time ago, the market value soared to 38. The good price performance made DA related hotly discussed again. Buterin even tweeted many times to discuss DA. EigenLayer also started to make EigenDA, making Celestia’s DA more competitive with Ethereum. Threatening remarks began to be mentioned, which shows how popular they are.
Celestia focuses on data availability networks and is able to reduce data costs by 99.9% compared to the Ethereum DA layer. However, Celestia's current data usage rate is only 0.1%, its market share is extremely small, and its profitability is too weak. On the other hand, although the current usage fee is low, as the network grows, users may need to participate in bidding wars, and the fee will increase with the increase of users.
Cronos is The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible chain launched by Crypto.comis built on Cosmos SDK technology. It provides the ability to port applications and crypto-assets from other chains with high throughput and low transaction fees. The relationship between Cronos and Crypto.com is similar to the relationship between BSC and BA. Its Token CRO can be regarded as the platform Token of Crypto.com. The current CRO market value is around 46.
< strong>Sei Network is a public chain built based on Cosmos SDK and Tendermint core. It specializes in the field of encrypted asset trading. It has a built-in central limit order book module (CLOB). Other Cosmos-based blockchains can use Sei's CLOB serves as a shared liquidity center to create markets for various assets.
Some time ago, Sei Network completely made the concept of "parallel EVM" popular, and some top institutions even started to call 2024 as the "year of parallel EVM". The current market value of Sei is around 49. On November 15 last year,Circle announced a strategic investment in Sei Network and announced support for the network to launch native USDC. It can be said that this investment information is an important turning point in the price change of Sei.
About "Parallel EVM", here is a brief introduction: Parallel EVM is an improved technology used to improve the performance and efficiency of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Traditional EVM processes transactions sequentially and can only process one transaction at a time, which results in slower processing. Parallel EVM allows multiple transactions to be processed simultaneously to improve overall processing capabilities. The goal is to improve the scalability and performance of the blockchain to handle higher transaction loads and enable faster transaction confirmations.
THORChain is the cross-chain DEX protocol of the Cosmos ecosystem. The last bull market was affected by the collapse of Luna, coupled with code vulnerabilities, resulting in losses of tens of millions of dollars, and it was in a state of limbo during the bear market. However, with the rise of this wave of Bitcoin ecology, THORChain, as an early platform on the chain that supports native BTC cross-chain transactions, has taken off again in this wave, with transaction volume soaring and its current market value reaching around 56.
Dymension is a modular settlement layer based on the Cosmos ecosystem. It aims to solve the sense of separation between Layer 2 and provide a unified way to build and manage Rollup. Dymension introduces a concept called "enshrined rollups" to standardize different Layer 2 and provide fluid integration, making the interaction between Rollup applications simpler and more efficient.
Dymension's goal is to make it easier to develop and deploy Rollup applications while providing better interoperability and shared security. Some time ago, there was a certain amount of popularity due to the airdrop of a total of 520,000 addresses to ecological users such as Celestia, Ethereum, and Cosmos. Xuan has been listed since the market opened recently, and its current market value is around 80.
< strong>Manta Network was originally a privacy protocol for DeFi on Polkadot. It later changed its direction and became an Ethereum Layer 2 public chain based on Celestia modular technology. It is committed to providing modular blocks for zero-knowledge proof (ZK) applications. chain support. The Blast liquidity staking category launched by Blur some time ago caused TVL to soar. Manta Network also launched a similar activity New Paradigm, attracting a large inflow of funds. Currently, TVL is US$1.7 billion, and the Layer 2 TVL ranking has soared to third place in a short period of time. After being listed on Binance recently, the price has also performed well, with the current market value ranking around 97.
dYdX, as the first decentralized derivatives trading platform,it can be said that it was full of glory when it first came out, but its development in recent years has been a bit slow. dYdX was initially built on Ethereum. Due to the explosion of DeFi, gas costs soared, affecting user trading experience. In April 2021, dYdX began to move to the more scalable Ethereum L2 Starkware platform, and in June 2022, dYdX plans to migrate the V4 version to the Cosmos network and create an independent L1 zone of its own. The blockchain dYdX Chain has a completely decentralized off-chain order book and matching engine, and currently ranks around 91 in market value.
Osmosis is the mainstream DEX in the Cosmos ecosystem. It focuses on providing cross-chain trading services. On Osmosis, users can trade and exchange tokens between different Cosmos blockchains. , there are currently a total of 62 chains connected to the Cosmos ecosystem through IBC, of which the number of chains connected to Osmosis is the largest, reaching 59. The current market value ranks around 81. The built-in swap of Cosmos wallet Keplr is Osmosis.
Kava is a cross-chain payment project established in 2017. Later, as DeFi became more popular, it turned to the DeFi field. In 2022, Kava will transform into the EVM-based Cosmos-Ethereum interoperable public chain Kava Chain. There is a lot of cooperation between Kava and project parties. At the beginning of this year, the Token economy was updated. Starting from January 1, 2024, Kava Token will stop inflation. The current market value ranks around 83.
ZetaChain is The first Layer1 with built-in cross-chain interoperability, it is compatible with EVM and has the ability to connect to all blockchains, including non-smart contract chains such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin. With ZetaChain’s full toolkit, developers can build true Omnichain decentralized applications (DApps) without the need to fragment development across different blockchains.
ZetaChain provides a convenient way to connect and manage multiple blockchains, and provides users with a more convenient cross-chain interaction experience. ZetaChain's goal is to establish a blockchain interoperability standard that enables users to manage all assets and data on the chain from a single platform without the need for bridging or wrapping tokens. The current market value is around 85.
Last year, the popularity of Chatgpt caused the AI track in the blockchain industry to take off. In the absence of other projects dealing with AI-related concepts, two independent projects, Fetch.ai and Singularity NET, began to soar. The recent release of Sora has made the AI track mentioned again. In addition, Nvidia’s financial report has also added fuel to the fire of AI , making Fetch.ai and Singularity NET perform well recently. In addition, BN is also continuing to invest in the AI sector. Several recently launched projects are all related to AI . It can be said that the AI sector in the crypto field is also Gradually becoming one of the mainstream concepts like the Metaverse.
Fetch.ai is an AI application chain built on Cosmos-SDK. The vision is to create a decentralized intelligent world that realizes functions such as intelligent self-organization, intelligent contracts, and intelligent agents through blockchain technology and artificial intelligence algorithms. Currently, Fetch.ai has built a series of ecological applications based on its own AI technology, including Resonate (social + AI Feed), MOBIX (Move to Earn), Atomix (DeFi protocol), etc. , the current market value is around 73.
Neutron is a permissionless smart contract platform built using the Cosmos SDK,designed to facilitate the deployment of smart contracts and DApps on the Cosmos Hub, simplifying settlement coordination, data availability and execution. Neutron was incubated by the Lido core team and launched liquid staking Ethereum wstETH in Cosmos in September last year in cooperation with Lido. It has also performed well after being listed on BN, and its current market value ranks around 151.
Axelar is committed to providing secure cross-chain channels for web3 and achieving interoperability between different blockchain platforms. Axelar uses smart contracts to manage and execute the rules and logic of cross-chain interactions, providing automated processing for complex cross-chain transactions while ensuring the consistency and predictability of operations. Currently, Axelar has connected to more than 50 chains, including most mainstream chains such as Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and Arbitrum, as well as a variety of Cosmos-based chains, taking a leading position in the field of cross-chain interoperability.
< strong>Secret Network is a privacy public chain built based on Cosmos SDK.Secret Network cooperates with NEAR Protocol and plans to achieve cross-chain interaction with NEAR in the first quarter of this year.
Stride is a staking protocol on Cosmos thataims to bring liquidity staking market share to the Cosmos ecosystem. Currently, the Cosmos LSD track occupies the largest market share.
It can be seen that there are still many high-quality projects in the Cosmos ecosystem, and most of them have caused a certain amount of heated discussion within a certain period of time.
03 Unlaunched projects
For investors, how to judge whether a project is worth paying attention to?The most time-saving and labor-saving way is to check whether it has financing, whether top institutions are participating in the investment, andwhether the team members are from well-known projects. Here are a few relatively popular projects.
Berachain originated from the NFT project Bong Bears and has now developed into a high-performance EVM-compatible chain. It is built based on the Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism. One of the common problems of Layer 1 is Unable to attract funds to stay for a long time, the team established Berachain based on this pain point. The team hopes to adjust the incentive mechanism of the network by strengthening the synergy between Berachain validators and the project ecosystem.
In April 2023, Berachain completed US$42 million in financing, with a valuation of US$420 million. Polychain Capital led the investment, and OKX Ventures, Celestia founders and others participated. It can be seen that the project has strong resources and background They're all pretty strong. On January 11, the official announced the launch of the public testnet, which attracted more than 1 million testnet users and more than 70 ecological DApps in more than ten days.
Saga is A modular blockchain project that provides developers with the tools and services to build Metaverse-specific chains. The goal of this project is to lower the barriers to developing blockchain and enable developers to build their own dedicated Web3 application chains in a simple way. It aims to provide a simplified blockchain deployment and management solution for applications in the multiverse. The plan emphasizes interoperability and focuses on games and the metaverse.
Team members come from projects such as Skuchain and Tendermint. After two rounds of financing, the project team raised US$13.5 million with a valuation of hundreds of millions of US dollars. In early January this year, the Airdrop standard was officially announced.
TABI is The game chain on Cosmos provides a variety of functions, including NFT transactions, distribution platforms, and gaming platforms. At the same time, TABI also converts users' activities on the chain into experience points for future rewards. The testnet was launched in February this year.
TABI completed 2 rounds of financing, totaling US$11 million, led by Animoca Brands, with participation from institutions such as Binance Labs and Draper Dragon.
Initia is Move Layer1 on Cosmos is committed to building a highly interconnected modular Rollup network. Its architecture includes L1 (Layer 1), L2 (Layer 2) and communication layers, allowing developers to easily launch Initia L2-based Application-specific blockchain without having to understand complex chain-level infrastructure or run a validator set.
At the same time, Initia utilizes Optimistic Rollups as an application-specific L2 solution to achieve seamless messaging between different virtual machines (such as EVM, WasmVM and MoveVM) by integrating L1, L2 and communication layers Passing and bridging,making it the first MoveVM computing framework compatible with the Cosmos IBC protocol and enabling seamless interaction with other blockchain networks in the Cosmos ecosystem.
In October last year, Binance Labs invested, with an unknown amount.
04 Summary
The above is the introduction of the Cosmos ecological project. Are you optimistic about the future development of the Cosmos ecosystem?
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