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Find out about the Cosmos ecosystem with Peng Zhong., CEO of Tendermint

CryptoSlate recently had the chance to chat with Peng Zhong, the CEO of Tendermint.

Zhong leads a world-class team empowering people to create a more transparent and accountable world through blockchain technology. Peng was the first employee at Tendermint, joining as Chief Design Officer in 2015 before becoming CEO in May 2020. With a background in interaction design and front-end engineering, Peng is focused on taking blockchain technology across the gap to mainstream.

The Cosmos community has been extremely active in the past few weeks, can you tell us a bit about that?

It’s been a really exciting time for the Cosmos community, and not just since IBC launched earlier this year [the Cosmos standard for interoperability] and watch how more and more chains connect with it, but also through the continuous innovation that we have seen in projects around the Cosmos network. This autumn was a wonderful opportunity to share these developments face to face with cosmonauts and to meet again in person. After so long working remotely, it was really nice to meet everyone, brainstorm in person, exchange ideas and eat together.

Organizations in the Cosmos ecosystem including teams from Tendermint, Osmosis, Persistence, Pylons, Sentinel and so many others have been present at all major conferences, be it online like the LA Blockchain Summit or in person like NFT NYC and Messari Mainnet 2021, which is ours underlines leading role in the blockchain area.

Cosmoverse, which recently took place in Lisbon, really speaks for the passion and strength of the Cosmos community. This was an event organized by the community and led by longtime Cosmos supporter Cryptocito. The event was a great opportunity to learn all about notable developments in the ecosystem, from the introduction of superfluid staking by Osmosis to the integration of The Graph into Cosmos to enable indexing and querying of Cosmos ecosystem data in a completely decentralized way, to Interchain Security, which will soon be the Cosmos Hub and much more.

We also held our own official event in Lisbon: the HackAtom VI opening ceremony. This is the largest hackathon in Cosmos history, with more than $ 1.2 million in prizes in ATOM. We are very pleased that more than 1650 developers have already registered. We couldn’t have done this without the support of all of our sponsors, who are all doing amazing things in the cosmos ecosystem. (More about HackAtom VI here, registrations are still possible). We are excited to see what submissions we will receive and how we can help promote innovation to further expand the Cosmos ecosystem.

Can you talk a little about IBC and why it’s so important to Cosmos?

On a very simple level, IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) is a protocol that allows blockchains to talk to each other as long as they have some of the same technical properties. It’s such a significant milestone for Cosmos because we’ve been working on it since the original white paper was published. Cosmos realized early on that the sustainable development of the blockchain space would not take place as long as all ecosystems were isolated and unable to connect with each other.

We have clearly seen problems with the scalability of the blockchain, throughput, transaction fees, etc. at Ethereum, which shows that an approach of “one chain to rule them all” does not work. Cosmos presents a solution that enables sovereign application-specific blockchains to maintain their own governance models, build their own communities, scale at their own pace, and yet connect to an ever-growing ecosystem in an environmentally sustainable manner. That’s why IBC is so exciting.

Since we launched IBC in April 2021, more and more Cosmos chains are making it possible to really start building the Internet of Blockchains. There are currently 25 in-chain IBCs registering more than 1.5 million transactions in 30 days, but more are being added all the time, with the Secret Network just announcing it will enable IBC. That way, they can all connect to various Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) available in the Cosmos ecosystem, such as Osmosis, Sifchain, and Gravity DEX. I think by this point next year we will easily see 200 chains connected by IBC, and even a million in the long run.

How about a connection to other blockchain ecosystems outside of Cosmos?

Cross-chain bridges have received a lot of attention lately to enable the connection of blockchain ecosystems. Many of these are centralized solutions, which means that when transferring your tokens, you need to trust the chain you are transferring them into.

Althea, a core development team at Cosmos, is working on building the most secure decentralized bridge that will connect Cosmos to Ethereum and Polygon, several teams are connecting Cosmos to Bitcoin and work is in progress to connect other ecosystems such as Polkadot, Harmony, and Celo. We see the future of blockchain development as inclusive rather than competitive in order to advance companies and other industries worldwide. A rising tide lifts all boats and we have so much to offer when we can flourish and prosper together.

What are you currently working on at Tendermint and what role does Tendermint play in Cosmos?

Hence, Tendermint is focused on user adoption and the developer experience for the Cosmos ecosystem. We stepped up DeFi on Cosmos in 2021 by developing the Gravity DEX protocol and Emeris, the portal that enables everyday users to interact with the DeFi opportunities available on the internet of blockchains.

Emeris is currently in beta but will eventually allow users to access a wide range of decentralized applications across different blockchain ecosystems from a single, easy-to-use interface. Our goal is for Emeris to become the main interface to the Internet of Blockchains, allowing users to access all types of crypto apps, whether they are related to DeFi, NFTs, DAOs or games.

Tendermint is also continuously working to improve the developer experience and engage the next generation of developers through world-class platforms such as Starport and major hackathons, global events, and ongoing training and support in Cosmos.

Can you tell us a little more about Starport?

Based on the Cosmos SDK, the world’s most popular blockchain application framework, Starport is the all-in-one platform for creating, starting and managing any crypto application on a sovereign and secure blockchain. Starport CLI is a powerful developer tool for building blockchains, generating code, running a node in development, and much more.

With Starport, Tendermint makes creating your own blockchain as easy as writing a smart contract, which means that developers and project owners no longer have to accept compromises that exist as a dApp in someone else’s chain. No longer do you have to fight for throughput on a single base layer, you can manage yourself, push upgrades at your own pace, and connect to the interoperable Cosmos network.

We’ll also be launching the Starport Network in 2022, which will allow developers to connect with a thriving and supportive community and coordinate the launch of their blockchain with any Validator team in the world. Stay tuned for more details.

What else do you have in the pipeline for the coming year?

We will continue our efforts to bring Cosmos to a wide audience through partnerships, promoting innovation, and incubating talent. One exciting area for us that we announced in Cosmos Signal, our brand new quarterly keynote, is our partnership with the blockchain gaming platform Forte. This is a huge step for us. With more than three billion players worldwide forecasted by 2023 and an explosive interest in NFTs as in-game assets and collectibles, working with Forte will help bring Cosmos to a wider audience and our place as the leading blockchain Consolidate ecosystem.

We have already developed the best tool in the industry, Starport CLI, which enables developers and entities to create their own sovereign chains and fit into our growing network. Now we want to make it easier for game developers and NFT developers to get started with Cosmos. I can also tell you that in the second quarter of 2022 we will be hosting the largest Cosmos conference in our history, with the aim of reaching a wider audience and expanding the reach of Cosmos to companies and individuals who want to learn more and participate in building it an open and decentralized global future. We’ll share more details on this shortly.

Would you like to add anything else?

Tendermint has grown beyond recognition into a successful and ambitious team over the past year and we continue to hire at an aggressive pace. I was the first Tendermint employee in 2015 and have had the privilege of seeing and leading this growth that is making a huge contribution to the strength of the Cosmos ecosystem.

When I think of where we came from and where we are now, aiming for a million independent yet interconnected blockchains doesn’t seem that difficult. Looking ahead, I am confident of a future where global businesses and individuals can benefit from our transparent and sustainable networked ecosystem that enables financial inclusion, accountability and the improvement of our daily lives.

Connect with Peng Zhong

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