Cosmos (ATOM)

Cosmos provides an SDK which allows developers to create their own blockchain, and allow blockchains to transact between each other. Cosmos also tackles the issue of scalability and speed when it comes to traditional POS based blockchains...

Cosmos is a network of many blockchains powered by Tendermint. While existing proposals aim to create a “single blockchain” with total global transaction ordering, Cosmos permits many blockchains to run concurrently with one another while retaining interoperability. At the basis, the Cosmos Hub manages many independent blockchains called “zones” (sometimes referred to as “shards”, in reference to the database scaling technique known as “sharding”). A constant stream of recent block commits from zones posted on the Hub allows the Hub to keep up with the state of each zone. Likewise, each zone keeps up with the state of the Hub (but zones do not keep up with each other except indirectly through the Hub). Packets of information are then communicated from one zone to another by posting Merkle-proofs as evidence that the information was sent and received. This mechanism is called inter-blockchain communication, or IBC for short.

Distributed public ledgers should have a constitution and a governance system. Bitcoin relies on the Bitcoin Foundation and mining to coordinate upgrades, but this is a slow process. Ethereum split into ETH and ETC after hard-forking to address TheDAO hack, largely because there was no prior social contract nor mechanism for making such decisions. Validators and delegators on the Cosmos Hub can vote on proposals that can change preset parameters of the system automatically (such as the block gas limit), coordinate upgrades, as well as vote on amendments to the human-readable constitution that govern the policies of the Cosmos Hub. The constitution allows for cohesion among the stakeholders on issues such as theft and bugs (such as TheDAO incident), allowing for quicker and cleaner resolution. Each zone can also have their own constitution and governance mechanism as well. For example, the Cosmos Hub could have a constitution that enforces immutability at the Hub (no roll-backs, save for bugs of the Cosmos Hub node implementation), while each zone can set their own policies regarding roll-backs.

The Cosmos Hub is the first public blockchain in the Cosmos Network, powered by Tendermint’s BFT consensus algorithm. The Tendermint open-source project was born in 2014 to address the speed, scalability, and environmental issues of Bitcoin’s proof-ofwork consensus algorithm. By using and improving upon proven BFT algorithms developed at MIT in 1988, the Tendermint team was the rst to conceptually demonstrate a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency that addresses the nothing-at-stake problem suffered by rst-generation proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies such as NXT and BitShares1.0. Today, practically all Bitcoin mobile wallets use trusted servers to provide them with transaction verication. This is because proofof-work requires waiting for many conrmations before a transaction can be considered irreversibly committed. Doublespend attacks have already been demonstrated on services like CoinBase.

Cosmos is a network of independent parallel blockchains that are each powered by classical BFT consensus algorithms like Tendermint 1. The rst blockchain in this network will be the Cosmos Hub. The Cosmos Hub connects to many other blockchains (or zones) via a novel inter-blockchain communication protocol. The Cosmos Hub tracks numerous token types and keeps record of the total number of tokens in each connected zone. Tokens can be transferred from one zone to another securely and quickly without the need for a liquid exchange between zones, because all inter-zone coin transfers go through the Cosmos Hub. This architecture solves many problems that the blockchain space faces today, such as application interoperability, scalability, and seamless upgradability. For example, zones derived from Bitcoind, Go-Ethereum, CryptoNote, ZCash, or any blockchain system can be plugged into the Cosmos Hub. These zones allow Cosmos to scale innitely to meet global transaction demand. Zones are also a great t for a distributed exchange, which will be supported as well.

Ledger

Ledger offers Cosmos support through the Cosmosnation wallet. As for using the Nano Ledger S, the first step towards setting up your device is unboxing and checking if you have received all the accessories with the device. Once you have unboxed your device, you need to configure and initialize it before being able to use it. The process is quite simple and will hardly take about 20-30 minutes post which you will be set to use your Ledger Nano S device.

Setup guide video: here

Trust Wallet

Trust Wallet, the open-source multi-currency mobile wallet, has its own staking platform that also includes Cosmos. The platform allows you to stake from the mobile Trust Wallet application (iOS and Android), as well as from Ledger devices or other wallets that support WalletConnect. There are also various way to access the wallet(including Ledger and WalletConnect) and the fact that it supports multiple currencies and applications is also quite convenient.

Cosmosnation

This slick mobile wallet available for Android is developed by the Korean team at Cosmostation, who also run their own validator and block explorer.
The wallet is available as a web wallet, on the Apple App Store and Google Play. The wallet has a great design and its availability as both a web and mobile wallet make it a top pick to store your atoms.

Lunie

Lunie is the official wallet that was first developed by part of the Cosmos team (then called Voyager). The Lunie team has now spun off as a separate company.

Lunie is available as a web and mobile wallet (in development). There's also a Lunie browser extension that allows you to securely generate keys. Lunie enables you to safely perform every operation from sending to participating in governance through your Ledger device without having to download additional software.