Original author: Cryptocito, Stakecito co-founder
Original translation: Aelx Liu, Foresight News
I saw a tweet from Rooter, co-founder of Solend and Suilend, asking: “Why has Cosmos never received as much attention as Solana?” Here are my thoughts:
1. Cosmos is not equal to Cosmos Hub
Cosmos is often misunderstood as just the Cosmos Hub, implying 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 vertical industries, 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 partially adopt Cosmos’ technology. (Translator’s note: Polygon PoS uses Tendermint consensus, BSC uses Cosmos SDK.)
There are also some big upcoming projects like Babylon, Berachain or Nillion that also use Cosmos technology. Some of these projects are more publicly identified as "Cosmos projects" and others are not, but that's okay. (Translator's note: Although Berachain is built using the Cosmos SDK, it has always objected to 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.
2. Interchain Foundation inaction
Second, 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 dependence on a single organization, but the disadvantages are lack of consistency, difficulty in coordination, fragmented vision and difficulty in dividing responsibilities.
Solana is moving very fast thanks to the Solana Foundation, which has taken a very proactive approach, hosting large conferences like Breakpoint, funding Superteams around the world, and strategically incentivizing all market participants to join and get educated about Solana.
This is so great, in fact, that we are working to replicate this model for the Cosmos ecosystem. Without funding, this is very challenging.
3. The ecosystem does not have a "unified currency"
Third, it’s worth noting that the core of Cosmos is that chains are interoperable while ensuring sovereignty, which means that there is no “unified currency” that can rule all these chains.
The entire ecosystem is not supported by a single base chain or token, and this is not because they "forgot" it, but because this is the nature of Cosmos.
I wasn’t present when ATOM launched in 2019, but I’m 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 highly adaptable, which is great for long-term sustainability but less so for short-term hype.
Terra proved the appchain theory in an extreme case. 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 remaining in the top 40 by market cap 5 years into the coin’s existence.
What I think needs improvement is:
Rebranding Cosmos to “Interchain”
Improve developer onbording process;
Copy Solana Superteam's model
The Interchain Foundation should play a more proactive role
The Interchain Foundation is currently going through some structural changes and more steps are likely to be taken from now on.
There is still a lot to consider and a lot to figure out, but this is my general opinion.
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