Cosmos official releases 2022 outlook: Cross-chain accounts will be launched, and the DeFi and NFT ecosystem may experience an explosion
The Cosmos plan includes at least one major upgrade every quarter.Source: Cosmos Blog
Compiled by: Dong Yiming
As another incredible year comes to a close, the innovations within the Cosmos ecosystem have seen explosive growth. However, launching IBC and completing the Cosmos whitepaper is not the end of the story; we are just beginning this amazing journey, with so many exciting plans on the horizon, and a plethora of development projects already in preparation for 2022.
1. Cosmos Hub Will Continue to Evolve
In 2022, Cosmos Hub will introduce many new features, with plans for at least one major upgrade each quarter.
Interchain Security
Interchain Security is currently being developed by the Interchain Foundation and Informal Systems. This shared security service allows Cosmos chains to effectively rent security from one another, enabling new chains to be economically self-sufficient, while validators and delegators on larger chains can earn rewards for providing this service. Even better, Interchain Security will allow validators and delegators to earn rewards across multiple tokens on multiple chains simply by staking ATOM on the Hub. New chains will benefit from a robust set of validator security and present their tokens to members of the Cosmos community in the early stages. Meanwhile, Cosmos Hub stakers can get early access to innovative projects and enhance the utility of their ATOM.
Interchain Accounts
Interchain Accounts will land on Cosmos Hub, expected to be completed with the Theta upgrade in the first quarter of 2022. Interchain Accounts have several significant implications for the Cosmos ecosystem, one of which is the ability to elevate Cosmos DeFi to a new level. This is because Interchain Accounts allow ecosystem chains to securely control accounts on other ecosystem chains, rather than simply transferring tokens from one chain to another.
Now, think about Ethereum. Complex financial instruments can be traded permissionlessly through a set of smart contracts, each handling a part of the entire business process. In the Cosmos ecosystem, smart contracts cannot immediately access one another, as each smart contract or application is essentially a blockchain.
With IBC, you can move tokens between networks, but you cannot trigger operations on another chain like you can with smart contracts on Ethereum. Interchain Accounts change all of this by providing the composability and interoperability needed to create a DeFi explosion within application-specific blockchains!
Interchain Accounts will also make it easier for developers to connect with IBC, as new chains can leverage the capabilities and functionalities of existing accounts without having to recreate them from scratch.
Liquid Staking
The first version of Liquid Staking, led by Cosmos core contributor and Iqlusion founder Zaki Manian, is set to launch in February 2022 and will be directly integrated into the Cosmos SDK. Version 1 of Liquid Staking will allow ATOM holders to send transactions that immediately convert their staked ATOM into transferable representations that can be used for liquidity pools and other activities. This opens up more possibilities in the DeFi space, allowing holders to maximize their ATOM while still earning staking rewards.
In the first version of Liquid Staking, liquid tokens will be tied to the validators with whom delegators stake their ATOM. However, this design may be restrictive and not necessarily ideal. This is why a second version of Liquid Staking is being rapidly followed up. The P2P team behind Lido has drafted a proposal that will make Liquid Staking a key component of Cosmos Hub. As one of the oldest validators in Cosmos, P2P developed a Liquid Staking solution for Ethereum 2.0, allowing people to use their staked Ether. Lido now holds 90% of all staked ETH in ETH 2.0 and also runs the popular Liquid Staking implementation bLUNA on Terra.
Without smart contracts, it is difficult to implement Liquid Staking, so the Cosmos Hub team will add CosmWasm to the Cosmos Hub, allowing Lido to create the smart contracts needed for this functionality. In the future, installing CosmWasm on the Hub will enable it to connect to any chain and manage their staking programs through IBC. This will make Cosmos Hub a core part of Interchain directly, enhancing its usability based on its values and strengths, becoming a true port city within the Cosmos ecosystem. Stay tuned for more details.
2. IBC Will Become an Ecosystem of "200 Chains"
2021 was the year IBC entered the market, and the major Cosmos chains formed a thriving interconnected economy. By 2022, due to Cosmos's powerful tech stack and developer-friendly blockchain framework (like Starport with IBC interoperability), the adoption of IBC will truly shine. As Tendermint's CEO told CryptoSlate, "I think we will easily see 200 chains connected via IBC by this time next year, and in the long run, even a million chains."
We will also see various teams using IBC to connect Cosmos to their ecosystems. In 2022, this means secure connections with Bitcoin, Celo, Polkadot, Kusama, Harmony, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, and more. The free flow of assets between these major blockchains will create tremendous opportunities for scalability and growth—ultimately forming a DeFi fair competition environment with low fees, high throughput, and a wide range of products to choose from.
3. Cosmos DeFi Will Experience an Explosion
With more liquidity connected through IBC, the ability to manage complex transactions across blockchains, and bridges to major ecosystems releasing liquidity, Cosmos DeFi will see explosive growth. Emeris will publicly launch in Spring 2022, bringing many highly anticipated features, including portfolio visualization, digital asset management, and advanced service discovery. It will also maximize reward generation through automatic reward mixing, cross-chain DEX aggregation, airdrop trackers, and browser extensions that seamlessly collaborate with the Emeris network dashboard.
Osmosis will also release its liquid staking version called Superfluid Staking in the coming months. This will allow OSMO holders to stake their tokens while providing liquidity, ensuring that the protocol's governance serves the interests of liquidity providers.
Another team making significant strides in DeFi and working to bring Ethereum to Cosmos is Evmos, known as "EVM-on-Cosmos" (formerly Ethermint). Evmos aims to become the EVM hub of Cosmos, allowing EVM smart contracts to be easily deployed and communicate within the Cosmos ecosystem. The chain is already in an incentivized testnet and will land on Cosmos in January 2022. Evmos is an application-agnostic chain that can interoperate with the Ethereum mainnet, EVM-compatible environments, and other BFT chains via IBC, serving as an EVM hub for any other EVM Cosmos chain.
Also, be sure to keep an eye on Umee in 2022, the first DeFi protocol providing infrastructure for cross-chain interactions. Umee raised $6.3 million in seed funding in 2021, backed by Tendermint, Coinbase Ventures, ConsenSys's Jo Lubin, and other industry luminaries. Umee allows users to create lending positions, discover yield opportunities, and explore trustless cross-chain DeFi applications.
4. NFTs Will Grow into Giants on Cosmos
In addition to the rapidly growing DeFi space, 2021 was also the year of NFTs, as interest in digital artworks, digital collectibles, and immutable proof of digital ownership surged. With mainstream interest in NFTs so strong, their popularity seems set to continue into 2022.
Many projects in the Cosmos ecosystem have already laid the groundwork for releases this year, including Stargaze, a public protocol for NFTs, Pylons, an interoperability system for brands and creators to build products using NFTs, BitSong, the first music NFT marketplace, Omniflix, a decentralized media and network layer driven by NFTs, and Secret Network's Stashh, a full-stack platform and marketplace supporting Secret NFTs. Evmos will also soon support NFT deployment and hosting markets for easy trading and deployment of NFTs.
Notably, Strangeclan will release the first virtual town of its adventure game in 2021, featuring quests, social activities, competitive battles, and the ability to mint NFT characters, goods, and tokens. The game will be developed gradually, and we look forward to exciting future releases in 2022.
Long-term contributor to Cosmos IRISnet also completed pioneering work in the NFT space in 2021, successfully conducting the first cross-chain NFT transfer across four chains in both permissioned and public blockchain environments: WenChang chain in BSN, IRITA Hub, IRIS Hub (also known as IRISnet), and Ethereum. Now, NFTs as digital twins of two exquisite Chinese paintings are available on OpenSea's EASTIP for the global market.
We are excited to follow the progress of all these incredible NFT projects in the coming months and will provide timely updates as they unfold.
5. More Significant Airdrops
Finally, don't miss the upcoming amazing airdrops in 2022. Some of the most innovative projects in the Cosmos ecosystem will go live next year, covering various fields from NFTs to decentralized social media, DeFi to gaming. Keep an eye out for airdrops from
6. The Developer Community Will Continue to Expand
Starport will help us achieve the goal of connecting 200 blockchains with IBC by the end of 2022; it is an all-in-one platform for building, launching, and maintaining any crypto application on sovereign and secure blockchains using the Cosmos SDK. Starport provides the best developer experience in the industry, empowering developers to build blockchains for a multi-chain future.
The Starport developer community is growing rapidly, having created 422 blockchains and pushed them to GitHub so far. Some of the most exciting projects in Cosmos this year have been created using Starport, including SifChain, Juno, Osmosis, Umee, and Lum Network. In just two months, the Starport Discord group has grown into an active community with nearly 600 developers. The newly launched Starport Twitter has reached 5,000 followers, with about 200 developers visiting Starport documentation daily for instructions and tutorials—these numbers are set to grow exponentially in 2022.
During HackAtom VI, we received some very high-quality Starport challenge submissions, and we look forward to integrating these ideas into production and collaborating with more open-source contributors. Starport will add some key new products and features in 2022 that will maximize developers' success when launching blockchains. You will hear more about this in the coming months.
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