Blockchain development firm Adoriasoft has released a new SDK that will give Cosmos chains superpowers. Its Cosmos SDK Parachain Development Kit will enable any Cosmos chain to be deployed on Polkadot, opening up Cosmos projects to the Substrate ecosystem of interoperable networks.
The ramifications of this move are significant, with the potential to suck Cosmos projects into Polkadot’s irresistible orbit. While Cosmos and Polkadot both utilize Proof-of-Stake, the networks’ architecture is markedly different, one built with Tendermint and the other with Substrate. Adoriasoft has made a breakthrough in finding a way for Cosmos chains to connect to Polkadot, without needing to rebuild their product from the ground up. The SDK should benefit Polkadot in particular, by luring talented Cosmos developers into its panoply of parchains, all connected to the Polkadot Relay Chain.
An independent chain cannot coherently communicate information or pass data to applications on other blockchains as they are like different planets, with no connection between them. Adoriasoft’s Cosmos SDK Development Kit will allow Cosmos blockchains to connect with any other blockchain using parachains. This will help Cosmos developers greatly, allowing them to tap into the cryptosphere’s most liquid and secure Proof-of-Stake network.
Bridging the Gap
Cosmos and Polkadot work under two very different security models. Polkadot uses parachains that have their own state machine and work under their own rules. All of the parachains are secured by the Relay Chain which has its own consensus algorithm called GRANDPA. All of the security for each parachain comes from the GRANDPA consensus, using a shared security model.
With Cosmos Network, however, rather than coming under the umbrella of a Relay Chain, which gives global protection to the parachains under it, each blockchain must secure itself. That means these blockchains are only protected by validators, which results in a greater attack surface and unfairly burdens smaller projects with network security costs. Developers working with Cosmos SDK must bootstrap their own security protocol, which can take a huge amount of time and effort to build and monitor.
In its Github grant document, Adoriasoft explains how this benefits the Polkadot ecosystem:
- Polkadot and Cosmos systems have similar purposes and ideas, the possibility of their interoperability will be useful for both systems;
- Developers will be able to use Cosmos SDK and its modules in their blockchain connected to the Polkadot Relay chain.
Who Benefits?
As Adoriasoft explains in a blog post detailing its breakthrough, “Our project benefits the Polkadot ecosystem by attracting Cosmos developers, who are accustomed to building with the Cosmos SDK. Anyone who can build a Cosmos app will be able to build for Polkadot, shifting the security burden to the Polkadot Relay Chain instead of relying on the Cosmos app’s own consensus and security processes.”
Polkadot is riding a wave right now, as expectation mounts as to its capabilities, particularly in light of Ethereum’s scaling failures. While Cosmos does not suffer from the high fees and low throughput that have bedeviled Ethereum, neither does it boast the latter’s network effects. Polkadot’s promise to deliver the best of both worlds – an active community and scalable infrastructure – has resonated with developers and DeFi users alike. With the release of Adoriasoft’s Cosmos SDK, the trickle of projects migrating to Polkadot could soon become a flood.