cosmos ecology - about peggy in cosmos
(The main part is translation)
Discuss the reason for the cross-chain bridge
The cosmos network recently tweeted lively about the purpose and suitability of building bridges in the cosmos strip. Here, we elaborate on Sifchain's stance, making it more relevant due to its work on Peggy (Cosmos <> Ethereum bridge). We first describe the leadership of the relevant cosmos organizations, including the cosmos hub. Then, we consider Osmosis as the dominant chain in the cosmos network. After that, we discuss the ideal bridge structure and the complexities of getting there. Finally, we discuss some options that exist in the future.
sifchain has great respect for any team mentioned in this post. All criticisms have positive intentions.
cosmos network product direction
The old Cosmos Network product documentation required connecting to Ethereum via a custom bidirectional bridge and to the Cosmos Hub via IBC. This will allow all Cosmos engineers to focus their attention on the deployment of a bridge and give them all the benefits of it. We just never got the conviction from the leadership of Cosmos to stick to this vision and provide the human capital and funding needed.
This may be because Cosmos is decentralized, it may be because there are too few blockchain experts and there are too many challenges, it may be because Cosmos has a strong self-limitation in funding projects, or it may be other reasons. Whatever the reason, it led to the underfunding of two different bridge projects (Peggy and Gravity Bridge), both of which required external funding to complete, adding financial complexity that prevented them from being installed directly on the Cosmos Hub.
In short, the work of the Cosmos Hub is underfunded, which is critical to its mission of being the source of all other cosmos network chains, and the recent bridge debacle is related to its leadership vacancy. Another example of the same problem is that the Cosmos Hub is considered the central source of tokens for all chains in the network, with each chain individually connected to the Hub without the need to connect directly to each other. Instead, we see chains using many-to-many connections, where the Hub is not particularly privileged.
The "Cosmos Hub" is still in a strong position with many talented contributors, but it does mean that many expectations need to be revisited, and the cosmos network isn't fully adapted to solve these kinds of problems, it's just solving them as they arise they. The network is now achieving standards through what we consider "convergent decentralization" rather than hierarchical decision-making.
Osmosis Community Governance
As an emerging force in the cosmos network, Osmosis is increasingly setting the cadence for decisions that the cosmos hub and other cosmos organizations like ICF and Tendermint are not involved in. As the most active transaction chain in the cosmos network and the network with the largest IBC transaction traffic, Osmosis contains the most cost-effective DeFi activity despite the Gravity DEX attempt from the cosmos hub.
"Osmosis" and its proxies have been circulating on Twitter and other sites, and the cosmos network, cosmos hub or other sites named after cosmos should be renamed to emphasize the lack of relative importance between cosmos hub and other chains. While the stance is controversial, it expresses the background that Osmosis is at the center of a critical new decision, with the cosmos hub mired in its own red tape.
It is worth noting that cosmos governance alone does not satisfy all of its needs, and another entity is filling the void. Osmosis does not have dozens of seasoned experts like Informal and Interchain Berlin. It is first and foremost to be a replacement for CEX; the quality of the architectural patterns of the cosmos network is second only to Osmosis. It doesn't have the storied history of investing countless hours of engineering cycles and financial product cycles into bridge technology.
By extension, it also doesn't have a well-defined procedure for computing bridges. To some extent, it is dragged down by the question of bridge bracing, which the cosmos hub didn't explicitly answer a few years ago. However, the question of whether a product is suitable for a bridge can be addressed more objectively.
The road to the ideal bridge
In an ideal world, each chain could instantly verify the state of any other chain it is connected to. The closest thing to this ideal is IBC, which provides a rotating bridge framework with dual-light client authentication. Communication between chains should be as direct as possible, which means that any network security node (validators, miners, etc.) should be able to verify cross-chain token transfers and event data transfers without relying on special privileged nodes.
The limitation of IBC is that it is primarily designed for the CosmosSDK blockchain. Efforts are being made to use it for connections to other architectures such as Solana, Substrate chains, and EVM chains, but so far it's really only belonged to Cosmos.
The closest compromise to the ideal would be the Cosmos Network pegging the blockchain using a bridging mechanism other than IBC to import tokens. If there are multiple regions, these regions will not import different versions of the same asset to avoid replaceability issues. These fixed zones can be connected to any other chain in the cosmos network, making the destination chain agnostic to the choice of bridge.
There is currently no bridge that really supports the ideal architecture, although the Peggy team is actively working on light client validation and bridge routing of Cosmos<>Ethereum transactions to transfer tokens through other bridges, pending security approval from the Peggy DAO, and other upgrades. For now, here is a brief analysis of some notable bridges, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.
Optics / Nomad : Scalable to many chains, but uses a reactive security model with controversial cross-chain transactions.
Connext : Executes swaps simultaneously in the liquidity pools of the source and destination chains, but does not support cross-chain token migration or any kind of event data transfer.
Layer Zero : Supports cross-chain event data transfer in messages compatible with IBC's application layer, but doesn't actually rely on full light client authentication requirements in IBC's transport layer.
Axelar : SDK for building cross-chain bridges to connect Axelar chains in the cosmos network, but does not support dual light client verification between source and target chains.
Gravity Bridge : Supports cross-chain event data transmission through the Gravity Bridge blockchain in the Cosmos network, but only supports Ethereum <> Cosmos, and does not support dual-light client verification. There are also cryptoeconomic security concerns if deployed as a Gravity Bridge blockchain and secured only by the $GRAV token until shared security is achieved.
Wormhole : Supports cross-chain token transfers across multiple chains (including Terra, Ethereum, and Solana), but is governed by a closed federation of relayers.
Peggy : Cross-chain token transfer between Ethereum and Cosmos. The infrastructure supports any EVM chain, but its relay base needs to be more and more decentralized, and cross-chain data transmission is not supported.
Every bridge is less than ideal in some way and has its own unique safety hazards. Bridges operate on different chains, so multiple bridges are required to give the target chain the widest selection of tokens. Unless there is one type of bridge that dominates all other bridges (it's hard to see any dominance at the moment), we'll have multiple bridges.
This is not to say that every bridge is equally close to our ideal. Instead, they all require additional development. This means they all need funding and long-term commitment from a well-supported development team/community. Given the inability of the community to actually assess the quality of each bridge in real-time, a functioning free market could provide the next best thing, allowing transactions of bridge tokens to happen unhindered and let users decide.
Only recently did the Osmosis team realize this.
The Osmosis team's plans to work exclusively with Gravity Bridge must have only begun in the past few months. It might save some clicks in browser wallets, a UX improvement that any other bridge could do. This product insight pales in comparison to market intelligence, which has been accumulated through years of fair play between bridges in the open DEX marketplace. CEXes may not have multiple versions of the same token, but they also don't have a permissionless list.
bridge monetization
The question of bridge monetization is crucial because it can tell us how well a bridge can fund the work it has to do to improve its utility, coverage, and safety. Most cryptocurrency projects have simple monetization stories, but bridges are unique in that users don't want to pay for bridges, and there are no other obvious ways to monetize bridges (though there are some clever non-obvious ways). Funding sources for bridges are mostly those that are enough to allow a competent team to build a prototype, and often not enough to get them into production or for V2. Bridges can try to obtain equity or token financing, but this can have mixed results, as token economics are often hard-packed and not viable.
Peggy's current funding comes from Rowan's revenue value, as a DEX settlement token, a large token sale, and backing from VCs. The other bridges mentioned earlier could provide similar support, but it’s unclear if the Gravity Bridge can do this; the project jumped from team to team and from team to team without generating revenue model.
Someone might be trying to find a monetization strategy for $gravv token as it has a private distribution of tokens but it has not been announced
https://twitter.com/fekunze/status/1487183012844425220?s=20&t=ET8mMak81wTMw6j3Ytspqg
The Gravity Bridge team's earnings story is confusing. If gravity bridge should still be deployed to the cosmos hub, then the gravity bridge blockchain should be treated as a hobbyist or a canary chain and will be sunset after the cosmos hub deployment of gravity bridge goes live. This means that the $gravv token is not intended to compete with $ATOM for the revenue generated by the Ethereum traffic supporting the Cosmos Network, so how much money does it actually make? If the Gravity Bridge team can't profit from $gravv, how will it compete long-term with Peggy and the likes of Axelar, Wormhole, Optics, and Multichain?
Outlook
Sifchain remains committed to making Peggy a strong bridge for the entire Cosmos network, eventually including improvements such as Omni-EVM, dual light client verification between Cosmos and Ethereum, Peggy Chain support for more advanced bridges, and a focus on Peggy Chain interconnection Operational standard Peggy DAO. In a world with many bridges, it is worthwhile for members of the Universe Center and Universe Network to think about how far they would like to address the conundrum of bridge standardization.
Fortunately, both Osmosis and Sifchain leaders are integrating user experiences that support multiple bridges and fungibility (currently known as "Token fungible groups"). If Osmosis is serious about giving a voice to the community like bridges, users who don't want to cause fungibility issues, and also respecting bridges between market competition, it may need to implement token fungibility groups before supporting any bridges, and then open multiple bridges at the same time.
Whatever it does, we hope its community takes that decision seriously. The recent wormhole hack is just another reminder of how important it is to get bridge structures right. If the cosmos network really does its homework, together we can coordinate on the bridging technology to actually minimise the risk of cross-chain attacks (social and technical), to actually take all the bridging liquidity in the cosmos network Maximize risk-adjusted value.
Summarize
The reason why this article came out is because sunny tweeted about sifchain before and proposed to conduct a trading competition on osmo, and then rewarded with tokens such as osmo, and it was discussed before, cosmos, cosmos hub, cosmos ecosystem Equal distinction and naming. sfichain also discussed in the proposal area to directly put eth above sifchain and set up a rowan-reth LP on osmos, which was finally rejected for various reasons.
Some people once questioned that the governance of sifchainDAO is too centralized and controlled by a few people. Such a problem does exist at present.
refer to
Like my work? Don't forget to support and clap, let me know that you are with me on the road of creation. Keep this enthusiasm together!
- Author
- More