Cosmos 2021 . The Cosmos Hub will roll out many new features in 2022, with major upgrades planned at least quarterly. If you want to dive into the technical details and get the specs for all the individual upgrades, check out the Cosmos Hub Roadmap 2.0 on GitHub. If you want a bird's-eye view, find below what's important - and why it's important to you.

Cross-chain 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 each other so that new chains can bootstrap their economies, and validators and delegators on larger chains can earn rewards from the service. Even better, Interchain Security will allow validators and delegators to earn multiple on-chain rewards in multiple tokens by staking ATOM on the Hub. The new chain will benefit from a strong validator security set and present its tokens in front of Cosmos community members at an early stage. At the same time, stakers of the Cosmos Hub can gain early access to innovative projects and improve the utility of their ATOMs.

Cross-chain account

Cross-chain accounts will be listed on the Cosmos Hub, and the Theta upgrade is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2022. Cross-chain accounts have several major implications for the Cosmos ecosystem, one of which is the ability to take Cosmos DeFi to the next level. This is because cross-chain accounts allow eco-chains to securely control accounts on other eco-chains, rather than simply transferring tokens from one chain to another.

Consider Ethereum. Complex financial instruments are traded permissionlessly through a set of smart contracts, each of which handles part of the overall business process. In the Cosmos ecosystem, smart contracts cannot immediately access each other because each smart contract or application is essentially the blockchain itself.

With IBC, you can move coins between networks, but you can't trigger actions on another chain like you can with smart contracts on Ethereum. Cross-chain accounts change all that by providing the composability and interoperability required for smart contracts to create a DeFi explosion in application-specific blockchains!

Cross-chain accounts will also make it easier for developers to connect with IBC, as new chains can leverage the features and capabilities of existing accounts without having to recreate those features from scratch. You can read more about how cross-chain accounts change everything here .

Liquid pledge

The first version of Liquid Staking, led by Cosmos core contributor and Iqulsion founder Zaki Manian, will launch as early as February 2022 and integrate directly into the Cosmos SDK. The first version of Liquid Staking will allow ATOM holders to send transactions that instantly convert their bound ATOM into a transferable representation that can be used in liquidity pools and other activities. This opens up a realm of DeFi possibilities, allowing holders to maximize their ATOM while still earning staking rewards.

In V1's Liquid Staking, liquid tokens are tied to validators whose ATOMs are staked by delegators. However, this design may be restrictive and not necessarily ideal. This is why Liquid Staking V2 quickly followed suit. The P2P team behind Lido has drafted a proposal that would make Liquid Staking an essential part of the Cosmos Hub. As one of the oldest validators in Cosmos, P2P developed the Liquid Staking solution for Ethereum 2.0, which allows people to stake their ether, but use it at the same time. Lido now owns 90% of staked Ether in ETH 2.0 and also runs Terra's popular Liquid Staking implementation bLUNA.

Liquid Staking is difficult to implement without smart contracts, so the Cosmos Hub team added 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 allow it to connect to any chain and manage their staking process via IBC communication. This will place the Cosmos Hub directly at the cross-chain core and increase its usability based on its value and advantages, becoming a true port city in the Cosmos ecosystem. Watch this space for more details.

IBC will become an ecosystem of "200 chains"

2021 is the year IBC enters the market , with the main Cosmos chain forming a thriving interconnected economy - and more to come next year! IBC adoption will be excellent in 2022 due to Cosmos' robust technology stack and developer-friendly blockchain frameworks like Starport with IBC interoperability. As Tendermint CEO Peng Zhong told CryptoSlate , “I think we will easily see 200 chains connected via IBC by this time next year, or even a million in the long run.”

We'll also see work done by various different teams using IBC to connect Cosmos to their ecosystems. In 2022, that means secure connections to Bitcoin, Celo, Polkadot, Kusama, Harmony, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, and more. The free flow of assets between these major blockchains will create huge opportunities for scalability and growth - finally, a DeFi level playing field with low fees, high throughput, and a large selection of products!

Cosmos DeFi will explode

Cosmos DeFi will explode with more liquidity connected by IBC, the ability to manage complex transactions across blockchain accounts, and bridges connecting major ecosystems to unlock liquidity. The public launch of Emeris will be available in Spring 2022 and will bring many highly anticipated features, including advanced capabilities for portfolio visualization, digital asset management and service discovery. There will also be maximized reward generation through automatic combination of rewards, cross-chain DEX aggregation, airdrop trackers, and a browser extension that works seamlessly with the Emeris web dashboard.

Osmosis will also release its version of Liquid Staking called Superfluid Staking in the coming months. This will allow OSMO holders to simultaneously use their tokens to stake and provide liquidity, and ensure that the governance of the protocol serves the interests of liquidity providers.

Another team making strides in DeFi and working to bring Ethereum to Cosmos is Evmos , "EVM-on-Cosmos" (formerly known as Ethermint). Evmos aims to be the EVM hub for Cosmos, enabling EVM smart contracts to easily deploy and communicate within the Cosmos ecosystem. Already in the incentivized testnet, EVM compatibility is coming to Cosmos in January 2022. Evmos is an application-agnostic chain that is interoperable with the Ethereum mainnet, EVM-compatible environments, and other BFT chains via IBC, and will act as an EVM hub for any other EVM Cosmos chain.

Also be sure to keep an eye out for Umee in 2022, the first DeFi protocol to provide infrastructure for cross-chain interactions. Umee has raised $6.3 million in seed funding in 2021, backed by Tendermint, Coinbase Ventures, ConsenSys’ Jo Lubin, and other big names in the industry. Umee allows users to create lending positions, discover yield opportunities, and explore trustless cross-chain DeFi applications. It will be crazy how fast Cosmos DeFi will emerge next year!

NFTs will be huge on Cosmos

In addition to the fast-growing DeFi space, 2021 is also the year of NFTs, with a surge in interest in digital artwork, digital collectibles, and immutable digital proof of ownership. With so much mainstream demand for NFTs, it looks like their popularity will continue in 2022.

Numerous projects in the Cosmos ecosystem are laying the groundwork for this year’s launch, including Stargaze , a public protocol for NFTs, Pylons , an interoperable system for brands and creators to build products using NFTs, and BitSong , the first marketplace for music NFTs , Omniflix , a decentralized media and networking layer powered by NFTs, and Secret Network’s Stashh , a full-stack platform and marketplace powered by Secret NFTs. Evmos will also soon support NFT deployment and host a marketplace, allowing people to easily trade and deploy NFTs.

A special mention goes to Strangeclan , as it releases its adventure game's first virtual town in 2021, complete with quests, social events, competitive battles, and the ability to mint NFT characters, merchandise, and tokens! The game will be developed incrementally and we look forward to exciting future releases in 2022.

IRISnet , a long-term contributor to Cosmos, also completed pioneering work in the NFT field in 2021, successfully conducting the first cross-chain NFT cross-chain transfer in the permissioned environment and public chain field: Wenchang Chain and IRITA Hub in BSN, IRIS Hub ( aka IRISnet) and Ethereum. Now, NFTs that are digital twins of two exquisite Chinese paintings are available on OpenSea EASTIP for the global market.

We're excited to follow the progress of all these incredible NFT projects over the next few months and will update you as they happen.

More important airdrops in 2022

Lastly, be sure not to miss a series of amazing airdrops coming up in 2022. Some of the most innovative projects in the Cosmos ecosystem will go into production next year, covering everything from NFTs to decentralized social media, DeFi to gaming. Keep an eye out for airdrops from Evmos , Umee , Gravity Bridge , LikeCoin , Game , Stargaze , BitSong , and Cyber, and be sure to stake your ATOM with Cosmos validators to qualify.

The developer community will continue to expand

Starport will help us achieve our goal of 200 blockchains connected to IBC by the end of 2022, an all-in-one platform to build, launch and maintain any crypto application on sovereign and secure blockchains using the Cosmos SDK. Starport provides the best developer experience in the industry and empowers developers to build blockchains for a multi-chain future.

The Starport developer community is growing rapidly, with 422 blockchains created and pushed to GitHub to date. This year alone, some of Cosmos' most interesting projects were 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 of nearly 600 developers. The newly launched Starport Twitter already has 5,000 followers, and about 200 developers visit the Starport docs every day for instructions and tutorials — numbers that will grow exponentially in 2022.

During HackAtom VI , we received some high-quality submissions for the Starport challenge, and we look forward to bringing these ideas into production and working with more open source contributors. Starport will be adding some key new products and features in 2022 that will give developers the most success when launching their blockchain. You'll hear more about this in the coming months!

refer to

What's Coming to Cosmos in 2022