A New Major Product Idea for the Cosmos Hub
Introducing: Halo, an ATOM-powered Shared Sequencer & Settlement Layer Screenshot 2024-09-12 at 18.55.13 2236×1380 227 KB How do we start driving some of the Cosmos ecosystem’s value back to ATOM? And how can we amplify the Cosmos Hub’s utility and power as a secure deployment and bridging platform? Introducing HALO , a new project being researched and developed by a small team between Binary Builders & Informal Systems . A product we think could solve a few critical issues in the Cosmos ecosystem. We believe this new product should be part of Cosmos Hub’s roadmap and I’d like to take some time to explain why, and open a discussion with the community about its place in the Hub’s future. The AppChain Thesis and its Flaws While Cosmos is known for pioneering the AppChain thesis where every protocol would have its own layer 1 blockchain, this has led to some obstacles that specifically hurt early-stage projects: • AppChains are expensive: The average inflation for a Cosmos chain currently sits between 8-10%. Most of this inflation is directed towards delegators and validators. If you’re a super early stage layer 1 with a market cap of $20M, you’re printing 2…
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Thank you, @Noam , for this thorough and high-quality work. Binary Builders has once again delivered ideas and content that we take great pleasure in reviewing. We will share our feedback using our standard three-step process: context, analysis, and conclusions. Context: The concept of funding a decentralized sequencer deployed as a consumer chain leveraging the Cosmos Hub’s security is certainly worth exploring. Whether the product will achieve market fit is a separate question, which we will address by outlining the pros and cons in our review. Nevertheless, this discussion should primarily focus on “how” and “when” rather than "if. " To address these critical questions, we will analyze the design choices and conclude with strategic recommendations aimed at maximizing the likelihood of successful market adoption. Analysis: Let’s begin by examining the proposed design choices, as quoted from the author: Noam: This is how you can avoid the waiting period and have instant withdrawals : some third party essentially sees your bridging request and says, “I’ll check the transactions and execute the block myself. If it looks good, I’ll front the money for the user…
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Very cool. I know similar ideas had come up in the past, but nobody had tried to build it yet.
The real doubt that comes to mind is the possibility of finding PMF, but conceptually, it’s certainly worthy of consideration. One thing I like in particular is that there’s no token involved besides Atom. Anything that’s designed to drive value to Atom gets diluted with a separate token and makes the value proposition much more nebulous.
More and more composability and modualrity, both in execution and in settlment, I’m not even talking about DA with celestia… also allowing rollups to access IBC is just a game changer, this roadmap seems pretty cool. Here is my understanding of Halo in schema: Halo3 1332×1056 183 KB In this diagram there are two main routes, the first is the simplest, you are a Halo consumer and you want to both execute your transaction on the Halo sequencer but also settle using the attestors, that’s is obviously the least expensive solution here with a good compromise between smart contracts and ics chains allowing even more modularity for developers on forge. The other route is more expensive and will surely be developed later, so here you are an L2 you would like to execute your transactions on Halo to obtain both a reduction in the costs of the sequencers and the possibility of connecting to other networks using IBC and then you settle on Ethereum to obtain the best guarantee . it is important to note that here the whole aspect of the execution is entirely secured by Halo before the settlement, in other words it is a good way to obtain indirect income from IBC for the hub (If you want…
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Love it! And love the ‘no token’ idea so value accrues to ATOM. The post mentions Celestia. Might Dymension be included? My thought is to benefit as many interchain ecosystems as possible.
Quentin:roadmap seems pretty cool. Here is my understanding of Halo in schema:
This is a very insightful representation, and we recommend that the author, @noam include it (or a similar version) in the original post, as it significantly improves the overall understanding of the system and its interacting components.
Cosmos Hub having it’s own rollup chain is an interesting concept and could possibly work. However I think there is a lot of competition here already that have similar concepts Dymension, Celestia, Initia, Sunrise with some of their own tweaks, adjustments and technologies they use.
These are only chains that are already based on Cosmos SDK there are similar services outside of the Cosmos. So my question here is what Halo does better than the current competition? What will make the developers decide to use Halo over some other service?
To make it clear I do not have anything against Halo it is just with the current timeframe given mainnet might go live in Q3 2025 I just feel like we need some extra edge. I feel like this project will “arrive to late to the party”.
As for the consumer chain how much would it make per rollup? For example how much would an EVM rollup generate revenue per transaction?
No new tokens please. More chains but all should be secured by PSS and using the ATOM token.
This is absolutely FANTASTIC!
I see HALO having a tornado cash like mixer to add privacy feature to Cosmos hub
A few random questions:
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Can rollups choose to settle to Ethereum?
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The settlement mechanism proposed sounds similar to Movement’s Fast-Finality Settlement. Does it operate on the same principle?
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What rollup frameworks will Halo support?
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What efforts are Binary Builders or others making to package Halo, Cosmos Hub settlement, Celestia DA, and a rollup framework (i.e.: Rollchains) into an integrated solution for building apps? I think this is important for business development.
A long time ago also the model where appchains would route IBC-transactions through the Hub. That would only require that an appchain-Hub channel is available and thereby tokens can be route through the complete Cosmoverse. It would immediately solve the issue of the wrong ibc-denom, since it would always be routed through one and the same IBC-channel. It comes close to the Polkadot-model, with the exception that the appchains can be stand-alone L1’s.
How does that model fit into this proposal?
Noam:We have submitted a grant proposal to the AADAO to fund this work until the end of year, on which we’re currently waiting for an answer
This wont age well =)
Sorry…
On a serious note, is there a testnet we can join?