Juno Network: A Cosmos Platform-Level Project That Cannot Be Ignored

Original author: 0x76/Rhythm BlockBeats

When it comes to the Cosmos ecosystem, most people's first reaction is often cross-chain. Indeed, Cosmos has built a thriving multi-chain ecosystem thanks to its efficient underlying IBC cross-chain protocol and convenient blockchain development tool, Cosmos SDK.

However, can developers only join the Cosmos ecosystem through application chains? Can we deploy smart contracts directly in Cosmos like we do in Ethereum? If so, where can we deploy them?

With these questions in mind, we re-scanned the Cosmos ecosystem. This article aims to introduce a project that is rarely mentioned in the Chinese internet: Juno.

Application Chain or Smart Contract?

To truly understand a multi-chain ecosystem like Cosmos, we first need to break the inherent concepts that many have formed in monolithic blockchain platforms (like Ethereum).

In the Cosmos ecosystem, the first question to answer for any newly encountered decentralized application (dApp) is: Are you a chain?

Below, we will categorize some common projects in the Cosmos ecosystem.

From the table above, it can be seen that different projects have different considerations when choosing their underlying technical architecture. For example, in the most basic trading platform projects, Osmosis, which addresses the asset trading needs of the entire Cosmos ecosystem, chooses to build through an application chain.

This is to better utilize the IBC protocol to absorb assets from the entire ecosystem. On the other hand, TerraSwap primarily solves the native asset trading issues within the Terra public chain, so deploying directly on the Terra chain through smart contracts is a more reasonable choice.

Additionally, it is important to note that while supporting smart contracts has become a standard configuration for the new generation of public chains, not all application chains in the Cosmos ecosystem can deploy smart contracts without restrictions. Strictly speaking, the vast majority of application chains cannot deploy external smart contracts.

The main reason for this phenomenon is that application chains in the Cosmos ecosystem often have their own core objectives. Taking the most basic Cosmos Hub as an example, its core function is to connect other application chains in the ecosystem as stably as possible. If the ability to deploy smart contracts were directly opened up, new application demands would inevitably crowd out the computing resources of the Cosmos Hub, thereby affecting the realization of the core functions of the application chains.

This has resulted in the majority of application chains in the current Cosmos ecosystem being in a relatively closed state.

However, due to the lower development difficulty of smart contracts, there remains a high demand for their use among developers. If we believe that the Cosmos ecosystem will continue to thrive in the future, it is hard to imagine that there isn't a reliable and permissionless smart contract deployment platform within this ecosystem.

The Juno project, developed by the official Cosmos team, is such an infrastructure-level platform chain in the Cosmos ecosystem. (Another smart contract platform chain with similar potential is Evmos, which differs from Juno mainly in its compatibility with EVM, and will not be discussed in this article.)

Characteristics and Advantages of Juno Public Chain

As a smart contract platform public chain, before discussing its ecosystem, let's briefly understand its basic parameters.

1. Consensus and Performance

The Juno public chain is developed based on Cosmos SDK, thus inheriting the Tendermint consensus and PoS mechanism, and natively supporting IBC cross-chain transactions. According to official information, Juno is expected to achieve a transaction throughput of 10,000 TPS.

2. Smart Contracts

The smart contracts supported by the Juno public chain are not the Solidity we are familiar with from EVM-compatible public chains, but rather CosmWasm.

CosmWasm supports the WASM virtual machine, allowing developers to use various more common languages to develop safer smart contracts. In simple terms, developers can use programming languages they are already familiar with (such as Rust, Go, C, C++) to directly develop applications on Juno.

Compared to the already mature Solidity in the Ethereum ecosystem, CosmWasm is a more advanced, yet still developing, new generation development standard, and CosmWasm smart contracts natively support cross-chain interoperability within the Cosmos ecosystem.

3. Token Standard

CW20 is the Cosmos version of the ERC20 Token standard, which inherits the main characteristics of ERC20 while also making certain improvements, such as adding metadata to store the Token's logo. Future applications deployed on Juno will likely issue Tokens that adhere to the CW20 standard.

It is worth noting that many Tokens commonly seen in the Cosmos ecosystem, such as ATOM, JUNO, and OSMO, do not follow the CW20 standard. This is because these Tokens are defined by independent application chains (similar to ETH in Ethereum), while the CW20 standard is primarily aimed at project Tokens defined and issued by smart contracts within the Cosmos ecosystem.

4. Development Team

The Cosmos ecosystem lacks project founders with a status similar to Vitalik Buterin in Ethereum; the entire development team is organized in a relatively loose manner. The currently active official development teams are mainly divided into two groups, known as Core-1 and Core-2.

Juno is an independent project driven by Core-1. Therefore, we can regard Juno as a public chain of the same level as Cosmos Hub and Gravity Bridge in the Cosmos ecosystem infrastructure.

Ecosystem Applications on Juno

As a platform-level public chain aimed at hosting smart contract application ecosystems, Juno is continuously promoting the development of its ecosystem. After several hackathon events, the ecosystem on Juno has begun to take shape. Although many projects are still in the early stages of development, several noteworthy projects have already emerged.

Junoswap

Junoswap is the native asset trading platform on the Juno chain. Unlike Osmosis, which targets the asset trading needs of the entire Cosmos ecosystem, Junoswap's goal is more focused on trading local CW20 assets within the Juno ecosystem.

Currently, Junoswap has completed its testing phase, and version 1 was officially launched on January 13. From the screenshot of the trading interface below, it can be seen that its trading interface is not significantly different from common DEXs.

However, the mainstream assets currently supported are still the native Tokens of other application chains, rather than local CW20 standard Tokens. Similar to Osmosis, Junoswap also provides asset deposit and withdrawal functions based on the IBC cross-chain protocol.

According to official announcements, the current Junoswap version 1 is just a temporary transitional version. The upcoming version 2 is expected to incentivize liquidity providers by issuing the original CW20 Token of Junoswap, and interested readers can follow the official updates for more information.

JunoMint

JunoMint is a one-click issuance platform for CW20 Tokens on Juno. Through JunoMint, users no longer need to deploy smart contracts directly; instead, they can issue their project Tokens with a single click by filling in core parameters such as Token name, decimal places, and total supply. Additionally, JunoMint provides various templates for users to choose from.

DAO DAO

DAO DAO is a tool for creating decentralized collaborative organizations on Juno. Similar to the design logic of JunoMint, it simplifies the originally complex smart contract deployment work into a standard user interface for one-click deployment. Users can directly create DAO Tokens and set voting rules within it.

NETA

There isn't much to say about the NETA project. The project's Token, NETA, currently has no practical use, but it is limited in supply and aims to become a value storage target within the Juno ecosystem.

However, given that NETA Tokens were airdropped for free to early stakers in the Juno ecosystem and have achieved complete decentralization from the start, with future development directions to be decided through NETA Dao, it can be observed as a social experiment.

(de)NS

The domain name registration system on Juno is currently still in the testing phase.

Advantages and Risks of Juno

After the emergence of multiple new ecosystem public chains in 2021, why is there still a need to develop a new platform public chain? This may be the first question many people think of when they see the Juno project.

First, as the Cosmos ecosystem continues to develop, more applications will inevitably attempt to deploy on Cosmos, and Juno is almost the only smart contract platform available. The neighboring Evmos exists more for compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem, while developers looking to efficiently deploy applications using the new generation of smart contract technology will find Juno to be more advantageous.

Moreover, the new generation of smart contract languages supported by Juno can better utilize the native cross-chain capabilities of the Cosmos ecosystem, enabling direct cross-chain interactions with other application chains. If this can indeed be realized, it may become a key feature that distinguishes Juno from other public chain ecosystems. (Note: I understand that the core of this feature is to achieve information cross-chain directly through smart contracts rather than the mainstream asset cross-chain currently.

However, I have not yet found a related demo or application, so whether this is a true technological breakthrough or just a marketing gimmick remains to be seen. Developers who are aware of related technological progress are welcome to contact me for discussion.)

After discussing the advantages, we must also acknowledge that the current Juno ecosystem still carries significant risks.

First, for a new ecosystem public chain that adopts an entirely new smart contract language, it will inevitably undergo a longer cold start period. Additionally, the future development prospects of Juno will be more constrained by the prosperity of the application chain ecosystem within Cosmos itself. The entire core development team of the Cosmos ecosystem, including the Juno team, exhibits a distinctly technical geek quality, often neglecting market promotion and marketing.

This poses certain obstacles to the exposure and value discovery of the entire ecosystem's products. While preparing to write this article, I found that as a platform-level infrastructure in the Cosmos ecosystem, the Juno project has almost no detailed introduction on the Chinese internet, aside from airdrop information.

Therefore, the purpose of writing this article is also to hope to address the severe lack of information in the Chinese community to some extent, and to help readers gain a more detailed understanding of the core components of the Cosmos ecosystem. While we cannot predict whether Juno's ecosystem will ultimately succeed, we should at least not completely overlook the existence of such platform-level infrastructure.