Interpretation of the smart contract platform Agoric: supports JavaScript language, aiming to become the Cosmos marketplace

Original Title: The Agora of Cosmos

Original Author: RainandCoffee

Translated by: Biscuit, Chain Catcher

All cities and villages need a marketplace to facilitate economic operations. Agoric strives to become the largest Cosmos ecosystem marketplace.

Marketplace of the Ancient City of Cosmos

The literal meaning of the term "marketplace" is "gathering place." The marketplaces of ancient Greece and Rome were the centers of the city's athletic, artistic, commercial, social, spiritual, and political life.

In other words, a marketplace is a place where people from various professions handle various affairs face-to-face in their daily lives—whether political, social, or economic. Similarly, Agoric aims to provide a gathering place for developers using the world's most popular programming language, JavaScript.

This enables developers to write smart contracts in a familiar and secure language, thereby attracting a large number of developers into Web3 development.

Currently, 0.06% of developers globally create a $1.90 trillion asset class. This is an incredible miracle; imagine what would happen if more developers around the world engaged in Web3 development!

Number of Web3 developers compared to developers in other non-Web3 languages. @ElectricCapital

Before delving into the underlying protocols and understanding Agoric, let's go back to 1988.

To understand how this idea originated, let’s refer to the concept of the Agoric open system developed by Agoric's Chief Scientist Mark S. Miller. Let's return to that cold day in January 1988:

Miller articulated the idea of financial computing networks in his paper on the Agoric open system. He believed that financial computing networks could be viewed from an economic perspective. In his view, as early as 1988, computer science had already shifted from a labor-intensive model to a distributed model—by using market mechanisms, we could scale the model, and the globalization of trade and pricing mechanisms would facilitate the development of large distributed computing systems.

With the rise of DeFi and Dapps globally, this has become increasingly real.

Miller described the value of the Agoric system as follows:

The Agoric system can serve as a software publishing and distribution market, providing strong incentives for the development of software components. Such a system can allow more intelligent assets to flow between software, entities, and people, creating a chemical reaction. ------ Mark S. Miller - Agoric Open System Market and Development Director

So what is the Agoric system?

The Agoric system is characterized as a software system that operates as a market mechanism, providing information access, resource encapsulation, and communication between applications.

Adoption

Now that we understand the background of some ideas on which Agoric is based, let’s discuss how Agoric helps drive the development of cryptocurrency and blockchain.

What is the best way to promote development? Ease of use and a wide range of available products.

Agoric builds smart contracts using the most popular programming language, JavaScript. Therefore, JavaScript developers can easily build applications on Agoric, allowing us to attract more developers to participate in Web3. If we attract more developers, it is likely that the user base will also increase because there will be more applications available for users. Innovative ideas will also multiply as the number of developers increases.

So what are the benefits of writing smart contracts in JavaScript?

In the traditional world, signing contracts facilitates smooth cooperation among parties, which is very similar to smart contracts on the blockchain. They are applications that enforce the terms of contracts written by the developers of the smart contracts.

Agoric aims to provide a secure, simple, and elegant way for a broader range of practitioners to write smart contracts by using JavaScript.

Agoric

Agoric is like other blockchains built on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint, which is a proof-of-stake chain. Agoric has been refining a method using JavaScript for years to make smart contract programming accessible to a wider range of developers. Agoric's enhanced JavaScript will enable millions of developers to easily and securely build applications.

Since Agoric is built on Tendermint, it also has native support for IBC, which naturally connects it to the entire Cosmos ecosystem. The composability of Agoric's technology is expected to achieve exponential growth similar to what we see in other JavaScript ecosystems (such as Node.js).

Despite the rapid growth of developers in the cryptocurrency space, the community of smart contract developers remains relatively small compared to global developers.

Monthly developer growth in cryptocurrency (Electric Capital)

In this context, Agoric has a unique advantage in attracting the largest developer community in the world (JavaScript developers), thereby advancing the expansion of the Web3 development community.

Composable DeFi

Agoric provides a simple way for a large number of developers to write decentralized applications by offering reusable and composable components created by the internet.

In this section, we introduce Agoric's composable components, which will usher in a new era of DeFi.

Connections between endpoints and protocols built on Agoric

Zoe - Agoric's smart contract framework

Zoe is designed as a recognizable link between web2 and web3 developers, featuring an insertable and composable framework.

The main difference between Zoe and other smart contract frameworks is the provision of security (ensuring that the desired information is obtained or that submitted information has been refunded), which guarantees that on-chain transactions either settle and close or return to the user.

On Ethereum or Solana, such protections are not provided to users: for example, if a user sends tokens to a smart contract on UniSwap and the transaction fails due to errors or malicious code, the user cannot retrieve their assets.

When using Zoe, tokens are sent to the Zoe smart contract rather than the contract itself. This means that this infrastructure guarantees that users receive what they want or can retrieve their assets. Zoe achieves this by automatically managing all users' digital assets and handling their subsequent payments.

Zoe's security allows users and developers to avoid catastrophic errors, which are often seen on other blockchains.

ERTP

The Electronic Rights Transfer Protocol (ERTP) is the standard Agoric uses for creating and transferring tokens, which will later include components like NFTs and assets from other chains. It also enables projects to quickly launch their own tokens with the security of JavaScript.

Endo

Endo is a JavaScript platform still in development that will enable object-safe communication between nodes and protocols. Endo is based on SES, a secure JavaScript environment that allows isolated programs to execute independently.

Dual Token Economic Model

BLD

BLD is the native staking token that provides security for the network. BLD not only generates yield through staking but also through the operation of RUN (Agoric's native stablecoin), which I will discuss below.

BLD will also serve as the governance token for the protocol, similar to other tokens in the Cosmos ecosystem. This means that as holders of BLD, they can vote to support the governance of the BLD and RUN protocols. Similarly, the fees generated by the RUN protocol flow to BLD stakers.

RUN - Agoric's native stablecoin

RUN will be pegged to the US dollar, minted from on-chain collateral, and supported natively by automated market makers (AMM).

Smart contracts on Agoric can use RUN for payments and to pay execution fees for transactions and other services. Fees paid in RUN on Agoric will be used to incentivize BLD stakers, as these fees benefit BLD stakers and enhance the security of the network.

RUN is entirely minted from user-provided collateral, which may include BLD, assets minted on the Agoric chain, and funds from the Cosmos cross-chain ecosystem via IBC.

BLD stakers can also lock their already staked BLD (Liquid Staking) and mint RUN, similar to liquid staking on other chains like sONE/sFTM. This allows BLD stakers to participate in the ecosystem while securing the chain.

Another possible scenario is that when we obtain liquid-staked ATOM, we can technically use it as collateral to mint RUN, unlocking new yield strategies on Cosmos that have been lacking so far.

Relationship between BLD and RUN dual tokens

Cross-Chain

To attract users from Ethereum, the largest smart contract platform, Agoric will serve as the entry point for Gravity Bridge (Eth-Cosmos Bridge) and future EVMOS. Therefore, assets on Ethereum will be able to participate in collateralizing contracts on Agoric.

Since Agoric is built using Tendermint, the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol ensures that Agoric can seamlessly link to any Cosmos chain.

Assets on the Agoric chain, such as BLD and RUN, will also be available on IBC applications like Osmosis, Evmos, and other IBC-supported protocols.

Similarly, we will also be able to use IBC assets within the Agoric platform, such as LUNA, ATOM, and OSMO. As IBC evolves and more protocols are enabled, the variety of assets will spread like a spider web.

Decentralized Application Templates

Agoric has established a template library that any interested developer can use for free. Creating a new dapp only requires writing two simple lines of code, for example:

agoric init --dapp-template dapp-fungible-faucet my-fungible-faucet

There are already various templates available, such as Fungible Faucet Dapp, NFT minting machine, OTC desk capable of exercising call options, Oracle dapp, and so on. These are just examples of many new developers beginning to build in the web3 space.

This lowers the barrier to entry for Agoric development (just using JavaScript is sufficient).

ICO and Release

In recent months, the hype around Agoric has been slow, but with the Cosmos narrative gaining momentum, it is starting to move forward.

Agoric's ICO price was $0.65, locked until November 1, 2022, with a linear release over 12 months; 45 million tokens locked until June 29, 2022, had an ICO price of $0.80, with the same linear release time of 12 months. This auction ended on January 5, 2022, raising $52.25 million.

Token Distribution:

The first phase of the mainnet (RUN launch) will be released in Q1 2022, and the second phase (smart contracts) will be released in Q2.

I would like to end this article with a quote from over 50 years ago that describes a problem that still exists today.

Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how to build on the work of others rather than redo much of it in a trivial way. ------ R. W. Hamming, 1968 from One Man's View of Computer Science