Overview of the Potential of the Cosmos Ecosystem Protocol (Part 1): NFT, Liquidity Competition, and Modularity

Written by: Morty, Deep Tide TechFlow

With the release of the Cosmos 2.0 white paper, more market attention has begun to focus on the future empowerment and development of the Cosmos native token ATOM. By introducing inter-chain security (ICS), liquid staking, inter-chain schedulers, and inter-chain distributors, ATOM will also have greater growth potential as the overall Cosmos ecosystem develops.

Therefore, how the Cosmos ecosystem will develop has become a key focus for the market thereafter. In this article, we will share 15 Cosmos ecosystem protocols from the perspective of core competitiveness.

This article is the first part.

Osmosis

Osmosis is a liquidity exchange venue in the Cosmos ecosystem that supports inter-chain communication via the IBC protocol, i.e., a DEX, allowing investors to trade and provide LP liquidity.

When providing liquidity with the native token OSMO, investors can earn OSMO rewards by staking their LP Token GAMM. This enhances yields while maintaining the security of the Osmosis protocol itself.

At the same time, investors can also use the native token OSMO. According to DeFiLlama data, Osmosis ranks third in TVL (Total Value Locked).

The core competitiveness of Osmosis lies in the strong liquidity moat brought about by its first-mover advantage. After the release of the ATOM 2.0 white paper, the Osmosis team ambitiously proposed a new model aimed at obtaining security from ATOM while providing security for the Cosmos Hub through Osmosis.

Celestia

Celestia is a modular public chain built with the Cosmos SDK that focuses on providing data availability (DA). It is characterized by the absence of an execution environment, serving the Rollup layer, and is solely responsible for protocol consensus and security. This is also why Celestia is referred to as a modular public chain.

Celestia's core competitiveness lies in the lightweight and cost-effective security brought about by modularity—this is also what Cosmos aims to achieve. Before Cosmos introduced inter-chain security in the ATOM 2.0 white paper, "cost-effective security" had always been one of Celestia's core advantages over Cosmos.

Just today, Celestia announced the completion of a $55 million financing at a $1 billion valuation. According to Celestia's co-founder, Celestia will launch its mainnet in 2023.

GNO Land

GNO Land is a blockchain founded by Cosmos creator Jae Kwon, aimed at fully utilizing multi-core processors to create a network capable of hosting multi-threaded smart contracts. The benefit of this approach is that the network allows for parallel processing of thousands of contracts by optimizing the consensus process among validators.

GNO Land's core competitiveness lies in its beautiful vision—a blockchain for multi-threaded processing of smart contracts, along with a programming language called "gnoland" specifically launched by Jae Kwon, ultimately achieving parallelism, security, and speed in blockchain.

Stargaze

Stargaze is an NFT-specific chain developed through the Cosmos SDK, primarily serving two functions:

1. NFT Marketplace

2. Creator Economy Platform

Stargaze's core competitiveness lies in filling the gaps in the NFT sector of the Cosmos ecosystem. It is foreseeable that as the Cosmos ecosystem develops and projects in NFTs, gaming, and other areas are established, Stargaze's advantages will become increasingly apparent.

Thorchain

Thorchain is a decentralized cross-chain exchange developed through the Cosmos SDK, characterized by the requirement to pair assets with RUNE when providing liquidity.

Currently, Thorchain supports asset exchanges between eight blockchains: Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Cosmos, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and BCH.

Thorchain's core competitiveness lies in the cross-chain trading services it provides, as well as the financial services that extend from it. At the same time, Thorchain also allows more developers to deploy their protocols on Thorchain to enjoy the multi-chain liquidity it offers.

Kujira

Kujira is a new Layer 1 launched this August, introducing a native stablecoin $USK based on the Cosmos ecosystem, which is minted through over-collateralization of ATOM. Based on Layer 1 and $USK, Kujira has launched applications such as Blue (a cross-chain platform), FIN (a multi-chain order book trading platform), and Orca (a liquidity staking platform).

Kujira's core competitiveness is based on the cross-chain DeFi ecosystem built around its over-collateralized stablecoin $USK. It is worth mentioning that the team has a very clear vision for Kujira's future development path and is continuously driving the protocol's growth.

Berachain

Berachain is a Layer 1 built on the Cosmos SDK that operates through three tokens.

The three tokens of Berachain are BERA, BGT, and HONEY:

• BERA is used as the protocol's gas token,

• BGT is used as the protocol's governance token,

• HONEY is a stablecoin used for protocol transactions and yield settlements.

The operation of these three tokens is as follows: Users stake BERA, ETH, BTC, stablecoins, and other assets to validators—this provides liquidity to the protocol, and all liquidity assets need to be paired with HONEY tokens—users receive BGT rewards, which are non-transferable and non-tradable—BGT holders receive protocol revenue, settled in HONEY.

Berachain's core competitiveness lies in its innovative three-token system and the Bear meme culture derived from the word Bera.