Brief Introduction to Supernova Core: A Comprehensive Revolution in the Cosmos SDK Experience

For a long time, Cosmos SDK has been the preferred solution for developers to create interactive, modular, and fully independent application blockchains. It provides a complete set of development tools covering all components and frameworks needed to build, customize, and launch a blockchain, allowing developers to avoid starting from scratch to rebuild the core infrastructure of the blockchain.

Although Cosmos SDK performs excellently in many areas, it also faces some challenges, particularly with its core consensus engine. The current Cosmos SDK relies on CometBFT, which is based on the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) algorithm, proposed as early as 1990. Since then, significant advancements have been made in consensus mechanisms and cryptographic technologies, while CometBFT has clearly fallen behind the times. Additionally, the deployment of CometBFT faces issues such as scalability limitations, performance bottlenecks, and integration complexities, which undoubtedly hinder many blockchain teams built on Cosmos from achieving their initial goals. Of course, the Cosmos community is also aware of these limitations and is actively developing support for the new consensus engine for the recently announced Cosmos SDK v2.

Meter is proud to introduce Supernova Core:

This is a consensus framework that is perfectly compatible with Cosmos SDK, designed to directly replace CometBFT. Supernova Core provides optimized solutions specifically for high-performance Layer 1 (L1) blockchains and decentralized Layer 2 (L2), with the goal of redefining high performance and decentralization for the upcoming Cosmos SDK chains.

Why We Choose Compatibility with Cosmos SDK

Cosmos has a vibrant ecosystem, and more and more developers are emerging in the community to build innovative projects. With Supernova Core, developers can achieve the best of both worlds—enhancing performance and decentralization while enjoying the benefits of interactivity and modularity. Integrating Supernova Core into Cosmos SDK can help developers transition smoothly, leveraging our high-performance consensus engine without giving up their existing development tools and modules. This approach significantly reduces the learning curve and accelerates the overall project development cycle.

One of our main visions is to promote broader application and collaboration within the blockchain technology community, making the development of high-performance blockchains more accessible.

Practical Test: Four Years of Application on the Meter Network

Supernova Core is not a theoretical solution; it has been validated on the Meter mainnet. Its core code has been running on the Meter mainnet for four years, which has over 300 validators and peak processing capabilities of up to 8 million transactions per day. In certain special cases, such as resource limitations (using restricted instances on AWS cloud servers), when the load peaks and 20% of the validating nodes go down simultaneously, the Meter network still maintains its integrity and high performance. This practical deployment demonstrates the robustness, security, and efficiency of Supernova Core, providing confidence for developers and enterprises to apply our technology.

Current Challenges Faced by Cosmos SDK

Developers using the CometBFT-based Cosmos SDK often encounter the following issues:

1. Scalability and Performance Limitations

The current consensus mechanism, CometBFT (formerly Tendermint), struggles to handle high transaction throughput as the number of validators increases. As the number of validators grows, the communication overhead will increase quadratically, severely limiting the network's scalability and decentralization.

2. Inefficient P2P Network Design

CometBFT uses an unstructured temporary network where validators and ordinary nodes share the same P2P layer. Under heavy network load, especially when there are fewer validators, the communication for block proposal voting in large networks can significantly slow down.

3. Tight Coupling of Transaction Ordering and State Processing

In the Cosmos network, transaction ordering and state processing are tightly coupled within the consensus engine, where the order of transactions directly affects their execution results and system state, thus greatly slowing down the overall speed of the blockchain and creating bottlenecks in performance and flexibility.

4. EVM Compatibility Issues

Projects like Evmos have encountered numerous difficulties when directly integrating the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) into the Cosmos architecture. The existing Cosmos lacks full EVM compatibility, limiting developers who want to leverage Ethereum's vast development tools and community.

5. Outdated Consensus Algorithm

CometBFT relies on the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) algorithm proposed in the 1990s. Since pBFT does not provide solutions for failed/malicious block proposers, CometBFT assumes that the network is well-synchronized and forces the blockchain to operate on precise time steps. This method can lead to temporary network failures and performance issues as the number of validators increases.

6. Validator Scalability Limitations

Communication overhead and signature aggregation issues hinder the scalability of Cosmos blockchains, preventing effective scaling to 150 or more active validators, significantly limiting the network's decentralization and security.

7. Database Performance Bottlenecks

High-performance applications often encounter I/O limitations on chains based on Cosmos SDK. The key/value storage access pattern leads to inefficient caching and slow data retrieval, affecting the transaction processing speed of the entire network.

What Will Supernova Core Bring Us?

1. BLS Signature Aggregation

Unlike the current Cosmos consensus mechanism, where all validators' signatures are included in each block, leading to bloated block data and increased communication overhead, Supernova Core employs Boneh–Lynn–Shacham (BLS) signature aggregation technology, merging an unlimited number of validator signatures into a fixed-length signature, significantly reducing block size and communication overhead, allowing efficient scaling even with more than 150 validators.

This technology also enhances the security of light clients and improves the security and performance of Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) bridges.

2. Optimized P2P Network Design

Supernova Core adopts a layered network architecture. A temporary P2P layer ensures robust block propagation, while validators communicate through a direct redundancy tree network centered around block proposers. This ensures the efficiency and reliability of time-sensitive validator message transmission, reducing network latency and improving overall performance.

3. Advanced Consensus Mechanism

Supernova Core is based on the latest version of the HotStuff consensus protocol, providing:

• Higher Throughput: Compared to traditional pBFT implementations, throughput is increased by 3 times;

• Network Resilience: Designed to handle network failures and partitions, improving fault tolerance;

• Linear Communication Overhead: Communication overhead will scale linearly with the number of validators (instead of quadratic growth);

• Fast Finality: Transactions will achieve quick confirmation based on network conditions.

4. Comprehensive EVM Support

Integrating EVM into Cosmos has always been a significant challenge. Supernova Core allows Ethereum-native clients like Geth to run on Cosmos, enabling developers to utilize Ethereum's mature development tools and ecosystem. It offers:

• Seamless Development Experience: Developers can write and deploy Solidity smart contracts directly on Cosmos chains without major modifications;

• High Performance and Fast Finality: Benefiting from high throughput and quick finality, significantly enhancing the user experience for DApps and DeFi platforms.

5. Decoupling of Transaction Ordering and State Processing

Supernova Core allows for the decoupling of transaction ordering and state processing, enabling virtual machine (VM) execution to be independent of consensus and scale separately. This architecture allows:

• Independent Scaling: By separately scaling consensus and VM execution, optimizing network performance.

• Enhanced Flexibility: Future Layer 2 solutions can use decentralized validators to ensure censorship resistance and fairness while validating zk proofs of VM execution through higher-level (potentially more centralized execution nodes).

• Improved Layer 2 Solutions: Decentralized Layer 2 can achieve performance comparable to or even better than currently centralized solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism, with faster finality and higher security.

Supernova Core Roadmap: Building for the Future

1. Parallel EVM Execution

Traditional EVM processes transactions sequentially, greatly limiting network performance. Supernova Core plans to support parallel EVM execution in the future, which will achieve:

• Increased Throughput: Enhancing EVM performance by utilizing multiple CPU cores;

• Improved User Experience: Faster transaction processing speeds enhance the responsiveness of DApps;

• Maintaining Competitiveness: Competing with projects exploring parallel EVMs to provide superior performance.

2. Database Optimized for EVM

Recognizing that traditional database I/O for EVM may become a bottleneck, Supernova Core is optimizing access patterns for Ethereum-style key/value stores. This database optimization will:

• Enhance I/O Performance: Reduce latency in data retrieval and storage;

• Reduce Database Size: Potentially decrease database space usage by up to one-third;

• Improve Overall Efficiency: Significantly enhance transaction processing speeds.

These features are part of our commitment to continuous improvement and will be integrated into future updates.

Encouraging Industry Adoption

Through the compatibility of Supernova Core with Cosmos SDK, our goal is to lower the barriers to application development. Developers can seamlessly integrate our high-performance consensus engine into their projects without facing a steep learning curve. We invite major developer communities and the crypto industry to explore Supernova Core together and join us in expanding the boundaries of blockchain technology!

Coming Soon

Supernova Core will launch a testnet by the end of the year. The development of high-performance L1 and decentralized L2 will no longer be daunting. With a clearer and more efficient engine, we will help your blockchain projects reach new heights.

Join us in revolutionizing the blockchain space. Let’s build the future together with Meter's Supernova Core!

Summary

By addressing core challenges—including scalability limitations, network inefficiencies, and development complexities—Supernova Core is poised to become the preferred solution for building scalable, efficient, and high-performance blockchains. Our compatibility with Cosmos SDK will ensure that developers can easily integrate Supernova Core into their projects, benefiting from our proven technology and the robust Cosmos ecosystem.

Whether you are developing a new L1 or improving L2 solutions, Supernova Core will provide significant support for your success, and we look forward to seeing the new projects you build with Supernova Core!

About Meter.io

Meter is a high-performance infrastructure that allows smart contracts to interact across different blockchains. The Meter mainnet uses the HotStuff consensus and is secured by 327 validator nodes from the community (scalable to thousands of nodes). Meter is also one of the most decentralized and high-performance Ethereum sidechains.

Meter Official Website and Community

• Official Website: https://www.meter.io
• Telegram: https://t.me/Meter_IO
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Meter_IO