A week ago, a lot of documents known as the FinCEN documents were delivered, enumerating how the absolute greatest banks on the globe move trillions of dollars in dubious exchanges for suspected psychological militants, kleptocrats, and drug top dogs. Also, the U.S. government has neglected to stop it.
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The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ("FinCEN"), an agency inside the Treasury Department, accused of battling tax evasion, psychological militant financing, and other monetary violations. An assortment of "dubious movement reports" offers a window into budgetary debasement, and how governments can't or reluctant to stop it. Benefits from destructive medication wars, fortunes stole from creating nations, and hard-earned investment funds taken in Ponzi plans, all course through money related establishments, in spite of admonitions from bank workers.
These reports are available to US law enforcement agencies and other nations’ financial intelligence operations. Although FinCEN is aware of the money laundering activities, it lacks the authority to stop it.
Money laundering is more than a financial crime. It is a tool that makes all other crimes possible - from drug trafficking to political crimes. And banks make it all possible. In a detailed expose, BuzzFeedNews named several of the most trusted banks. Current investigations show that even after fines and prosecutions, well-known JPMorgan Chase JPM (+0.9%), HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon BK (+0.8%) are all involved in moving funds for suspected criminals.
The current money related framework generally protects the banks and its heads from the indictment, inasmuch as the bank documents a notification with FinCEN that it might be encouraging crime. The dubious movement alert adequately gives the banks a free pass. Thus, unlawful finances keep on moving through banks into different businesses from oil to amusement to land, further isolating the rich from poor people, while the banks we have developed to trust, make everything conceivable.
As indicated by the United Nations, the assessed measure of cash laundered universally in one year is 2 to 5% of the worldwide GDP, or $800 billion to $2 trillion, with more than thank 90% of illegal tax avoidance going undetected today.
Simultaneously, the cryptocurrency industry has likewise been condemned for being an apparatus for tax evasion, in spite of insights expressing something else. It is assessed that solitary 1.1% of all digital currency exchanges are illegal. During its initial days, Bitcoin was generally connected with the Silk Road, an online dim net commercial center, where clients could buy weapons and unlawful medications namelessly.
Be that as it may, with the developing utilization of the Bitcoin organization, 42 million Bitcoin wallets, and checking, it is getting progressively conceivable to follow exchanges on open blockchains, while private financial exchanges stay covered up on display.
This week, I had a chance to plunk down with Chanpeng Zhao "CZ", the Founder and CEO of Binance, the biggest cryptographic money trade by volume on the planet, to get his interpretation of illegal tax avoidance both in the customary and the computerized fund universes.
Coming up next are a couple of features from our meeting:
Much obliged to you for going along with us today, CZ. As you would see it, for what reason is illegal tax avoidance especially destructive to our economy?
CZ: As monetary administration suppliers, it is our obligation to battle unlawful action. Everybody shares this duty. Yet, regularly once the principles are set up, individuals will attempt to get around the guidelines. What's more, there are individuals who simply need more business, and knowing or unconsciously will encourage these exchanges. We live in an intricate world, where one nation may see a go about as criminal and the other may not. Many individuals have a high contrast see, yet the world is really dim. Not all banks are honest and not all crypto organizations are terrible.
The digital currency industry has experienced harsh criticism for encouraging unlawful exchanges. How would you think conventional money and digital currency businesses analyze in such manner?
CZ: If you are utilizing Bitcoin, it is a straightforward record. When you have a couple of exchanges, you can follow the assets right back to where the coins were mined. So along these lines, blockchain really gives a straightforward record to everybody to dissect. In the event that you piece together a couple of information focuses and do a group examination, it isn't that difficult for a calculation to break down the beginning. Security coins are more earnestly to follow, yet their market top isn't unreasonably high, making bigger exchanges more troublesome. So to be completely forthright, it is a lot simpler to make illegal exchanges utilizing fiat than utilizing crypto.
How might you analyze the volume of illegal exchanges in crypto versus fiat?
CZ: It's likely a thousand times less. Essentially, for any important measure of cash you need to move in the crypto, it is exceptionally difficult to move it namelessly. There are outsider checking devices and information bases that can coordinate a considerable lot of the addresses to known people. The digital currency market top is little to the point, that in the event that you are moving a $100 million dollars, you can't do as such without experiencing an incorporated trade, making it considerably simpler to follow.
The cryptographic money space overall was begun by Satoshi Nakomoto as to some degree a campaign against the defilement of banks. Remarkably, the beginning square of Bitcoin contained a commentary tending to the bailouts of banks in 2008 and 2009 ["The Times 3 January 2009 - Chancellor on edge of second bailout for banks."] Is that ethos still alive in the digital currency space today, the drive to bring down the enormous person?
CZ: I have even more a fair view here. Some in the crypto space are against banks, fiat, and so forth., while others think digital forms of money are utilized by drug masters. Those are two extraordinary perspectives. My view is that digital money offers opportunities - a further extent of opportunity in exchanges, ventures, property, reserve funds, and so on. We are simply offering another choice for clients who esteem that opportunity and control. I'm not against any bank or any single individual. I think crypto offers a higher opportunity of cash, and thusly we need to give more individuals admittance to crypto… If I don't care for the banks, I simply don't utilize them.
Where do you feel the equalization lies between the legislature securing its residents as opposed to encouraging advancement?
CZ: I accept governments ought to be public administrations. They ought to give streets and fire departments...Whenever there is government intercession, it is awful for the economy. At whatever point an administration encourages one gathering, it naturally harms another. The administration influences the parity of the economy giving assistance to a gathering that isn't sufficiently serious to remain alive. So at whatever point an administration rescues huge banks, or any business so far as that is concerned, they just appear as though they are making a difference. I have confidence in a free economy, and I buy into that way of thinking unequivocally.
Much obliged to you for your understanding, CZ.
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Written by TokenInsight
Published by tokenin.cn

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Advantages

1. The team’s overall technical background is good, and the CTO and CEO of the project have rich experience in related industries;
   
2. The current business scope of CoinEx has been expanded, and the development of the public chain has a decisive role in promoting the development of the exchange business;
   
3. The project operation information is transparent, and the development process is consistent with the road map;
   
4. The unlocking schedule is clear, and the token held by the team will be unlocked continuously in the next five years;
   
5. The project uses POS consensus mechanism. At present, it has been launched on the main network, and the block time is stable, between 2–3 seconds.
   

Challenges

1. It is not clear enough yet whether the trichain operation planning can achieve the project’s development goals;
   
2. There is limited information on implementation details about cross-chain and other related technologies, and the development status needs to be assessed based on the later project development disclosure information;
   
3. The team currently hold a large share of the token, hence the distribution of tokens is relatively concentrated;
   
4. There are few application scenarios for project tokens, and more ecosystem scenarios need to be developed;
   
5. As a deflationary token, CET needs to be balanced by dealing with the contradiction between public chain users and token holders.
   

Outlook

The development of CoinEx Chain contributes to the future development of CoinEx’s centralized and decentralized exchanges; the concept of trichain operation simplifies the functions of each chain, improving their performance. At present, there are few exchanges working on the public chain, and no fierce competition has occurred.

Conclusion

Considering the status and development prospects of the project, TokenInsight gives CoinEx a rating of BB with a stable outlook.

1. Multidimensional evaluation

2. Project analysis

CoinEx (CoinEx Technology Limited) was established in December 2017 and is headquartered in Hong Kong, China. It is a sub-brand of the ViaBTC mining pool. At present, CoinEx’s business scope includes CoinEx exchange, CoinEx public chain, and CoinEx decentralized exchange. The current development focus of the CoinEx platform are public chain and exchange. The main purpose of the public chain is to build a decentralized exchange (DEX) infrastructure and an ecosystem around DEX.
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CoinEx business structure，Source: CoinEx; TokenInsight

2.1 Introduction

“ CoinEx Chain uses the parallel operation of three chains which are DEX, Smart, and Privacy, as well as cross-chain technologies to create a rich decentralized exchange ecosystem and blockchain financial infrastructure.
The core of CoinEx’s early business was the exchange, consisted of two major categories which were spot and derivatives trading. Currently, there are 123 trading currencies online, covering 302 trading pairs. On June 28, 2019, CoinEx released the CoinEx Chain public chain white paper, aiming to build a decentralized trading system (CoinEx DEX) with community-based operations and transparent transaction rules, and providing user-controlled asset trading scenario by the highest technical standards in the industry; CoinEx Chain has become another development focus of CoinEx. CoinEx Token (CET), which was originally a native token of the CoinEx exchange, will also be developed mainly as a built-in token of the public chain.
CoinEx Chain is a public chain based on the Tendermint consensus protocol and Cosmos SDK, and it uses POS mechanism. CoinEx Chain plans to support 42 nodes when the project starts, and any entity in the ecosystem can participate in the validator’s campaign by staking CET. CoinEx Chain will use the new block reward and the transaction fee contained in the block as the reward for running the node.
CoinEx Chain has developed three public chains with different positioning and different functions in order to meet the needs of blockchain transactions for transaction performance, smart contracts, and privacy protection at the same time. They operate in parallel and collaborate with each other through cross-chain technology. At present, the block time of the public chain is between 2–3 seconds. According to the observation of TokenInsight, the block time is stable, but the number of transactions through the CoinEx public chain is still low at present, the number of transactions in 24 hours is about 30,000; The TPS on public chain disclosed by CoinEx can reach up to 1500 per second.
CoinEx Chain uses a trichain parallel model to build a more vibrant ecosystem around DEX. The three chains are DEX public chain, Smart public chain, and Privacy public chain, respectively responsible for decentralized transactions, smart contracts, and on-chain privacy protection.
CETs that need to participate in complex financial contracts can be transferred to the Smart public chain through the DEX public chain, then moved back to the DEX public chain after that. CET tokens that need to participate in token confusion can also be carried out through the privacy transaction of the Privacy public chain, and can eventually be returned to the DEX public chain. The three public chains are responsible for their respective duties, and they are interconnected through the cross-chain technology through the relay mechanism. In addition to ensuring their respective transaction processing speed and functional attributes, they can also jointly provide richer and safer functions, and synergistically constitute the CoinEx decentralized public chain ecosystem.
In addition, CoinEx Chain also supports any participant to issue new tokens on the chain and create new trading pairs for the issued tokens. CoinEx Chain guarantees the circulation of new tokens by establishing a trading pair between the new token and CET.

2.2 Component architecture

“ Tendermint Core and Cosmos SDK have improved the performance and operation capability of the blockchain. The SDK packaging reduces the consideration of non-related logic, hence reducing the development complexity.
CoinEx Chain is based on Tendermint Core and Cosmos SDK, both of which have brought a big boost to the development of CoinEx public chain performance. Cosmos-SDK will implement the application logic of the blockchain. Together with the Tendermint consensus engine, it implements the three-layer architecture of the CoinEx public chain: the application layer, the consensus layer, and the network layer.
Tendermint
Tendermint is based on the state machine replication technology and is suitable for blockchain ledger storage. It is a list of transactions making consensus with Byzantine fault tolerance, the transactions are executed in the same order, and eventually the same state is obtained. Tendermint can be used to build various distributed applications.
Cosmos SDK
Cosmos-SDK is a blockchain framework that supports the construction of multiple assets with a consensus mechanism of POS (Proof of Stake) or POA (Proof of Authority). The goal of the Cosmos SDK is to allow developers to easily build custom blockchains from 0, while enabling the interaction with other blockchains.
Cosmos-SDK is a blockchain framework that supports the construction of multiple assets with a consensus mechanism of POS (Proof of Stake) or POA (Proof of Authority). The goal of the Cosmos SDK is to allow developers to easily build custom blockchains from 0, while enabling the interaction with other blockchains. The blockchain development framework Cosmos SDK implements general functions such as account management, community governance, and staking in a modular form. Therefore, using the Cosmos SDK to build a public chain can simplify development procedures and facilitate operation. Tendermint is a fixed protocol in a partially synchronized environment, which can achieve throughput within a delay range of the network and each process itself. The CoinEx public chain is developed based on both, improving the performance and operability of the blockchain. The SDK packaging further reduces considerations of non-related logic and reduces the complexity of developers creating. The two components of Tendermint and Cosmos SDK are connected and interacted through the Application Blockchain Interface.
Cosmos SDK and Tendermint interworking structure，Source:CoinEx; TokenInsight

2.3 Project public chain planning

The development plan of the CoinEx public chain is to create a series of public chains with specific application directions, including:

1. DEX public chain: solve the problems of lack of security and opacity that are widely criticized by centralized exchanges at present; aim to build a transparent, safe, and permission-free financial platform; restore the experience of central exchanges to the greatest extent；
   
2. Smart public chain: a public chain that specifically supports smart contracts and provides a platform for building complex financial applications;
   
3. Privacy public chain: mainly provides transaction amount, account balance, and information protection and the hiding of both parties to the transaction.
   

In order to achieve the performance of each specific application public chain, each public chain in the CoinEx public chain focuses on the development of a certain function. For example, in order to improve the transaction processing speed of the DEX public chain, the DEX public chain only supports the necessary functions and does not support smart contracts. To achieve the smart contract function support, cross-chain connection between the DEX public chain and the Smart public chain is required.

2.4 Operation analysis

“ The CoinEx platform publishes monthly ecosystem reports with high transparency; but the monthly reports are limited to contents about transactions and development, and lack progress in ecosystem and community construction, making them relatively simple.
2.4.1 Disclosure of ecosystem information
Operational risks have a direct impact on platform users. Whether platform operations are smooth and whether there is transparency are issues that platform users care about.
The CoinEx platform was established in 2017 and has around 3 years of development. It is also one of the platforms that has been developing for a long time in the exchange industry. It has obtained a digital currency trading license issued by the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), and the platform’s compliance is guaranteed to some degree.
The actual operation of the CoinEx platform will be displayed in the form of ecosystem monthly reports. The monthly report contains various types of content such as online currencies, new activities, plans for the next month, and ecosystem dynamics. It involves multiple business dimensions including the CoinEx exchange, CoinEx Public Chain, and CET token.
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Snippet of a CoinEx ecosystem monthly report，Source: CoinEx; TokenInsight
2.4.2 Roadmap
CoinEx Chain released its development roadmap for the four quarters of 2020 in January 2020. The roadmap shows that CoinEx Chain will undergo major updates on smart contracts and DEX hard fork upgrades. The project roadmap is basically planned on a monthly basis, with a clear plan and a clear direction of development.
CoinEx Public Chain 2020 Development Roadmap，Source: CoinEx; TokenInsight
In addition to the development route planned in the roadmap, CoinEx public chain also discloses its goals for next month in its monthly ecological report. The project’s main net was launched online in November 2019. According to TokenInsight’s review of the development of CoinEx public chain from January to April and the disclosure of the project’s ecosystem monthly report, the project’s plan about development of the smart contract Demo in February failed to be completed as planned; the project completed launching of the new version of the blockchain browser and the Asian Atlantis upgrade; the smart contract virtual machine development was planned to be completed in April, but the progress related to supporting cross-chain agreements was not disclosed yet.
Overall, the project’s development route planning is clear, and the project’s development schedule is consistent with the plan, but there are still some discrepancies. Operation and development information is disclosed every month, and information transparency is high.

3. Industry & Competitors

The earliest origin of the exchange layout in the public chain field began in early 2018 when Binance released an announcement to start the development of the Binance Public Chain officially. In June of the same year, Huobi announced at its brand upgrade conference that it will combine the technical capabilities of the Huobi technical team and the community developers to develop the Huobi public chain called “Huobi Chain”. In December of the same year, OK Group announced the launch of its self-developed public chain OKchain, dedicating to provide underlying technical support and services for startups stationed in B-Labs.
The successful launch of the public chain brings huge strategic significance to the exchange, which can not only improve the performance of the existing business of the exchange but also achieve further expansion of its influence. As one of the most important blockchain infrastructures, the public chain can benefit the exchanges behind it.
As a platform for developing public chain technology exchanges, CoinEx’s main competitors in the field of public chain development include Binance, Huobi, and OKEx. Although they are all exchange platforms for deploying public chains, the above four are different in terms of specific functions, economic models, and critical points of the public chain.

3.1 Development progress comparison

In 2019, Binance became the first exchange to launch a public chain among all digital asset exchanges, and its main product is Binance exchange (DEX). In April 2020, Binance announced the launch of a second smart contract chain, using Ethereum’s virtual machine, so that developers can build decentralized applications without affecting the performance and functionality of their original chain.
OKEx launched OKChain’s testnet in February 2020 and completed open source two months later. OKChain is designed as the basis of large-scale blockchain-driven business applications, with the characteristics of source code decentralization, point-to-point, irreversibility, and efficient autonomy.
Huobi released Huobi Chain for the first time in July 2019, the code is open source, and the testnet was released in February 2020. As a “regulator-friendly financial blockchain”, Huobi Chain focuses on providing compliance services for companies and financial institutions.
The CoinEx public chain officially completed the main online launch in November 2019 and completed the new block browser’s launch in March 2020. On April 3, 2020, CoinEx DEX uploaded the underlying code to Github to achieve open source. The CoinEx public chain is more inclined to build a full DEX ecosystem to achieve a one-stop solution for issuing, listing, storing, and trading. The long-term goal is to create a blockchain financial infrastructure.

3.2 Comparison of economic models

At present, the exchange is more inclined to use its existing platform currency as the native token of the public chain in the construction of public chain ecology. CoinEx’s CET, Binance’s BNB, and Huobi’s HT all fall into this category. OKEx is the only exchange that issues new tokens for its OKChain, which means OKT is the only ‘inflation token’ in the exchange’s public chain, while CET, HT, and BNB are all deflationary.

3.3 Decentralization of public chain

The initial number of CoinEx public chain verification nodes is 42, which is currently the most decentralized among all exchange public chains, and able to take both efficiency and decentralization into account; OKChain also currently has a relatively high degree of decentralization in the exchange public chain (21 verification nodes), its nodes have a high degree of autonomy; by contrast, Binance still firmly controls the operation of nodes and transactions; In terms of encourages cooperation between regulators and the private financial aspects, Huobi provides a lesser degree of decentralization. Huobi Chain uses a variant of the DPoS consensus algorithm to provide functions such as “supervision nodes”, allowing regulators to become validators.
Comparison of some dimensions of CoinEx, Huobi, Binance and OKEx public chain，Source: TokenInsight

4. Token Economy

CoinEx Token (CET) is a native token of the CoinEx ecosystem. It was issued in January 2018. Token holders can enjoy some user value-added services within the ecosystem. Currently, it is mainly used as a native token on the CoinEx Chain. As of 11 am on April 23, 2020, the current circulation of CET tokens in the market is 3,215,354,906.31, with a total of 5,842,177,609.53. CET tokens will not be further issued or inflated. Currently, daily repurchase and quarterly destruction are carried out. The repurchase destruction dynamics can now be tracked real-time on the CET repurchase system on the platform.

4.1 Token Distribution

The CET token used to be based on the ERC-20 token developed by Ethereum. Since the CoinEx Chain mainnet was launched in November 2019, some ERC-20 CET tokens have been mapped to the mainnet CET, and the rest of the CET will be mapped before November 10, 2020. CET holders need to deposit ERC-20 CET to the COinEX exchange, and the exchange will conduct the main network mapping.
At present, CET is mainly circulated in the form of mainnet tokens, and only a small portion of ERC-20 CET has not been mapped. The distribution of token holdings currently circulating on the mainnet can be seen in the figure below. At present, the number of tokens held by the top ten holders accounts for about 60.44% of all mainnet CET tokens.
Distribution of CET token holding addresses，Source: Etherscan; TokenInsight
The following figure shows the initial distribution of tokens after the mainnet mapping preset by CoinEx. From the initial distribution map of CET, it shows that, after mapping, a large portion of CET remains concentrated in the hands of the team (31%), and the actual number of CET circulating in the market only accounts for 49% of the total.
The initial distribution of CET token，Source: CoinEx; TokenInsight
After the main net mapping, the 31% of the total CET (1.8 billion) held by the team will be gradually unlocked in the five years from 2020 to 2024, and 360 million CET will be unlocked each year. By 2024, the CET held by the team will be completely unlocked. From the current CET dynamics, the CET share held by some teams has been used for destruction purposes to achieve the purpose of CET austerity. If the frozen 1.8 billion CET held by the team are used for similar purposes, the development of CET and its platform can benefit from it.
Team’s CET unlocking plan，Source: CoinEx; TokenInsight

4.2 Token economic model

4.2.1 Deflation mechanism
Since the CET token went online in January 2018, CoinEx has increased the circulation of CET through airdrops, transaction fee refunds, operation promotion, and team unlocking. As one of the existing platform coins with long development time, the deflation mechanism of CET token has undergone a series of changes with the development of the industry. In 2018, when the concept of coin-based mining prevailed, CET used transaction mining, stake mining, and pending order mining, which were cancelled in October, December and, April respectively of the following year.
The repurchase and destruction model currently used by CET was updated by CoinEx on April 11, 2020. The original CET quarterly repurchase and destruction policy of the platform will be adjusted to daily repurchase and quarterly destruction. After the implementation of the daily repurchase policy, CoinEx will take out 50% of the daily fee income for CET repurchase in the secondary market and implement quarterly destruction until the total remaining circulation is 3 billion (currently about 5.8 billion).
At the same time that CoinEx updated the repurchase and destruction plan on April 11, the platform also launched a page dedicated to displaying CET repurchase information, so that users can clearly understand the progress of CET repurchase and destruction.
As of April 23, 2020, the platform has destroyed 4,157,822,390.46 CET tokens, accounting for 41.6% of the initial total issuance. At the end of January 2019, it had destroyed 4 billion CETs (single destruction volume peak) at the end of this quarter. The number of CETs to be destroyed is 3,422,983.56.
CET historical destruction data，Source: CoinEx; TokenInsight
4.2.2 Application scenarios
The current usage scenarios of CET are discounted platform transaction fees, VIP services, special activities rights and interests, CoinEx Chain internal circulation fuel, and use of external scenarios.
Deduction and discount of platform transaction fees
CoinEx platform users can use CET to deduct transaction fees when conducting transactions within the platform. At the same time, using CET to pay transaction fees can enjoy the exclusive preferential rates provided by the platform.
CET fee discount amount，Source：CoinEx; TokenInsight
VIP service
Holding a certain number of CETs can make a user become a platform VIP user. Users can also use CET to purchase platform VIPs to obtain corresponding privileges such as discounted rates, accelerated withdrawals, and exclusive customers.
Special activity rights
CET holders can enjoy special rights and interests in platform marketing activities, such as participating in the airdrop of tokens on the platform or accelerating opportunities for high-quality projects.
CoinEx Chain built-in token
CET will serve as a native token of CoinEx Chain, circulate and serve as fuel in CoinEx Chain, and users can also use CET to invest or trade other digital assets. In addition, CET can also serve as transaction fees and function fees (issuing Token, creating new trading pairs, account activation), etc. in the platform, and users can also participate in the campaign of validators by staking CET tokens.
CET is currently used as a circulation token as well for CoinEx DEX to issue tokens, create orders, Bancor, address activation, set address aliases, and other application scenarios.
In general, the types of application scenarios of CET are not plenty enough. In order to better develop the internal ecosystem of the platform, it is necessary to design and develop more CET usage scenarios and incentive mechanisms to increase the retention rate of users while adding new users.
4.2.3 Token incentive
As the native token of the CoinEx public chain, CET will be used as a block incentive to increase community participation after the mainnet of the public chain launched. The 315 million CET held by the foundation in the total CET issuance will be used to incentivize initial verification nodes and Staking participants.
CET annual incentive information，Source：CoinEx; TokenInsight

5. Team & Partners

5.1 Core team members

Among the core team members of CoinEx, the technical members account for a relatively large proportion. The technical team’s overall ability is good and the team members have different technical experience backgrounds including cryptography, underlying protocols, marketing, and operations. The team has rich blockchain industry experience, especially the chief developer, who has about 13 years of development industry experience.
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https://preview.redd.it/kd0z9q0ese551.png?width=785&format=png&auto=webp&s=7beff33e522165202f6a0b75dba70f32630d8656
https://preview.redd.it/s2klsatese551.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=57f03219007d853d754883e2e07cd5eb2c8ed17d
https://preview.redd.it/kuyspmkfse551.png?width=978&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd9c808107d245047f7c74ef34fcf6a02965152c

5.2 Investment institutions and partners

CoinEx’s investment is led by Bitmain and its main partners include Matrixport, Bitcoin.com, CoinBull, Consensus Lab, BTC.com, BTC.top, Hoo Exchange, Wa Yi, ChainFor.com, etc.
Investment institutions and major partners have rich experience in the industry, which can promote the development of projects to a certain extent. However, the current industry involved by the partners is not wide enough, and it will have a limited role in promoting the future of CoinEx’s enriching business lines and increasing ecosystem functions.
https://preview.redd.it/zjgzvv6ise551.png?width=533&format=png&auto=webp&s=a3f7fe3abb2c2d522e289213ae6fbc4e899825e0

6. Community Analysis

According to TokenInsight’s research of the CoinEx platform community, as of April 23, 2020, its official Twitter has 19,800 followers and 932 tweets; the official Telegram has 45 official groups, 3 in Chinese and English, and the other is Korean, Arabic, Vietnamese, Indian and other small language groups, with a total number of 56088 people; the current number of followers on Facebook accounts is 3,107. The overall community followers still have a lot of room for improvement, and community activeness needs to be improved.
Number of followers on the CoinEx social platform，Source:TokenInsight
At present, the project’s search popularity and official website visits are both top-notch, and monthly visits have slowly returned to their previous visit levels after experiencing a significant decline in December 2019.
CoinEx visit popularity，Source: TokenInsight, Similarweb, Google
At present, the visitors of the CoinEx website are distributed in multiple countries, and there are no visits concentration from a single country or region. Therefore, CoinEx’s comprehensive global influence is widely distributed and has a reasonable degree of internationalization.
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CoinEx official website’s top 5 countries by number of visitors，Source: CoinEx, TokenInsight
Original article
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Cryptocurrency technical analysis: bears drive the crypto market movement
The negative sentiment continues to reign in the crypto asset market, as indicated by technical and fundamental analyzes. Thus, the drop in demand for many top altcoins caused by the bitcoin correction has already led to the fact that the bears have reached many targets located in the support area. At the same time, several interesting events took place on the crypto market over the past working week. On July 15, it became known that the Chinese authorities will test the digital yuan on the largest supplier of groceries and food delivery Meituan Dianping. The work of the Chinese CBDC is already being tested by McDonald’s corporations, Starbucks and DiDi, the largest taxi aggregator in the Middle Kingdom. On June 16, Samsung announced the start of a partnership with Stellar, within which the developments of the blockchain project will be integrated into the Samsung Blockchain Keystore and Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Also, one cannot fail to note the large-scale hacking of the social network Twitter. On the night of July 15–16, unknown attackers gained access to 130 accounts of prominent businessmen, politicians and opinion leaders. As a result, fake Elon Musk, Changpen Zhao, Bill Gates and Barack Obama posted messages calling for bitcoins to be sent to them, which allowed them to collect 12.86 BTC.

Bitcoin

On the four-hour chart, bitcoin develops a very clear movement along the levels from the point of view of technical analysis. After retesting the resistance at $9500 and the lower boundary of the “Triangle” pattern, BTC quotes rushed down to the first target at $9150. If in the coming days the price consolidates below the support level, then in the short term we should expect the development of a downtrend. The closest targets for sellers will be $9000 and $8760 (38.2% correction at Fibonacci levels). At the same time, the persistence of negative sentiment in the stock market will be a signal for the digital currency market, which will continue to fall until the beginning of autumn and the recovery of the business cycle.
In the long term, this may lead to a decline to supports at $8330 and $8050. But in order to push the price lower, the bears will need to exert enormous forces. Moreover, from these levels, whales will begin to gain new positions, which will push the bitcoin price up and launch a medium-term growth trend. It will confirm its departure above the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) line and the closing of Japanese candlesticks above $9500. In the long term, this will make it possible to achieve medium-term goals in the form of clusters of $9,900- $10,000 and $10,400- $10,500.
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BTC / USD chart, four-hour timeframe
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So far, the first cryptocurrency also cannot form a global trend, and this has led to the fact that Bitcoin continues to consolidate movement within the $8900 cluster (50% correction at Fibonacci levels) — $9580. BTC quotes have already dropped below the $9,300 level, which could lead to sales up to $8,900. In the future, we should expect Bitcoin to test the targets of $8600 and $8220, where the 200-day moving average (MA) line and the lower border of the technical analysis model “Triangle” (on the chart below, its borders are marked in orange).
For a short time, BTC quotes may even drop to supports at $7400 and $6800, but the forecast for the price rebound back up and the formation of a long-term upward trend seems more likely. This will allow Bitcoin to reach the $10,000 and $10,500 levels, and their subsequent breakout will allow the asset to rush to the $11,000, $11,200- $11,300 and $11,800 levels by the end of the year.
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BTC / USD chart, daily timeframe

Ethereum

The altcoin market is also developing neutral dynamics so far, but more and more signals appear on the charts that speak in favor of the development of a downward movement.
Big capital is not yet ready to acquire digital assets at a price that has grown strongly since March.
Ether price develops along the $233 level (11.4% Fibonacci retracement line) and within the framework of consolidation within the $220- $251 range. The drop in the total demand for digital assets will lead to a decrease in the cost of ether towards the first target in the form of consolidation of $195- $200, where the 200-day MA line is located. The further course of trading will be determined by the appearance or absence of demand for cryptocurrencies. In the long term, by the end of the year, we should expect a move above $251 to the resistance areas of $280, $300 and $320.
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ETH / USD chart, daily timeframe

Litecoin

On the daily chart, Litecoin continues to consolidate above the support boundaries in the form of a $40- $42 cluster, which takes the form of the Andrews Pitchfork technical analysis model. The development of the downward dynamics will lead to the fact that the cost of LTC will drop to $36 and $30.60. But in the medium term, we should expect the quotes to move above the 200-period MA line, which passes in the resistance area of $47.45. Overcoming it in the coming months will allow LTC quotes to soar to the levels of $51.50 (38.2% correctional level along the Fibonacci lines), $56.80, $60.80, $65 and $70.
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LTC / USD chart, daily timeframe

Bitcoin Cash

The Bitcoin fork began to decline after the breakout and a very clear retest of the lower boundary of the technical analysis model “Triangle” (on the chart below, its boundaries are marked in pink). At the same time, the Bitcoin Cash quotes remain within the framework of a broader consolidation in the form of the “Horizontal Channel” $200- $272. However, the priority trading scenario remains a decline in Bitcoin Cash to the $200 level. There is also a high probability of updating the March lows in the $170 and $150 regions.
However, in the months ahead, expect BCH to move above $272, where the 200-day SMA line passes, paving the way to the $305, $356 and $400 levels.
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BCH / USDT chart, daily timeframe

XRP

XRP is also under the influence of bears, leading to a decline towards the resistance level at $0.2050. In the coming weeks, the asset may test the support at $0.18, where the lower border of the Descending Triangle model lies. The development of the downward movement will allow XRP to test the support at $0.16 and $0.1470.
But in the medium term, a signal for a reversal of the downtrend may appear in the event of a break above the 200-day MA line passing at the level of $0.2360. If this happens, then in the second half of 2020 XRP will be able to reach important targets at the levels of $0.2540, $0.27, $0.2860 and $0.30.
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XRP / USD chart, daily timeframe

Binance Coin

Binance Coin tried to break the bottom of the Ascending Triangle, but failed. The current quotes are supported by the 200-day SMA line and the boundaries of the $15.30- $16 area. Maintaining the downward momentum will allow BNB to rush down to the supports at $13.80 and $11.50.
But the most likely scenario looks like a final consolidation above the 200-day MA. This will open the way to the current resistances at $17 and $18.14, as well as the first target in the form of a $19.36- $20 cluster. Testing of the $21.30 and $23.50 levels is also expected in the coming months.
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BNB / USDT chart, daily timeframe
Now more and more crypto assets are showing a willingness to succumb to bearish pressure, which will send quotes into a short decline that will last over the next few weeks. But by the end of the year, we should expect the activity of whales, which will begin to massively buy cryptocurrencies. This will undoubtedly send their value into a long-term upward rally.
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https://preview.redd.it/oly12rv9rqq31.png?width=1500&format=png&auto=webp&s=6667e09b78b0edc6dc3b411e5f96bba36f4a6430

Attorney General Barr Signs Letter To Facebook From US, UK, And Australian Leaders Regarding Use Of End-To-End Encryption The Department of Justice published an open letter on October 3 to Facebook from international law enforcement partners from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia in response to the company’s publicly announced plans to implement end-to-end-encryption across its messaging services. The letter is signed by Attorney General William P. Barr, United Kingdom Home Secretary Priti Patel, Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. Addressed to Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, the letter requests that Facebook not proceed with its end-to-end encryption plan without ensuring there will be no reduction in the safety of Facebook users and others, and without providing law enforcement court-authorized access to the content of communications to protect the public, particularly child users.
Coincheck Launches New Service That Rewards Gas Users With Bitcoin In an attempt to bring crypto to the mass audience, Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck inked a partnership deal with E-net Systems to reward gas users in the Tokyo Gas area, the company announced Oct 4. Under the partnership agreement, the two companies will start offering Coincheck Gas with two crypto-related plans for its customers. The gas service by the crypto company will offer a Bitcoin Rewards Plan under which customers will receive Bitcoin as rewards for the usage of gas. In addition, customers can also pay their gas bills using Bitcoin under the Bitcoin Payment Plan.
Libra Association: 1500 Entities Have Indicated Enthusiastic Interest To Join Libra After PayPal announced to withdraw their support for Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, Libra posted a series of tweets in response to the striking news. Libra Association tweeted: “Building a modern, low-friction, high-security payment network that can empower billions of financially underserved people is a journey, not a destination. This journey to build a generational payment network like the Libra project is not an easy path.” “We recognize that change is hard, and that each organization that started this journey will have to make its own assessment of risks and rewards of being committed to seeing through the change that Libra promises,” they continued. The final tweet read: “We look forward to the first Libra Council meeting in 10 days and will be sharing updates following that, including details of the 1,500 entities that have indicated enthusiastic interest to participate.”
Prysmatic Labs Team Unveils Updates On The Ethereum Serenity Roadmap Prysmatic Labs team has unveiled biweekly updates on the Ethereum Serenity roadmap via Medium. According to the article, the testnet has been restarted for everyone to experience staking and becoming a validator. This testnet includes beacon chain spec v0.8.4, various performance improvements, faster BLS paring library, new syncing strategies and more RPC end point support.
Japan: Using Virtual Currency To Make Donations To Politicians Is Legal Citing Yomiuri Shimbun, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, a cabinet-level ministry in the Government of Japan, indicated that the use of virtual currency to donate to politicians is not illegal. According to Japan’s Political Fund Control Law, it is prohibited to conduct donations to politicians in principle, but virtual currency is not in the category of “money and securities” which are covered by law.

Encrypted project calendar（October 05, 2019）

Ontology (ONT): Ony Ji will attend the blockchain event in Japan on October 5th and explain the practical application based on the ontology network. BNB/Binance Coin: The Binance Coin (BNB) Oasis Game Hackathon will be held on October 5th in Bangalore, India, and will be hosted by Binance Labs, Matic Network, Cocos-BCX, Celer Network, Marlin Protocol.

Encrypted project calendar（October 06, 2019）

SPND/ Spendcoin: Spendcoin (SPND) will be online on October 6th

Encrypted project calendar（October 07, 2019）

GNO/Gnosis: Gnosis (GNO) will discuss the topic “Decentralized Trading Agreement Based on Ethereum” will be held in Osaka, Japan on October 7th. Kyber and Uniswap, Gnosis and Loopring will attend and give speeches.

Encrypted project calendar（October 08, 2019）

BTC/Bitcoin: The 2nd Global Digital Mining Summit will be held in Frankfurt, Germany from October 8th to 10th.

Encrypted project calendar（October 09, 2019）

CENNZ/Centrality: Centrality (CENNZ) will meet in InsurTechNZ Connect — Insurance and Blockchain on October 9th in Auckland.

Encrypted project calendar（October 10, 2019）

INB/Insight Chain: The Insight Chain (INB) INB public blockchain main network will be launched on October 10. VET/Vechain: VeChain (VET) will attend the BLOCKWALKS Blockchain Europe Conference on October 10. CAPP/Cappasity: Cappasity (CAPP) Cappasity will be present at the Osaka Global Innovation Forum in Osaka (October 10–11).

Encrypted project calendar（October 11, 2019）

OKB/OKB: OKB (OKB) OKEx series of talks will be held in Istanbul on October 11th to discuss “the rise of the Turkish blockchain.”

Encrypted project calendar（October 12, 2019）

BTC/Bitcoin: The 2019 Global Mining Leaders Summit will be held in Chengdu, China from October 12th to 14th.

Encrypted project calendar（October 14, 2019）

BCH/Bitcoin Cash: The ChainPoint 19 conference will be held in Armenia from October 14th to 15th.

Encrypted project calendar（October 15, 2019）

RUFF/RUFF Token: Ruff will end the three-month early bird program on October 15th KAT/Kambria: Kambria (KAT) exchanges ERC20 KAT for a 10% bonus on BEP2 KAT-7BB, and the token exchange reward will end on October 15. BTC/Bitcoin: The Blockchain Technology Investment Summit (CIS) will be held in Los Angeles from October 15th to 16th.

Encrypted project calendar（October 16, 2019）

BTC/Bitcoin: The 2019 Blockchain Life Summit will be held in Moscow, Russia from October 16th to 17th. MIOTA/IOTA: IOTA (MIOTA) IOTA will host a community event on the theme of “Technology Problem Solving and Testing IoT Devices” at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on October 16. ETH/Ethereum: Ethereum launches Istanbul (Istanbul) main network upgrade, this main network upgrade involves 6 code upgrades. QTUM/Qtum: Qtum (QTUM) Qtum main network hard fork is scheduled for October 16.

Encrypted project calendar（October 18, 2019）

BTC/Bitcoin: The SEC will give a pass on the VanEck/SolidX ETF on October 18th and make a final decision HB/HeartBout: HeartBout (HB) will officially release the Android version of the HeartBout app on October 18.

Encrypted project calendar（October 19, 2019）

PI/PCHAIN Network: The PCHAIN (PI) backbone (Phase 5, 82 nodes, 164, 023, 802 $ PI, 7 candidates) will begin on October 19. LINK/ChainLink: Diffusion 2019 will be held in Berlin, Germany from October 19th to 20th

Encrypted project calendar（October 21, 2019）

KNC/Kyber Network: The official online hackathon of the Kyber Network (KNC) project will end on October 21st, with more than $42,000 in prize money.

Encrypted project calendar（October 22, 2019）

ZRX/0x: The 0x protocol (ZRX) Pantera blockchain summit will be held on October 22.

Encrypted project calendar（October 23, 2019）

MIOTA/IOTA: IOTA (MIOTA) IOTA will host a community event on October 23rd at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles with the theme “Connecting the I3 Market and Experiencing Purchase and Sales Data.” BTC/Bitcoin: The WBS World Blockchain Summit (Middle East) will be held in Dubai from October 23rd to 24th.

Encrypted project calendar（October 24, 2019）

BCN/Bytecoin: Bytecoin (BCN) released the hidden amount of the Bytecoin block network on October 24.

Encrypted project calendar（October 25, 2019）

ADA/Cardano: Cardano (ADA) The Ada community will host a community gathering in the Dominican Republic for the first time on October 25.

Encrypted project calendar（October 26, 2019）

KAT/Kambria: Kambria (KAT) Kambria will host the 2019 Southern California Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Conference in Los Angeles on October 26th with IDEAS. BTC/Bitcoin: CoinAgenda Global Summit will be held in Las Vegas from October 26th to 28th

Encrypted project calendar（October 28, 2019）

LTC/Litecoin: Litecoin (LTC) 2019 Litecoin Summit will be held from October 28th to October 29th in Las Vegas, USA BTC/Bitcoin: Mt.Gox changes the debt compensation plan submission deadline to October 28 ZEC/Zcash: Zcash (ZEC) will activate the Blossom Agreement on October 28th

Encrypted project calendar（October 29, 2019）

BTC/Bitcoin: The 2nd World Encryption Conference (WCC) will be held in Las Vegas from October 29th to 31st.

Encrypted project calendar（October 30, 2019）

MIOTA/IOTA: IOTA (MIOTA) IOTA will host a community event on October 30th at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on the topic “How to store data on IOTA Tangle.”

https://preview.redd.it/jfxnwvgcrqq31.png?width=473&format=png&auto=webp&s=6adc6ab9f1c8a5f14874041d1e57a6721b8023b3

On the chart, we can see that the price made a break of the lower resistance boundary of the “triangle with a flat bottom” formation in the zone of $9560–9580. At the same time, 157 SMA was broken, which confirmed the dominance of sellers. Now the price is trading around $8100–8250, at the border of the resistance of descending channel. Consolidation of the price indicates the current period of accumulation, interest of buyers and a potential return to the upper boundary of the descending channel to $9100–9200 zone. After the middle of the month, the price may rebound from the support level of the descending channel and return to the area of $​​8900–9300, where there is a strong resistance. Also, the other day, the level of 8200 was traded and once again protected. The common mood is to fall, and we know that often the market goes against the majority. A lot of people are in shorts and this is an excellent point for growth (their stops and liquidation of positions, as was the case recently with longsters)
Review previous articles: https://medium.com/@to.liuwen

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This is part one of three articles where i will discuss what i have learnt whilst looking into Cosmos. I will provide links throughout the article to provide reference to sections as well as a list of sources at the bottom of the article for you to look into specific areas in more detail if required. Hopefully it will be useful for those interested in learning more about the project.
Cosmos is still very early in development process with components such as IBC which connects two blockchains together currently in research / specification stage, as a result can change by the time its released.

What is Cosmos?

Cosmos is a network and a framework for interoperability between blockchains. The zones are powered by Tendermint Core, which provides a high-performance, consistent, secure PBFT-like consensus engine, where strict fork-accountabilityguarantees hold over the behaviour of malicious actors. Cosmos is not a product but an ecosystem built on a set of modular, adaptable and interchangeable tools.
In Tendermint, consensus nodes go through a multi-round voting proposal process first before coming to consensus on the contents of a block. When 2/3 of those nodes decide on a block, then they run it through the state transition logic providing instant finality. In current proof of work consensus for Ethereum, the consensus process is inverted, where miners pick the transactions to include in a block, run state updates, then do “work” to try and mine the block.
Tendermint BFT can handle up to thousands of transactions per second (depending on the number of validators). However, this only takes into account the consensus part, the application layer is the limiting factor though. Ethermint (described below) has achieved up to 200 tps to give you an idea of the speed available per blockchain which is significantly more than current versions of Ethereum and Bitcoin etc.
The Tendermint consensus is used in a wide variety of projects, some of the most notable include Binance Chain, Hyperledger Burrow. It’s important to note though that just using Tendermint consensus doesn’t mean they can connect to other chains with the cosmos ecosystem, they would need to fork their code to implement IBC as a native protocol to allow interoperability through IBC.
see https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devcorn/hackatom/mastetminfo.pdf for high res
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The Tendermint consensus algorithm follows a traditional approach which relies on all validators to communicate with one another to reach consensus. Because of the communication overhead, it does not scale to 1000s of validators like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which can have an unlimited number of validators. Tendermint works when there are 100s of validators. (Cosmos Hub currently has a maximum of 100 validators and the maximum tested so far with Tendermint is 180 validators)

Therefore, one of the downsides of a blockchain built using Tendermint is that, unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, it requires the validators to be known ahead of time and doesn’t allow for miners to come and go as they please.Besides this, it also requires the system to maintain some notion of time, which is known to be a complex problem in theory. Although in practice, Tendermint has proven this can be done reasonably well if you use the timestamp aggregates of each node.
In this regard, one could argue that Tendermint consensus protocol is “less decentralized” than Bitcoin because there are fewer validators, and they must be known ahead of time.

Tendermint’s protocol guarantees safety and liveness, assuming more than 2/3 of the validators’ voting power is not Byzantine (i.e., malicious). In other words, if less than 1/3 of the network voting power is Byzantine, the protocol can guarantee safety and liveness (i.e., validators will never commit conflicting blocks at the same height and the blockchain continues to make progress).https://www.preethikasireddy.com/posts/how-does-cosmos-work-part1

To see the process of how Tendermint works please see this diagram as well as more info here

Sovereignty

Cosmos goal is to provide sovereignty through governance to developers by making it easy to build blockchains via the Cosmos SDK and provide interoperability between them, using Tendermint consensus. This is their main differentiator compared to competition like Polkadot and Ethereum 2.0. Ethereum 2.0 and Polkadot are taking a different approach by only using shared security, where there is a root chain which controls the security / prevents double spending for all connected blockchains.
In Hub governance all stakers vote, the validators vote is superseded if the delegator votes directly
Governance is where all stakers vote on proposals to determine what changes are implemented in the future for their own blockchain, stakers can either choose to delegate their vote to the validator or they can instead vote directly. Without sovereignty all DAPPs share the same underlying environment. If an application requires a new feature in the EVM it has to rely entirely on the governance of the Ethereum Platform to accept it for example. However, there are also tradeoffs to having sovereignty as each zone is going to need a way to incentivise others to validate / create blocks on the Zone by running Full Nodes. Whilst it may be easy to create a blockchain using the cosmos SDK and to mint a token, there are the legal costs / regulation associated with creating your own token. How are you going to distribute the tokens? How are you going to list them on exchanges? How are you going to incentivise others to use the token without being classed as a security? All of which have led to a significant reduction in the number of ICOs being done. With every zone needing their own validator set, there’s going to be a huge number of validators required each trying to persuade them to validate their zone with only a finite number of validators available.
Each Zone / App is essentially a mini DAO and not all are going to be comfortable about having their project progress been taken out of their hands and instead relying on the community to best decide on the future (unless they control 2/3 of the tokens). The Cosmos Hub has proved this can be successful, but others may be risk averse to having their application be a mini DAO. Should someone / competitor acquire 1/3 of the tokens of a zone then they could potentially prevent any further progress being made by rejecting all governance votes (this would be very costly to do on the Cosmos Hub due to its high amount staked, but for all the other less secure zones this potentially may be an issue).
Security for some zones will likely be a lot lower with every developer needing to validate their own blockchain and tokenise them with POS with no easy way to validate the setup of a validator to ensure its secure. Whilst the Cosmos hub is very secure with its current value staked, how secure zone’s will be with significantly less staked remains to be seen. Whilst providing soverignty was Cosmos’s main goal from the start, they are also looking at being able to provide shared security by having validators of a connected Hub also validate /create new blocks on the connected zone’s blockchain for them as well. They are still going to need some way to incentivise the validators to this. Another option is if the developers didn’t want to create a token, nor want sovereignty etc, then they could just build a DAPP on the EVM on a zone such as Ethermint.
As can be seen their are potential advantages and disadvantages to each method, but rather than forcing shared security like Ethereum and Polkadot, Cosmos is giving the developer the choice so will be interesting to see which they prefer to go for.

Layers of a blockchain

From an architecture standpoint, each blockchain can be divided into three conceptual layers:

• Application: Responsible for updating the state given a set of transactions, i.e. processing transactions.
• Networking: Responsible for the propagation of transactions and consensus-related messages.
• Consensus: Enables nodes to agree on the current state of the system.

The state machine is the same as the application layer. It defines the state of the application and the state-transition functions. The other layers are responsible for replicating the state machine on all the nodes that connect to the network.
The Cosmos SDK is a generalized framework that simplifies the process of building secure blockchain applications on top of Tendermint BFT. The goal of the Cosmos SDK is to create an ecosystem of modules that allows developers to easily spin up application-specific blockchains without having to code each bit of functionality of their application from scratch. Anyone can create a module for the Cosmos SDK and using ready built modules in your blockchain is as simple as importing them into your application.
The Tendermint BFT engine is connected to the application by a socket protocol called the Application Blockchain Interface (ABCI). This protocol can be wrapped in any programming language, making it possible for developers to choose a language that fits their needs.
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https://preview.redd.it/5vpheheqmba31.png?width=770&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec3c58fb7fafe10a512dbb131ecef6e841e6721c

Hub and Spoke Topology

Cosmos follows a hub and spoke topology as its not feasible to connect every zone together. If you were to connect every blockchain together the number of connections in the network would grow quadratically with the number of zones. So, if there are 100 zones in the network then that would equal 4950 connections.
Zones are regular heterogenous blockchains and Hubs are blockchains specifically designed to connect Zones together. When a Zone creates an IBC connection with a Hub, it can automatically access (i.e. send to and receive from) every other Zone that is connected to it. As a result, each Zone only needs to establish a limited number of connections with a restricted set of Hubs. Hubs also prevent double spending among Zones. This means that when a Zone receives a token from a Hub, it only needs to trust the origin Zone of this token and each of the Hubs in its path. Hubs do not verify or execute transactions committed on other zones, so it is the responsibility of users to send tokens to zones that they trust.
There will be many Hubs within Cosmos network the first Hub to launch was the Cosmos Hub whose native staking token is called ATOM. ATOM tokens are specific to just the Cosmos Hub which is one hub of many, each with their own token. Transaction fees for the Cosmos Hub will be payable in multiple tokens so not just ATOMs whereas other Hubs such as IRIS has made it so that all transaction fees are paid in IRIS for transactions on its hub.
As mentioned, the Cosmos Hub is one of many hubs in the network and currently has a staking ratio of around 70% with its token ATOM having a market cap of just over $800 million. IRISnet was the second Hub to launch which currently has around 28% bonded with its token IRIS which has a market cap of just under $17 million. The Third Hub about to be launched later this month has its token SENT which has a market cap of around $3.4 million. As you can see the security of these 3 hubs differ wildly and as more and more hubs and then zones are brought online there is going to need to be a lot of tokens / incentivisation for validators.
Ethermint
Standard Cosmos zones / hubs don’t have smart contract functionality and so to enable this, as the Application layer is abstracted from the consensus layer via ABCI API described earlier, it allows Cosmos to port the code over from other blockchains such as Ethereum and use it with the Tendermint Consensus to provide access to the Ethereum Virtual Machine. This is what is called Ethermint.
This allows developers to connect their zones to specialised zones such as Ethermint to build and run smart contracts based on Solidity, whilst benefiting from the faster performance of the tendermint Conensus over the existing POW implementation currently. Whereas a normal Go Ethereum process runs at ~12.5 transactions per second (TPS), Ethermint caps out at 200 TPS. This is a comparison against existing Ethereum speeds, whilst obviously Ethereum are working on their own scaling solutions with Ethereum 2.0 which will likely be ready around the same time. Existing tools / dapps used on ethereum should easily be able to be ported over to Ethermint by the developer if required.
In addition to vertical scaling (with the increase in tps by using Tendermint consensus), it can also have multiple parallel chains running the same application and operated by a common validator set. So if 1 Ethermint zone caps out at 200 TPS then 4 Ethermint zones running in parallel would theoretically cap out at 800 TPS for example.
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https://preview.redd.it/e2pghr9smba31.png?width=554&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6e472a6e4a0f3845b03c36caef8b42d77125e46
There is a huge number of developers / apps currently built on Ethereum, should a developer choose to migrate their DAPP over to Ethermint they would lose native compatibility with those on Ethereum (except through Peg Zone), but would gain compatibility with those running on Ethermint and others in the cosmos ecosystem.
You can find out more about Ethermint here and here

IBC

IBC stands for inter-blockchain communication protocol and is an end-to-end, connection-oriented, stateful protocol for reliable, ordered, authenticated communication between modules on separate distributed ledgers. Ledgers hosting IBC must provide a certain set of functions for consensus transcript verification and cryptographic commitment proof generation, and IBC packet relayers (off-chain processes) are expected to have access to network protocols and physical datalinks as required to read the state of one ledger and submit data to another.
In the IBC architecture, modules are not directly sending messages to each other over networking infrastructure, but rather creating messages to be sent which are then physically relayed via “Relayers”. “Relayers” run off-chain and continuously scan the state of each ledger via a light client connected to each of the 2 chains and can also execute transactions on another ledger when outgoing datagrams have been committed. For correct operation and progress in a connection between two ledgers, IBC requires only that at least one correct and live relayer process exists which can relay between the ledgers. Relays will need to be incentivised to perform this task (the method to which hasn’t been established as of this writing)
The relay process must have access to accounts on both chains with sufficient balance to pay for transaction fees. Relayers may employ application-level methods to recoup these fees, such by including a small payment to themselves in the packet data. More information on Relayers can be found here
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https://preview.redd.it/qr4k6cxtmba31.png?width=1100&format=png&auto=webp&s=d79871767ced4bcb0b2632cc137c118f70c3863a
A high-level overview of the process is that Zone 1 commits an outbound message on its blockchan about sending say 1 x Token A to Hub1 and puts 1 x Token A in escrow. Consensus is reached in Zone 1, and then it’s passed to the IBC module to create a packet which contains the reference to the committed block, source and destination channel/ connection and timeout details and is added to Zone 1’s outbound queue as proof.
All relayers (who run off-chain) are continuously monitoring the state of Zone 1 via the Zone 1 light client. A Relayer such as Relayer 1 is chosen and submits a proof to Hub1 that Zone 1.
Hub 1 then sends a receipt as proof that it has received the message from Zone 1, relayer1 sends it to Zone 1. Zone 1 then removes it from its outbound queue and sends proof via another receipt to Hub1. Hub1 verifies the proof and mints the token.
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https://preview.redd.it/qn7895rumba31.png?width=770&format=png&auto=webp&s=96d9d808b2284f87d45fa0bd7b8bff297c86c2da
This video below explains the process in more detail as well as covers some of the other points i raise later in this article so worth a watch (time stamped from 22:24 to 32:25) and also here from 38:53 to 42:50
https://youtu.be/5h8DXul4lH0?t=1344
Whilst there is an option for UDP style transfer where a zone will send a message to a Hub and it doesn’t care whether it gets there or in any order etc, Token transfers are going to require the TCP style connections in IBC where there is a send, receipt and then another receipt as explained above. Each Send, receipt followed by another receipt is going to take at least 2 blocks and so using Cosmos Hub block times as an example with 6.88 second block times a transfer between one zone and hub could take a minimum of 41.28 seconds. You also then have to factor in the amount of other transactions going through those at that time and relevant gas price to see whether it is able to use 2 consecutive blocks or whether it may take more. This is also explained in this video “ILP Summit 2019 | Cosmos and Interledger | Sunny Aggarwal” (time stamped) from to 12:50 to 15:45
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In Part Two we will look at potential issues with multi hop routing, token transfers across multiple routes and Peg Zones, whilst also looking at other interoperability solutions that would resolve some of these issues and compliment the cosmos ecosystem. Part Two can be found here