The Funding Program 2024 for crypto developments within the Cosmos ecosystem has been launched.
The announcement was made by Interchain Foundation (ICF), the Swiss-based foundation that is the main developer of the cross-chain communication protocol Cosmos.
Summary
Cosmos and its crypto growth project
Cosmos is an independent crypto project that has been in existence since 2014.
Its goal is to solve some difficult problems of the blockchain industry by offering a connected blockchain ecosystem.
It also aims to make blockchain technology less complex and difficult for developers through its modular framework for decentralized apps. Last but not least, an interblockchain communication protocol simplifies communication between blockchain networks, preventing fragmentation in the industry.
In 2016 the whitepaper was published, and the ATOM tokens were launched on the market in 2019.
Cosmos should not be confused with Cronos (CRO), which is the blockchain of Crypto.com.
ATOM: the crypto of the Cosmos ecosystem
Initially, they were tokens on Ethereum, but today they are also on BSC and on the Cosmos blockchain.
Until the beginning of 2021, it had not attracted much interest, but as soon as the latest major speculative bubble began to involve altcoins as well, markets started to take an interest in ATOM.
The peak was reached in September of the same year, when it rose above $44, but it continued until the beginning of 2022.
Since then, it has lost 74%, with a recent bear-market low reached in June 2022 just above the $6 mark.
The 2023 of ATOM has been a bit controversial.
In fact, after opening at $9, the price skyrocketed to $15 at the beginning of February, only to slowly descend back to $6 in October. It practically made a double bottom during the bear market, one in June 2022 and one in October 2023.
It has only recently recovered, thanks to the recent small bull run in the crypto markets. However, the current price of $11 is still significantly lower than the February 2023 yearly highs.
The Funding Program
The Funding Program 2024 announced by Interchain Foundation provides for the allocation of $26.4 million for the maintenance of the Cosmos ecosystem, and in particular for the development of the Interchain Stack.
This development is based on a roadmap that for the first time appears to be unified. In this way, the various teams working on the project will work within a balanced and comprehensive perspective.
19.2 million dollars will be allocated to core funding, and to these will be added 3.5 million dollars for the engineering of the Cosmos Hub, 1 million for the Interchain Builders Program, and other funding for the Interchain Developer Academy.
The rest of the budget will be kept as a strategic reserve for any adjustments that may need to be made during 2024.
Out of the funds allocated to core functionalities, a whopping 3 million dollars will go to CometBFT, the beating heart of the Cosmos ecosystem, namely the PoS consensus layer.
The objectives are to improve modularity, improve efficiency, and improve stress tests.
Four and a half million instead will go to Binary Builders and Zondax, for their work on the Cosmos SDK framework.
The majority, namely 7.5 million dollars, will go to Informal Systems, Interchain GmbH, and Strangelove Ventures for the development of the main blockchain interoperability protocol, Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).
The future of the project
The Cosmos 2024 roadmap is a lengthy document of 49 pages that describes dozens of different developments that are theoretically supposed to be completed within the course of 2024.
It is defined as “a milestone for Interchain” because it is the first time that the Cosmos project makes a formal community effort to shape a cohesive product-oriented vision.
So in theory, 2024 could be a turning point for this project, in the event that actions actually follow words.
There is a common vision, there is a roadmap, there are developers, and there are funds. Although all of this is not necessarily enough to guarantee success, at least it creates the conditions for it.
Since the project has been around for almost a decade, even though it has only been operational since 2019, it is necessary for it to speed up development in order to keep up with the competition.
Decentralization
While decentralization is undoubtedly the main revolutionary aspect of crypto projects, on the other hand, it is also a hindrance to their development.
In fact, decentralized projects do not have a fixed, clear, hierarchical, and centralized organization that can impose a development line and push for it to be carried out as quickly as possible.
A perfect example of this is Bitcoin, whose basic protocol hardly evolves except through higher-level private initiatives.
The strength of Bitcoin lies precisely in its solidity and invulnerability to any type of attack, not only computer-related, but for other crypto projects this can be an obstacle.
Some of the crypto projects that are evolving more quickly have chosen, for example, to partially sacrifice decentralization in favor of development speed, but in doing so they end up being much less revolutionary than the others.
The path chosen by Cosmos seems slightly different, because on one hand it seems like they want to maintain decentralization, while on the other hand they are centralizing development thanks to funding from a single large fund.
