Cosmos Beginner's Guide – Part 2

This is Part 2 of this Cosmos Beginners Guide. In Part 1 we covered four popular questions about Cosmos. In Part 2 we cover another four questions. 

So, without further ado, let’s dig in to Cosmos.

How to Stake ATOM?

With a 20% APR, it’s well worth staking your ATOM. There are a few different ways how you can stake your ATOM. For example:

  • You can stake on a centralized exchange. This is custodial, and you don’t control your tokens.
  • Stake straight from your Cosmos compatible wallets. For instance, Keplr or Leap, allow you to do this. However, when using wallets, the safest way is to use a hardware wallet, like Ledger or SafePal
  • Liquid staking. This is a centralized form of staking. You hand your ATOM tokens over to a company that stakes it on your behalf. However, you receive a liquid token in return. You can trade with this token. Liquid staking happens by means of liquid staking pools.
  • At last, you can also become a validator. More on this later.

So, as you can see, you have a variety of options at your disposal. Choose the option that you are most comfortable with. Each option has some pros and cons, so find the right balance. The video below shows you how you can stake ATOM when using a Ledger hardware wallet

Cosmos Domain Review

Domain name services are a staple on blockchains. A typical crypto wallet address is a long string of numbers and letters. These are difficult to remember. A typical Cosmos address may look like this; bostrom1fc0sx45lgkh0hw5rsyqjssl4jhs7yvjse66f68. 

However, a name service gives you the option to make the address easy to remember. For example, CamilleLemmens.bostrom. In the IBC ecosystem, there are a few name services available. Here are three name services we have a look at.

  1. Cosmos Naming Service

There’s been a lot of talk of name services on Cosmos. Jack Zampolin, the Product Manager at Cosmos/Tendermint, talked about this. He made a technical video of this. However, there’s no service yet by this name. 

2. ICNS

The Interchain Name Service is active. For example, the Keplr wallet installed an ad for this service. You can get the same name for each blockchain that resides on your Keplr. So, the only thing that changes is the last name of the address, the blockchain name. See the bostrom sample above. So, instead of bostrom, it can change to, for example:

  • .juno
  • .cosmos
  • .osm.secret
  • .akash
  • and so on.

Currently, 46757 ICNS names have been claimed. See the picture below.

3. StarGaze Names

The StarGaze Names is another name service for the IBC. For this service, you pay with STARS.

Cosmos

Source: ICNS

How to Bridge ATOM?

Within the IBC, the zones or blockchain can easily communicate. However, with other ecosystem networks, it’s not that easy. For example, Ethereum. The Gravity Bridge Portal changes this. It allows for an exchange of ERC-20 assets between Ethereum and Cosmos. On the other hand, it also allows for Cosmos assets to bridge to Ethereum-based chains.

For example, this allows ATOM and all other Cosmos ecosystem tokens, to trade on Uniswap. Or, for this matter, a variety of other Ethereum based AMMs. This is a decentralized and trustless blockchain. See the picture below for the Gravity Bridge infrastructure.

Cosmos

Source: Gravity Bridge FAQs

How to Be a Validator in Cosmos

The Cosmos Hub is a proof-of-stake chain. In this set up, a validator runs a full node. They also take part in consensus. Validators do this by broadcasting their votes. So, they also add new blocks to the network and in exchange for this, they receive rewards.

Anybody can become a validator in the Cosmos ecosystem. These are the steps to become a validator in Cosmos. You need to set up a ‘create validator’ transaction. This requires the following information by the validator. For instance:

  • ‘Pubkey‘ – A private key to sign prevotes and precommits.
  • Address  –  An app level address. It identifies a validator in public. The private key allows you to delegate, govern, unbond, or claim rewards.
  • Name or moniker
  • Website
  • Description
  • Initial commission rate
  • Max commission
  • Minimum self-delegation – The least amount of ATOM a validator bonds at all times.

Once you have set up a delegator, delegation can start by ATOM holders. This increases the validators staking pool. Cosmos has 175 validators. To take part in consensus, you need to be in this top 175. The more ATOM you stake, the easier it is to become a Cosmos validator. The picture below shows a list of Cosmos validators.

Cosmos

Source: Keplr Dashboard

Conclusion

This is Part 2 of our Cosmos beginners guide. This is Part 1. In this article, we covered four topics. For example, how to stake ATOM and how to become a validator in Cosmos. We also looked at name services and bridges.

The current ATOM price is $10.93. Its market cap is $3.1 billion, with an infinite max and total supply. Currently, 292.5 million ATOM tokens circulate.

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