Thank you all. My name is Brent Shu and I lead strategy and special projects at Tenderman. And at Tenderment we are building on the Cosmos network. So everything in the Cosmos network is an attempt to create interoperable systems within a decentralized ecosystem. Who loves Ethereum?
I love Ethereum. I love Ethereum. I've spent my entire blockchain career working on Ethereum. So I joined Consensus, the software studio, in 2016. And we analyzed everything possible in the Ethereum space.
From applications like MetaMask, infrastructure like Infura, different business use cases , working with companies like Microsoft, BHP Billiton, and Johnson Johnson, figuring out how to apply this technology and in specific use cases. And it was very interesting because the nuance that people were saying in 2016, 2017 and even today is that this was a kind of technology that was like a hammer looking for a nail. And I think there are many reasons why people think that way. Practical real-world use cases are still somewhat limited. Therefore, in this presentation we hope to explore what we can do to make this technology more usable.
How do we frame a Cosmos or Ethereum blockchain to formulate it into a practical abstraction of the real world that can be used in our daily lives? I was very inspired by ETH Waterlue. I had the opportunity to work with Sunny Agarwal and Billy Ranmp on a really cool project. So, you know, what we did was think a little bit. We believe that many of these ERC20 token accounts already have backdoors and administrator privileges.
That 's a bit centralized. So why not take it in the exact opposite direction and simply say why not trust Google for this use case? So we decided to see what would happen if we connected Ethereum to a Google spreadsheet and used that Google spreadsheet as a sort of minimized trust sidechain and then facilitated transactions through Google Ooth. Basically, we could use email addresses and have a much better user interface . So we call Google Spreadsheets as a sidechain of Ethereum Sheetcoin.
With Sheetcoin, you can basically add Ethereum to a Google Sheet and manipulate that Ethereum and use it in several different contexts within the spreadsheet. So imagine that anything you can do in a spreadsheet, you can somehow do in Ethereum. You have to trust Google, but You have to trust Google, but who doesn't really trust Google these days? So this was a side chain that was completely connected. We used Ooth to manage transactions both within and outside of Google, but everything that happens at Google was very seamless, and this was very helpful.
It was a very smooth user interface . Google Sheets worked. They weren't very slow. I mean , they were very fast and very useful. I think what he did was give an indication of what we would like to see in a fully functional blockchain ecosystem with a working sidechain.
So, when the sidechain is able to operate with the fluidity of a Google spreadsheet, you have the opportunity to see what happens when you have these real-world asset transfers between chains. So why am I talking about this? The IBC blockchain communication protocol is a protocol that will enable the functionality I just described in a blockchain ecosystem. You know you go to these talks and people talk about this new seamless political-economic paradigm and how technology might behave. And yet, right now the user interface and usability of these systems remain somewhat limited.
When we finally have a system that can function as smoothly as that Ethereum-to-Google bridge, then we will have a usable system in which different ecosystems can actually work together and operate usefully. So, what is IBC? IBC is essentially a mechanism for implementing modules within the state machines of different blockchains, allowing them to connect through a relay that carries packets of information across the network. Basically, it's our equivalent of a TCP/ our equivalent of a TCP/ IP protocol, with the ability to demonstrate hash acknowledgments and Merkel proofs between different systems. Basically, these modules are deterministic processes that run on independent state machines, allowing these different blockchains or state machines to communicate with each other.
What we hope to achieve with this IBC protocol is, essentially, to have that fluid communication between systems that fluid communication between systems . So what does IBC do? You know, it manages data transport, the reliability of authentication. It allows arbitrary data transfers between chains and computing, essentially sharing computing power between networks, enabling the interoperability we all seek. Often, interoperability in different blockchain conferences is sometimes interpreted as a general term or sometimes as a kind of utopian concept.
Interoperability will be very useful when you want to transfer assets between different networks. For example, you have an Ethereum blockchain, you have a Cosmos blockchain, you have Near Protocol Cosmos blockchain, you have Near Protocol , you have Algarand. Being able to communicate assets between these different protocols is a useful feature that allows different types of commerce to occur across networks, similar to the commerce we see today between different nations, between different companies, between different organizations. Token transfers are possible. This was facilitated in the application layer above the IBC.
Therefore, any application that can be created on this communication protocol essentially does not have just a state machine divided into networks. It has several state machines that share a common interface that allows these state machines to interact with each other. And, in essence, it's not dealing with just one layer of the protocol stack. It is dealing with different segments of the network topology that can talk to each other and communicate. For example, on the Internet there was a connection through TCP/IP of several unconnected ecosystems, unconnected servers.
We like to apply that framework to the new blockchain ecosystem where we are using IBC only to connect different desperate versions of blockchain protocols so that viable communication and trade between systems can occur. So I'm going to... between systems can occur. So I'm going to... also, on the application side, IBC can handle token transfers, as well as NFTs, non- fungible assets, being able to apply an NFT from one network to another, just data transfers and smart contracts.
So, I'm going to take IBC and apply it to another system we have, which is Peggy, a bidirectional connection between Cosmos and Ethereum. For now, IBC is designed to connect between fast-track systems. For example, systems like Tenderman, consensus, systems based on mechanisms that allow for rapid completion in networks. But right now there isn't necessarily a good communication protocol between fast-targeting systems and probabilistic-targeting systems. Therefore probabilistic-targeting systems.
Therefore , Ethereum's proof of work is currently probabilistic. Similar to the Tenderman consensus, it is a fast-final BFT business fault tolerance-based consensus mechanism. Therefore, the way to connect them right now is through a bidirectional connection or a bidirectional bridge between the networks. Basically, what you have is a situation where you take assets on Ethereum, such as Ether itself or an ERC20 contract or an ERC20 token contract, and lock them in a Peggy smart contract. This block is communicated through a relay service in which the information is processed by an ETHbridge module and relayed to Oracle.
The result is a banking module that ultimately creates new versions of that Ethereum on the Cosmos network, creating this fast-final ether. You know, it's either us or the Ether ERC20 token contract. We 've been working on this bridge for about two and a half years, and in fact, Billy Renam completed this two-way bridge for this hackathon. So we can transfer Ethereum to the Cosmos network and we can also transfer it back, creating this Surface interoperability service. And what Peggy allows is the ability to connect Cosmos and Ethereum and reassign some of the cross-chain functionality between these two networks.
We hope to unite all of this into a cohesive system where we can utilize all aspects of the blockchain, not just the Fast Valley system blockchain, not just the Fast Valley system , but also interact with the proof-of-work system. So I'm going to show an example of a real-world use case, different tools that we've created that can be formulated together and redeployed as a system that uses the Peggy IBC protocol, as well as a DEX, a decentralized exchange, which we launched a few months ago at SF Blockchain Week. So what happens when you take an IBC protocol, add different components of a bidirectional Peggy PEG protocol, and also implement a DEX, a decentralized exchange that can allow trading of different assets within the ecosystem? So let's take a look at this network with IBCs. So, if you included...
or, sorry, let's take a look first at the network without IBCs. So, right now you have an infrastructure where you have a single Cosmos hub and this hub can connect to different applications that use the hub. Therefore, you can have app one, app two, and then add a DEX to it. Without IBC at the moment, you need different versions of Peggy in each application that connects to the Cosmos hub. Therefore, each Peggy has their own set of relays.
They have their own contract, and every time you mention it... Therefore, if application one mints a Peggy token, then application one has its own application one Peggy token that must be added back to the Cosmos network before adding that token to application two. The same applies to DEX application two. The same applies to DEX . As you can see, it's a somewhat disconnected ecosystem.
There is not necessarily an economic purpose across the entire network, and each relay or service occurs outside the chain in different smart contracts. Therefore, it remains somewhat disjointed. But somewhat disjointed. But what happens when you add IBC to this equation? When you can add this ETH parity zone that Peggy implements within the entire Cosmos hub, you no longer depend on an isolated Peggy within each application that exists in your network, but you can share the Peggy zone with every application that is connected within the Cosmos hub.
What you have is a fragmentation of the clearinghouse of each chain's deposit so that each application running within the Cosmos network can use the Peggy tokens that are intended for it. Basically, a way is created for Ethereum and ERC20 tokens to be added to the Cosmos hub and used in a similar way to the Sheetcoin example. Similarly, instead of relying on proof-of- work to validate all transactions on Ethereum, you can have that faster finality interface that creates greater ease of use and better functionality, creating a more cohesive ecosystem. And as mentioned earlier, this is not a single infrastructure under one party. These are several unconnected blockchains that are connected to each other through this communication.
And in this network of cross-chains, you are minimizing the platform's risk because each risk is linked by a single protocol for communication between systems. And when you think about it, this can be applied to various social paradigms. We don't just rely on blockchain for simple asset transfers; you can take a blockchain asset like Ethereum and implement it in a system of speed similar to how our real world is organized— similar to how we expect functionality to exist in a cohesive and viable ecosystem. Similar to taking Google's user interface and adding it to Ethereum's asset transfer capabilities. So, I wanted to thank everyone.
I appreciate the opportunity to say sheetcoin at least five times in this presentation. I hope people will have the opportunity to take a look at the Cosmos network and many of the protocols that are being built. Just make a blatant ad. We are still accepting reward proposals. Well, you know, we have three main prizes for people who build on anything related to Cosmos.
Etherment, which is our Tenderint-based chain compatible with EVM, as well as Peggy. And IBCs, of course. We are very interested in seeing different presentations. We want to see different applications that use both Cosmos and the Ethereum blockchain. And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, I love Ether.
I hope everyone else loves Ether, Ethereum, and I'm looking forward to seeing what people build. Thank you so much. There are also questions, if people have any. We have a microphone for questions, so everyone on the broadcast can hear them. Thank you so much.
Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.