In a presentation at CosmoVerse 2023, Celestia Labs‘ Head of Dev Relations, Yaz Khoury, outlined its strategy to safeguard the Cosmos network against internal challenges.
His presentation focused on how Celestia is creating new features that contribute to the transformation of Cosmos into a modular ecosystem while reducing reliance on coin-weighted on-chain governance.
Celestia is a modular blockchain platform that offers sovereignty, customizability, and decentralization to its users. Its unique architecture allows developers to focus on their application’s core logic, while Celestia handles consensus and data availability layers.
Celestia is a minimal blockchain that only orders and publishes transactions and does not execute them. By decoupling the consensus and application execution layers, Celestia modularizes the blockchain technology stack and unlocks new possibilities for decentralized application builders.
Why Celestial in Cosmos
According to Yaz, Cosmos has established itself as a trailblazer in blockchain technology. Developers worldwide have been drawn to its developer-friendly tools, enabling them to create interconnected application chains with ease. However, the protocol has several critical issues.
Yaz highlighted several key areas for improvement, which include standardization, cohesive narratives, and consensus building. He emphasized the need for clear storytelling and robust governance. Explaining further, he said that the existing monolithic structure of Cosmos led to fragmented decision-making, causing potential political rifts. It also resulted in increased consensus costs for developers.
Celestia Improvement Proposal (CIP)
While speaking on the best possible way to make the ecosystem better, he announced the launch of the Celestia Improvement Proposal (CIP) process, aimed at incubating Cosmos core development within the Celestia community. The CIP process incorporates the concept of rough consensus, promoting more robust technical decision-making.
Yaz cited the Ethereum EIP and Bitcoin’s BIP processes as inspirations for this approach. The decision to defend Cosmos involved reinforcing its walls through standardization, specifications, and better hard fork mechanisms.
Modularity, data and security
Beyond the CIP, the Head of Dev Relations said that Cosmos also need to embrace modular architecture and reduce on-chain governance. Modularity, data availability sampling, and shared security were presented as the keys to achieving exponential scalability while enhancing the security of IBC transfers.
Modularity refers to breaking down complex systems into smaller, independent components. By making IBC systems modular, it becomes easier to scale and manage different aspects of the process separately.
This approach allows for flexibility in designing and upgrading different parts of the IBC infrastructure without affecting the entire system. It contributes to scalability by enabling the addition or modification of components as needed.
Data availability sampling involves checking the availability of data across different blockchains. Ensuring that data is consistently available is crucial for the functioning of IBC, and sampling techniques can help monitor and maintain data availability. This process enhances security by reducing the risk of data loss or manipulation during transfers.
Shared security implies that multiple blockchains within the IBC ecosystem collectively contribute to the security of the entire network. This can involve various consensus mechanisms, including those that use the security features of interconnected blockchains.
Yaz said that this approach sought to bridge the gap between application and core developers, allowing Cosmos developers to focus on building rollups and reducing consensus complexities. In closing, he also noted that Cosmos should brace up to face further challenges that will come in the future as it evolves.
