Recently, the Cosmos blockchain network released a major update to Stargate, which is aimed at increasing transaction throughput, cross-chain cryptocurrency transfers, speeding up and simplifying the development of the user interface, and more. In today’s review, we’ll talk about what’s new came after the Stargate update and why this update is so important for the Cosmos ecosystem.
What is the Cosmos Stargate update?
Stargate — this is the largest update of the Cosmos blockchain since its existence. This update is a natural completion of the project roadmap and will entail significant changes in the Cosmos ecosystem. Here are the new features available after the Stargate update:
- Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC), which will provide cross-chain transactions;
- Switching from Amino to Protobuf, improves transaction performance and bandwidth. This will ensure faster and cheaper transactions, as well as speed up frontend development;
- State Sync allows you to reduce the duration of synchronization with the blockchain network to a few minutes-100 times faster than it was before the update;
- Light clients with a full set of features;
- Chain Upgrade Module that automates all necessary updates.
More information about the Cosmos Stargate update can be found in the official project’s blog.
What’s new and why is the Stargate update so important for the Cosmos network?
Stargate will allow you to create more productive blockchains developed using the Cosmos SDK. The new services will be able to speed up transactions by 10 to 100 times, which will reduce their cost. The Protobuf upgrade will allow blocks to accommodate more transactions, reducing gas costs. But the changes will affect not only the performance but also the user interface. This is why the Stargate update is the largest for the Cosmos ecosystem.
Protobuf introduces a new concept for developers — composability. This solution will simplify UI development and expand the list of languages used to create blockchain applications that interact with the Cosmos infrastructure.
In addition, it will reduce the complexity of developing decentralized applications. The updates will affect all the main services that interact with the Cosmos ecosystem: validators, wallets, crypto exchanges, as well as the Zones blockchain developers.
The update will make it possible to exchange and transfer many other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, on the blockchain level. Also, various blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem will be able to exchange data among themselves, regardless of whether they are public or private. More information about how Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) works can be found here.
Pros and cons
The new State Sync module provides lightweight clients with a full set of features that allow nodes to sync with the network in minutes. Tendermin generates new blocks every 6–7 seconds, so during the existence of Cosmos, the blockchain has accumulated a large number of records. Because of this, syncing new nodes could take several days.
In the new module, the node can download publicly available snapshots. This will speed up syncing by up to a few minutes, but it is a threat to the security of validators.
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