It's been a big week in the Cosmos ecosystem...
Archway Airdrop
The archway airdrop landed. I'd rate the experience as pretty smooth! There were a few of the typical hoops to jump through to claim the full amount, as is the norm these days: staking, IBC transfer, and voting. There was also a more unusual domain claim experience; I guess this is like having a Hive username.
There's not much to see so far in terms of dApps but it's early days. And the UI is great. I'm a sucker for a nice UI!
Native Tether on Kava
The only thing worse than using a dollar stablecoin with limited transparency to the backing assets and no interest is using a bridged version of the same asset.
Up until now, the main stablecoins in the Cosmos ecosystem have been bridged. With this implementation, that changes. Native coins are considered more secure and can be minted / redeemed directly on the chain giving a whole new on / off ramp.
There's been plenty of talk about Circle bringing native USDC to Noble chain so it's been a surprise to see Tether jump in front on Kava. Hopefully within a few weeks we'll see live versions of both and a corresponding surge in liquidity.
Trustless connection between Polkadot and Cosmos
The IBC (Inter Blockchain Communication) system in the Cosmos ecosystem is the market leader for communication of data and messages between blockchains.
It's firmly established in the Cosmos ecosystem for coin transfers between chains and there's been a lot of work on interoperability (actions on one chain producing actions on another chain). Now we're starting to see this technology reach out to other ecosystems, starting with DotSama (Polkadot / Kusama).
The first established connection is between Osmosis (a DEX which I use a lot) and Picasso Network (an infrastructure hub on Kusama which I've never heard of). I've personally found the user experience on Dot to be a nightmare so I'll be watching this with interest. If I can use Polkadot with Cosmos tools and Keplr wallet, I'll be happy.
Not financial advice, not an advertisement. Please do your own research. I own some of the coins listed in this article.
