#citizenweb3 Episode link: https://www.citizenweb3.com/vladcostea Episode name: Denizen Cosmos: Xmas special 2020 Johnnie: Can you reach him out on a different way, like call him or something? I don't know. Immasssi: No, I don't have his number. Citizen Web3: In generally Immasssi: He hasn't read my message since yesterday, so I don't know. Citizen Web3: Probably hangover, right? Immasssi: Yeah, yeah, he was in Vegas. Citizen Web3: There we go. Johnnie: The day before yesterday. Immasssi: The last message I got from him was I got way too drunk and I had a pretty rough day. Citizen Web3: Guys, do you really expect somebody who was in Vegas two days ago to come to a podcast recording? Are you fucking serious? Anna: Hey, it's Citizen Cosmos. We're Serge and Anna and we still discover cosmos, but today we will do it with a twist and a Christmas Carol. Citizen Web3: Hey, cosmonauts. Welcome to another episode of Citizen Cosmos. And actually, it's not Citizen Cosmos today. Today is the first episode of a spin-off podcast that we called The Nizin Cosmos with a special host, Johnny, who is going right now to join us and tell us all about this new crazy, absolutely amazing idea. Yeah, this is going to be a rumble, guys, so please prepare yourself, buckle up your seat belts and hang Kansas anymore. Johnny, how are you today? Johnnie: I'm fine, man. You know, we're quite the virgin type on this type of podcast and talking through podcasts, so I'm going to try and be a good host, but I don't promise that I will be or I will be leader. Citizen Web3: Don't be too naughty. Johnny, maybe you can introduce the guests. Johnnie: Before that, I want to welcome them. Hello, virgins. Well, the discussion and the conversation today is going to revolve about people that had an influence on me, at least, on the ecosystem and all of them, Masi, Sasha, Joy, who's been invited but he hasn't turned up yet. There are people that actually taught me things in this journey through Cosmos, so today we're going to just have a free conversation, hopefully, and just talk about the ecosystem, the community, and since we're like denizens and people who just hang around in the telegram groups, etc., we're going to talk about ordinary stuff. So, Masi, you go ahead and you tell us a few things about yourself first, how you joined the ecosystem, how you found out about Cosmos and all that. Immasssi: Hi, NJ. So thanks for the intro. Really good to be here. Everyone knows me as Masi in the ecosystem. So basically, I run the SG-1 validator currently with my partner Tosh from Berlin. We're securing many networks in the Cosmos ecosystem. I've been around for around two years now. I've been a little bit longer in the space since around the end of 2015. Originally got into it with Bitcoin and Ethereum. The early start was quite funny, actually. Like a lot of people had this where they originally got introduced to Bitcoin or Ethereum and then just overlooked it or ignored it and then, you know, later you get another call or another wake up. You dive in deeper. That's how it happened to me. You know, I saw the advantages of blockchain and the potential, obviously. Yeah, then did my research for a few months and explored the space and basically got stuck. You know, there's no way back anymore once you're in it. So yeah, that was my beginning. I mean, we can talk about how I got into Cosmos a little bit later if you guys want. That's another story. And yeah, thanks for the intro. Johnnie: Hey, thanks. Sasha Jotun. Awesome. Sascha: Awesome, Hello. My name is Sasha T. Light. I am also in the Telegram group and I roughly enjoy talking and while reading the ideas of others in the ecosystem. I'm not since the start of the blockchain in the business, I would say. I had my first contacts maybe around 2012, 2013, although I was not understanding like the potential in terms of investing and how it can unfold. I did quite huge investment in 2018. It was not a very good one. Then I stood back for a while and I got back then into it like the beginning of this year, end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. I would say I'm a quite spiritual person and I collected quite many gemstones in New Zealand and Australia and that shifted my perception of wealth. And because of the presence of the gemstones in my life, I understood to read more about finances and then I detected the compound interest and from the compound interest, I got then into crypto and like the staking years and that was what brought me to Cosmos. So I'm highly focused on investing in anything with interest. Yeah, that was my starting point and since then I am here. Johnnie: So you are more like a proof of stake guy than this radical, maximalist BTC funds, which is good. It's the same for me. I myself started back in 2009, 2010 and just curiosity, reading the white paper from Satoshi. Sorry, I'm making an introduction about myself too. Initially I took keen interest on basically Bitcoin and then a little bit on Dogecoin or Doge, I don't know how it's pronounced. Citizen Web3: Doge, Johnnie: Doge, yeah. So I was quite interested in those projects. I kind of like the proof of work and the mining and all that, but proof of stake is, I think it's superior in several grounds. So I was introduced to Cosmos through some courses that I was doing trying to enhance my understanding of blockchain. And then I bumped onto Masi and Joy and Sasha and I got sucked by it. And that's it really. That's how I came to Cosmos. Citizen Web3: I was going to say that, well, first of all, Johnny has joined recently Citizen Cosmos as a community advocate. But to be honest, apart from that, I think I've seen Johnny quite a lot around the ecosystem with quite a lot of different posts and helping answering people in chats and doing it just because he's loving Cosmos. And I think it's great. And it's a thing because of people like you, guys who are here today. And I'm not talking just about you, Johnny. Sorry, I'm talking about Sasha and Masi and Johnny and Joe, Joe, especially. I'm not sure why he's not here. Who answer other people. You know, this is why the ecosystem, in my opinion, and I've been around a little bit longer than what Sasha has in blockchain. But I think this is what makes the communities help them to grow and build those things. And I just want to thank you, all of you guys, that you guys do what you do just because you want to do it and not because somebody is asking you to do it. Johnnie: You know, that was the reason why I've got so deeply engaged in Cosmos because I saw this sharing and this spirit from Masi. For example, when I joined for the first time in the beginning of 2020, I had so many questions and Masi was always there to answer them. patiently. Sometimes I will have to ask a second time and he will answer again. So this is how we get sucked into the rabbit hole of Cosmos. And Cosmos has many distinct characteristics. It's an amazing ecosystem. People do not still realize how big and how expansive all this ecosystem is. And I think it's going to explode in 2021. You know, we need to do some moonboy talk, guys. That's how Masi is. Immasssi: I agree with that part about the availability. You know, the best ability is availability. I really like the saying and being in the community, being in the chats and answering questions. I mean, it's important for all of us. We are active in the ecosystem. There will be new people in the ecosystem which do not have the foundation, the informational foundation that we, I mean, we are at a different stage in the understanding, obviously. And that's what we need to spread. So, I mean, this moonboy thinking is good, but I think we're like a little bit past that 2017. This was really all about hyping up even 2018. But I think like the space is going into a more of a legit area now. So people are, you know, it's more about what does the project really bring in terms of value? Who's building it? What's being built and what value does it drive? Is there a real use? Is there a real use case? Are there maybe more than one use case? That's really what I like about Cosmos because before I got into Cosmos, I explored the space for like several years and there was really nothing that convinced me 100%. Like obviously Bitcoin, whatever you want to call it, digital gold, digital cash. It's not really digital cash anymore. I think we can all agree on that. But it wants to be or people frame it to be a digital gold. You know, we can agree that it was the first mover. It has a really important role in the ecosystem. But besides that, I mean, obviously Ethereum, some people want to make the case for Ethereum. Then we had the Oracle Hype lately with Chainlink. But there's really only a handful of projects in the space, in my opinion, that really drive value, that really bring value to people and drive things forward. And there's a lot of, I don't want to call them scams, but they're not really moving anything. Maybe they're a speculative vehicle at best. But for me, Cosmos is the first project and for the last two years, my view hasn't changed on this, the first project that really drives inherent value. And I made a tweet today actually about how important it is, you know, to interconnect all the siloed blockchains in the ecosystem. We have over 3,000 main nets in crypto right now and none of them can really interoperate, share data, share resources among each other. So that's why IBC is so important. That's why Cosmos is so important. And not only IBC, but also the SDK itself. I keep emphasizing that the SDK is so important because you can spin up, remember the 2017 Hype. Everything was about making a token, generate a token, make an ICO. But right now, the new shift is the new meta basically is spin up your own main net. And there's no easier way than to use a Cosmos SDK. A super simple framework to build your own modular blockchain basically, to customize it, to use tandem consensus or another consensus, and to interconnect via IBC to share resources, to share data, to grow. I keep saying it, Cosmos and IBC is the foundation for the new decentralized internet. That's really what it is. And I'm really a little bit shocked, like you said, Angel, like people are sleeping on it, completely sleeping on it. There's never been anything even comparable in the space at this level. There will be a wake up moment. It always happens, you know, the first year, two years people sleep on it. And then suddenly there's a moment where a lot more people wake up and see a project for what it is. And I think this will change everything. Johnnie: I totally agree with Masi. And one thing that I cannot stress enough is that what Cosmos offers is not only the sovereignty, the scalability, sustainability, it's the decentralization and the interoperability that's going to take place through implementing IBC. Like Masi said, I do not think there's anything that compares to this. Even Polka, even Dot, is not as decentralized as Cosmos is. So Masi has been screaming about this on Twitter and on the Telegram groups that people are sleeping on Cosmos indeed. They do. Immasssi: I'm not one of those people that likes to put a bad name on Polkadot, really. I think there's going to be more than one winner. And I'm glad there's more interoperability solutions. Obviously, I do not think that Polkadot is on the technical level that Cosmos is, but that's all right. They will find their own path. So I don't want to take away from what they're doing. Both are huge ecosystems with thousands of developers and thousands of projects that are already launched or launching in the future inside the ecosystem. And so I don't want to take away from that, basically. Sasha, what's your opinion? Sascha: I absolutely appreciate when you think of the different projects about the ethos of the project. Like what's the atmosphere between all people and also the core idea of it. And the great thing is most other projects are about their project, their view and enhancing what they are built for. And Cosmos is the connecting piece. It's the thing which supports all others. It's moving away from competition to cooperation. And that's what's going to succeed in the future that we connect each other and interoperate and cooperate with each other. And that's why I think there's no other technology which is as amazing as Cosmos in that regard. Johnnie: Guys, what do you think about the consensus mechanism? I mean, Amasi, you mentioned that you can take an SDK and put any consensus ends in your own. How about Tendermint? Do you think it's the best one available, the way the proof of stake works on Cosmos? Immasssi: That's a good question. And that's definitely one that goes a little bit more into the technical side of things. In my opinion, I think this still has to be figured out basically because it's not been around that long, Tendermint consensus. One aspect which we discuss a lot with SG-1 with our validator is the governance side, which I think brings a lot of value to Cosmos and to the new networks that are launching and launched a while ago. Like the latest one, Akash, for example, they all use this governance aspect of the consensus, which governs your sovereign blockchain. And obviously through governance, once the main net is live, you can make adjustments to every aspect of the blockchain. I think this is both the biggest strength, but also could be the biggest weakness. And why I say that is because it's very in the early stages still there si a lot of posable attack vectors. I'll be quite frank about it. And so this applies to all of the networks. And this really depends, I think the strength of it really will depend on how does the community get involved behind it and how does it develop going forward? So yeah, maybe you have some in-depth questions about the governance itself, for example, which is one big aspect, I think, of the consensus. I might have to add that probably a lot of people don't know that there's not many blockchains in the space right now who even have a governance aspect. There's a lot of networks. I mean, first of all, there's a lot of tokens yeah. Not a lot of projects even have a main net, let alone have a main net with decentralized governance. And if they do have decentralized governance like Cosmos, it's everything on the network is decided by the community, by the holders. So everything's possible in a good way, but a lot can go wrong as well. So I think we as a community should really keep an eye on this. Johnnie: Yep, I totally agree. I agree also on the side that the consensus and the way governance works on Cosmos has to stand the test of time. But so far, it seems like it's a great mechanism. I really enjoy it. But as Masi said, it's all boils down in the end to how mature is the community and the valid data set about the project and the higher the community involvement, the more the potential for a truly decentralized ecosystem. Citizen Web3: I think it's also important to note here that recently we had on the Cosmos have the first parameter change via governance, which was actually Joe's proposal together with Eric, who as far as I understand helped him to put the proposal together. But it's a great example of where the token holders or the community can influence what is in the consensus and influence the numbers that were set out that were originally set out. And I think it's a great example of how the communities come together and just change it. Immasssi: I was just going to mention that it was proposal number 30 that you just mentioned, which was for the adjustment of block rewards. I think that's the one you're talking about now. Citizen Web3: Yep. Yep. Immasssi: So we had really good turnout, almost 60% of people of atom holders voted on it. And it was quite unanimous to go through with this. Yeah, it was great. So since the inception of the Cosmos network, we had 32 proposals, which the community voted on some good, some bad, but in the end, consensus is working on the network. Really good. Johnnie: Sunny made a nice proposal lately that has passed 3132. And this is adding some elements and value, I believe, to the whole governance mechanism. I don't know how good it is for decentralized validators. And when I say decentralized validators, I mean, validators that are not exchanges. So Masi, I would like both yours and Sasha's opinion on this. Do you think this new proposal is going to help the ecosystem? Is it going to do any good? Sascha: To be honest, I do not know then in depth the thing I know, and what also attracted me to Cosmos is Sunny. I absolutely believe that everything Sunny is putting out is awesome. Because he is such an amazing person. He's just such an enrichment for the ecosystem. He can just put everything to governance. I vote yes. Johnnie: Yes, same here. Immasssi: Yeah, so we had proposal 31, as you mentioned, and proposal 32, which are both proposed by Sica validator. The one is for the governance for the splitting of votes, which was proposal 31. And then 32 is for funding of this implementation. And I just looked at the charts right now, like they both already passed, both were approved by the community. And just quick take on it. So what is it about? It's basically about you as an atom holder have a vote, right with your atom. And this proposal was to split votes to basically break down the votes that you have into not only a yes or no or an abstain or a veto, but, you know, to have each amount of vote. They said you have 1000 atom that you vote with, that you split this up, you know, 30% yes, 60% no, and so on. So basically, this is, why is this even good? I mean, this could be a big benefit to something like a fund, for example, who manages various addresses and manages atom for various holders and wants to give each one not all agree on the same subject. So, you know, you can split the votes and give everyone a vote. So I discusses with Tosh at SK one, and we basically didn't see any downside to it. In my opinion, it's just a benefit. And on top of it, then we come to proposal 32. I think the funding itself is, I don't know what the proposed amount was like, not even a 2000 atom for the implementation, which it's around one month of dedicated development work. And I thought there was ridiculously cheap and told Tosh, like he was like, here's the developers, like, how can they even do this? But this comes back to your point, Sascha. It's really incredible. Like, Sikas, I think they're just doing this really for the benefit of the network. And there's no other motivation behind it. It's just like, what can we bring to the community that enhances, that brings value? So it's great. Johnnie: How about the part of the exchanges? I didn't quite understand this part. So this is going to enable voting on exchanges too? Or is it just giving the ability to custodians to split votes? Immasssi: It really depends on the exchanges, right? Like, there's a lot of exchanges that do not even give the atom holders the rights to vote. So they just completely ignore the votes, or the governance part. And basically, if you hold your if you stake on an exchange, you don't get any say, right? So so this is obviously not good. I don't want to call out any specific exchanges. But some are doing this. It's easier probably for them to just split the vote. Someone can just click one button on the exchange, and then they cast the total vote for one address. Like, let's say, as an example, Binance has a certain amount of atom, the user comes to the exchange and basically clicks yes, no on a certain proposal. And then Binance can cast one big vote for all the holders, you know, this one voted yes, this one voted no, they put away a split vote. And then the thing is done. So it's maybe like for them, a workflow facilitation, something that's a little bit easier for them to manage, then to go to each holder and be like, Okay, this one got 1000, this one voted yes, this one got it. You know what I mean? So, but I don't think it's I mean, if the exchange really does not want to join governance, then they will not join governance. That's why I actively try to discourage people from staking on exchanges, because you're not really doing anything for the network, you're not doing anything for governance. So, yeah, Johnnie: Exactly, we do it on the main channel of Cosmos as well, try to discourage people from basically staking on wallets or exchanges that do not allow voting and participating through governance, which is the backbone of Cosmos, it's the very reason of its existence. And also, Immasssi: in deed Johnnie: we do suggest that people try and put their atoms on wallets that provide access to all validators, because some wallets do not. So they have a preselect list of validators that have probably paid to be in there. And they don't give us access to, for example, less G1, I think trust wallet, I'm not sure, Masi, do they have you last time I checked? Immasssi: Yeah, I don't want to specifically go into any wallet providers or how they, but I'm aware of this issue. I mean, that's how our world works, you know, you have certain interests that certain parties have, and then they front round this process. It's kind of a way of protectionism, I guess, or capitalist protectionism, whatever you want to call it. And it's certainly not good, right, for the users, because the users, you know, you want the users to have all the available options. Why are they limited on your service? It's a little bit misleading. But obviously, yeah, we should really get on the providers and force them to offer all the options. Johnnie: I see you're a validator, so you have to be diplomatic about it. So I will ask for Sasa for his opinion. Sascha: That's really something which could be improved, to be honest, because I stayed with one wallet, which does not allow that I can vote, although I'm not very keen to swap, because then I would have to wait for 21 days. So that's really a thing. I would definitely join another wallet to participate in the governance, although I also do not like to miss out on 21 days interest. Immasssi: That's a valid point, for sure. Citizen Web3: You could redelegate, by the way, you know, you could redelegate. Immasssi: It's about the private key in that case, what he's talking about. Citizen Web3: Oh okey, Immasssi: If you would have to move your private key in that case, which is a little bit, Citizen Web3: sure, Immasssi: makes it a little bit vulnerable. But yeah, I agree, redelegation, but it's more about the provider itself. Citizen Web3: Not many people know about the option. In fact, I actually fell into that pit when I first started out with Staken, not with Cosmos particularly, but with Staken and Unbonded, then bonded to another place. And then, you know, it took me the whole 21 day cycle instead of just pressing one button and then not losing the 21 day period. It's handy to know that it exists, that option. Immasssi: Yeah, Yeah, that's true. Johnnie: Another question I have is, what do you think it's the ideal amount of atoms to own so that you make it to the mass strip? Immasssi: What's the ideal amount of atom to be wealthy? Or what is the question? Johnnie: Yeah, to be a moonboy, you know. Anna: Let's imagine, yeah, in the imaginary world. Johnnie: So, Masi, you tell us first. Immasssi: Yeah, so my view on this is basically, I'm a huge fan of what Sasha already said, compounding interest. And you have to keep in mind as an atom holder or a holder of any proof of stake network in the Cosmos ecosystem. Most of the networks, depending on how governance sets it, you have a certain amount of inflation. And this should not be overlooked by people, because let's say you're staking and people become very happy, especially at the beginning, oh, I have such big staking rewards. Let's invest them in something else. Let's, buy something else, let's make mor money, let's make more assets. Let's make more value. Um They're really fooling themselves a little bit, because what you're doing is you're diluting your stake in the network. And what you have to keep in mind is the the inflation. And you have to, if you want to keep your stake in the network, or the same amount of stake in the network percentage wise, you have to compound your interest and have to do this on a regular basis. Obviously, there is some percentage that's not well, let's say you have a 7% right now, the bottom inflation is 7%. And let's say you make around 9%, 9.5% with adjusted, it's maybe like 8.5 or whatever. So there's maybe like a 1.5% difference between the inflation and the APY that you make. Then that's your profit, right? The 1.5%. It's not the 8.5% that you get on a daily basis. So if you take out each day your rewards and you're super happy and you go invest something else and then, oh, I keep getting rewards. Well, the inflation, the amount of coins in the network keep growing on a daily basis, on a block per block basis, actually. And you have to compound it to keep your stake. And this is really important and I think people that are in this space longer like all of us they realize this and they want not only to keep their stake they want to increase their stake in the network so yeah compounding is super important I'm going to make post about this on social and make a few articles about it because this is really the best way to grow your wealth. Sascha: I think the same, especially when you think long term. Most people think about short term, like how to get rich quick. And just statistics show that the really wealthy people, they grew their wealth over a long period of time. And for that reason, there is like the compounding interest, which is after a couple of years, it's going exponential. And that's why it's so important to invest in things with an interest and then compound interest. Because all of this, all crypto and all blockchain technology and especially Cosmos is so new in its development, it does not have to be like so much because you asked how many atom you have to have to go to the mass. I do not think that it has to be like not even 10,000, not even 5,000 maybe, when you have patients, when you just have patients, stake and compound, like in 30 years, just think about what's going to be in 30 years. Even when we think about our predictions where Atom is going to be, I think like in 30 years, it's going to be like so massive that even what seems like a comparably low amount of 2,500 or up to 5,000 Adam is going to be worth like extremely much. Immasssi: Yeah. Citizen Web3: Wait a minute, guys. Are you saying that my 3.7 atoms is not enough to like make me go to the mall? This would the rest of my life is so you just trying to say. Immasssi: Well, look at it in comparison. If you look at something like Ethereum and the price development that it has made since inception, I like to compare it to Ethereum because I see a lot of similarities, especially the early stages. Obviously, I see a lot more potential than Cosmos, but I'm biased. I mean, with your 3.1 Ethereum, I think you would be quite happy, you know, if you're a small holder. Citizen Web3: It's 3.7. don't underestimate me Immasssi: 3.7 sorry, sorry. Citizen Web3: It's like 0.5 centimeters. I mean, atoms. Johnnie: Can I interrupt? Is it 3.7 or 3.7 thousand? Citizen Web3: Unfortunately, it's 3.7 so yet. Johnnie: By the way, today, because the price of the atom has shrunk as in the BTC terms, I feel the another bug of them. I'm that positive about the potential it has for next year. When we announced this episode, we also asked people to retweet and ask questions. And the first question I come across is what is Citizen Cosmos? This is for you to answer. I'm waiting for your answer. Anna: He's just crazy projects. Citizen Web3: I wasn't prepared for it. I'm going to answer for both me and Anna. I'm going to try and keep it short, get back to the guests because I think it's more interesting. The idea was actually Anna's idea originally and it originated as a podcast that talks not about solely the project that the person does, but the idea was to go into the depth of what motivates the person. Why does he do what he does? Just because he earns money or does he have some kind of values that drive him to do whatever he decides to do? And if he does do it, what drove him to that point? And that kind of really worked well and we had really, well, let's put it that way, we had much of a more interesting feedback that we expected and we had way more listeners originally than we expected originally to be ever to listen. And by the way, a fun fact, the first episode of Citizen Cosmos was a by chance recorded in Berlin in the office of Cosmos, the GMBH that's there in full note. So the first episode was actually recorded there. And not many people know about it. In fact, nobody knows about it until now. Yeah. And then at some point in the summer, I think it was, we started our own VALIDATOR as well and we decided to grow Citizen Cosmos into a brand which combines the podcast, the VALIDATOR and we do quite a lot of social work as well in terms of like we organize meetups. So we do kind of things like that. We're planning like a hackathon now together with Cosmos. I hope it's going to happen. It's still not confirmed, but I hope it will happen. And yeah, so we're trying to make this a small like brand and the purpose of this brand is to help people dive into what Cosmos is, what is Web3 and in simple terms via communication, podcasting and so on and so forth. And like compounding interest, helping people to dive into those things without having to read all the technical things. The first step that they should make or can make. Johnnie: That's nice. But you know, I like the opinion of the guests on Citizen Cosmos too. Citizen Web3: Yes, please. Johnnie: Be honest guys. Sascha: It's amazing. That's like the great thing about Cosmos. Everyone is contributing out of like an inner motivation because we know it's so amazing. It's not just about the investment itself to grow our wealth. It's also about the ethos and what Cosmos can really do. I mean, we are talking about like changing the financial system. So just from our hope for a bright future of humanity, supporting Cosmos is the best thing to do. And therefore everything everyone is doing, especially being so active as launching a podcast and the validator is just splendid. Johnnie: Nice. Masi, your turn. Immasssi: Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, I'm a huge fan of the podcast. I listened to it since the very first episode actually. Didn't tell anyone yet, but I actually am because I like the format. I like podcasts in general because, you know, it's easy to follow. It's easy to take it on the go. And I think it's the best source if you want to stay up to date on Cosmos. And if you don't have time to scroll through the forums or chats or whatever. So it's a great way to consume Cosmos content. And to stay up to date, learn about new projects in the Cosmos ecosystem. There's so many actually. It's really, you can't even cover it in one podcast. So this is a great source. Anna: I think you are the very first person who said that you follow us from the very first episode. It's quite cool. Thank you. Citizen Web3: Shall we put Masi on a spotlight? What's your favorite episode then? Immasssi: Maybe actually I enjoyed from the very beginning the episodes with the validators. Because I mean, we always had the idea to launch our own, which we did a few months ago. So I enjoyed the validator podcast that you guys did and tried to listen to how to best go about it. And so that's, you know, went into our decision making actually. So it benefited us, you know. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Citizen Web3: Very cool. Anna: Yeah, quite cool. Immasssi: What do you think, Johnny? Johnnie: Let me pick up my shovel. So I've been working with Sergei for the past few weeks, month plus. And he's one of the loveliest, truly. You know, I mean what I say. He's one of the nicest guys to cooperate with. He's so decentralized in everything. I mean, you know, he's so democratic. And, you know, it's really, really enjoyable. I like the project. I like what he does. I like his ideas. I started using GitHub and just, you know, educating myself on new stuff. But it's really, really interesting. And also, I think that the podcast is like Masi and Sasha said, there a chance to participate on the ecosystem like Sergei does. But also keep people who follow the project up to date. And this is amazing. And it's doing a very good job on that level. So only good words to say about you. Citizen Web3: Thanks, guys. What about predictions? Shall we do some blockchain predictions or some cosmos-based predictions? Or maybe what do you think, Johnny? What's your opinion? Johnnie: I want an atom price prediction for the end of this year. And an atom price prediction for the end of next year. Just, you know, press your belly. You know, it's just make a prediction unless you can back it up by some kind of serious argument. So, Sasha, what's your end of year prediction for 2020 and for 2021 for atom? Sascha: Oh, I'm usually not talking much about that short term because, yeah, like short term, it's just impossible to predict. Tomorrow, Tesla could say like, oh, by the way, we are using cryptocurrency to fund our in-built software for some reason or something like that. And everything just skyrockets. Like something like that can always happen, like with PayPal when they announced it and everything has risen. So something like this can happen if it does not happen and Bitcoin crashes like to 14,000, then, oh, man, altcoins get wrecked. Therefore, it's not easy to say. I think it will hover around like four to five as it is now. I do not see any much internal rise happening from cosmos itself. I think because the devs, as Saki has announced that IBC is coming in January. So I do not think that there is much going on by the end of 2020. 21, it all depends on how Bitcoin is also moving in its cycle. If we think of the cycles it has performed after the past halvings, I think end of the year 2021 can be around its peak. And then with IBC, when it's going to be used quite well with not many bucks, then end of next year, yeah, I think it can make three digits. Like I think it's possible. Johnnie: Nice. That's a bullish prediction. I like this. Citizen Web3: And here is my 3.7 atom suddenly started to make sense. Johnnie: Yeah, indeed. A nice thing, Sasa. Masi, your turn. Immasssi: Yeah. So in terms of prediction, I have a similar view to Sasha. First of all, the short term is really irrelevant, in my opinion, especially if you're staking on the network, which 71% of all atoms are currently staked in the network. So a lot of people have a long-term approach. In my opinion, in terms of prediction, I think it will depend on the overall cycle that we, I mean, we just obviously just started the cycle. Some might say two months ago, some might say a few days ago, but Bitcoin is on its way and which is draining the altcoins quite obvious. You know, atoms been drained for around 65 to almost 70% in terms of Bitcoin value in a matter of four weeks. So this is quite drastic. But once all these altcoins get drained and I keep telling people there's nothing to do with atom itself, all altcoins are getting drained because people are going into Bitcoin and really depends on how long this is going to continue. But at some point it's going to exhaust Bitcoin is going to exhaust itself and investors, especially the big funds, they will diversify. They don't see the upside anymore. Or one should say there is no upside and it gets too risky to keep pounding into Bitcoin. So they have to go back into the cheap altcoins. And I think that's the moment when we really will kick off in something like atom. I don't know when it's going to happen, if it's going to happen. In my opinion, it's going to happen in Q1, Q2, something in that area. And that's where I see it a little bit different than Sasha. I do actually think that atom will make quite a good jump in that range. And I think three digits is if we really go into a similar, as you know, like the cycles, they go in waves and each bull run, the waves get a little bit bigger. I think we're going to see not only what we saw in 2017, but a much bigger overall market cap and also alt season. And who knows if it's going to be three weeks of alt season or half a year. You know, we've never seen half a year just straight up bullish. You never know what's going to happen. But I think cosmos and I made this prediction two years ago that we will see a similar rise to Ethereum. I still stick to this. And I think three low three digits is absolutely doable. But I actually think three to two seven hundred dollars is somewhere in that range. I think we will see within the next two years. Johnnie: And then the 3.7 atoms of Sergey have real value. So Citizen Web3: wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, don't pull the quilt. I mean, now you have to do the prediction. Johnnie: You know, I'm really, I really suck at predictions. This is why I was following masses and Sasha's. And I think masses predictions and Sasha's views, I mean, but masses predictions will have come through. If we had the IBC ready, but IBC is a massive upgrade. It requires a little more time. And I think that by the end of this year, we will not see much rise. It will rise at some point as we get closer to the implementation of IBC. But I think it's not just IBC. It's what layers of value you built on top of the protocol. The protocol is a protocol. It's a TCP IP of blockchains. It needs stuff to be built on it. And there is already there is stuff being built as we speak. For example, the AMM, which is going to have an impact on Cosmos in general. I think that 2021 is going to be the year that Cosmos shines. And more projects are going to be built on the SDK. And I agree that three digits is absolutely doable in 2021. Given that that Bitcoin does not act crazy and does not have fluctuations. Immasssi: Think about it this way, NJ. The crazier that Bitcoin acts, the more it's going to flow back into altcoins. If there's no interest for Bitcoin, you will not see a crazy alt season. So in my opinion, it's completely independent from from Atom. And even one might even say that it's independent from IBC. Obviously, we're going to get a large boost in confidence from investors when IBC is fully ready and then starts rolling out in terms of adoption. But I think when alt season is here, everything is going to 300% in one day and keep going and keep going and people are going to go nuts. You know, this is going to happen regardless. And you cannot really expect, I mean, the space is still a little bit immature in that sense. A lot of people just use cryptos as a speculative medium. So you cannot expect 80% of the blockchain space to know fundamentally what each project does. They see the number goes up and they go in and then they dump and whatever. So I think IBC will give us a huge boost, obviously, but I think it will more depend on the overall macro trend of Bitcoin versus altcoins. Johnnie: What do you think that's the value that's going to be built on top of Cosmos in the coming years, 2021 on after IBC is implemented? Sasha, what's your opinion? What are the key developments that are going to drive adoption? Sascha: I have to think about that. That's like a big question. Maybe Masi can go first. Immasssi: Yeah, so in terms of adoption, what is IBC going to enable? I have to circle back first to the Cosmos SDK. So in my opinion, to really drive IBC home, we need to have much more adoption, which is already going great right now. We have over 130 projects built on the Cosmos SDK live on mainnet, using tandermint core as well for consensus. But in my opinion, we need to see much more increase in this to really be a top three project in the space. Right now you have amazing projects, obviously using the SDK like Binance, Chain, Kava, Terra, Agorik, 4 Chain, the list is so long. Yeah, so the adoption of the SDK and everyone that really has the vision to launch their own network or has a business which needs a network, it doesn't even have to be a public network in that sense. It can be a private network, it can be whatever. You can use the Cosmos SDK, you can have your own consensus. It's really modular and easy to build. Everyone can just pick this up with one developer set up a network. It's basically like building Legos. So I think the most important thing will be the SDK adoption. And then obviously you have a direct modular access to IBC. You can communicate with all the blockchains that have enabled IBC. You can share data, you can share resources. There's so much that you can do once IBC is here. But it's important that we lay the foundation now in the next few months to be ready for IBC. You know The work is not done, there's so much work to do. And so this is the most important thing right now for adoption. Johnnie: So like Zaki said, there is a lot of work to be done post the implementation of the protocol. But what do you think that apart from the adoption of SDK, which is evidently a superior way to build things, what do you think that will give a nudge to the project? Immasssi: To each individual project or to the Cosmos Hub. Because a lot of people have to separate what comes to the hub. And this is actually something that really needs to be discussed more. Is what can drive even more value later to the Cosmos Hub itself? Because what you have to really keep in mind is that a network like, let's just take a random example. Let's say a network like Terra. Terra has its own network, right? They have their own use cases. And usually if a project launches its mainnet and they have a use case or use cases, they have a team behind it, they have a community behind it. They go into this one direction, into their specific direction, into their niche that they're working on. And this niche the Cosmos Hub has still has to find, right? Obviously one might argue, okay, the atom is the maybe the reserve asset of the ecosystem. A lot of value will drive through it. But there's a lot of things that are being worked on as well. Like for example, automated market making, Cosmos Hub specific decentralized exchanges. I think a lot of this has to come to the hub as well. We have to actively work on the unique competitive advantages of the hub. And this is really important or it's not going to become obsolete, but you have to put the work in. Johnnie: Masi, what do you think is the particular characteristic of the hub of Cosmos hub? That is going to make it valuable within the ecosystem? What do you think it's very distinct characteristic that will make it be like the main project within the ecosystem? Do you have any idea on this that you want to share? Immasssi: There's a few avenues that the Cosmos Hub should go into, but it really depends on the governance. Obviously everything that's decided has to go through governance. But in my opinion, do you have to look at it like this? I mean, what's similar to Ethereum? Obviously, what is the main purpose of Ethereum? What's going to drive its competitive edge? There's so many things built on Ethereum that you cannot point one specific thing out. I just think that it has to provide a similar role as to Ethereum. You can have atom as a reserve asset. You can have a thousand different niche use cases and tools built on the hub to facilitate interactions between the sovereign chains in the ecosystem. But it's limitless. You have to build everything and something is going to crystallize itself out and be the thing that is a super app, for example. People say it's a super app. It could be anything. Most importantly, we have so many new possibilities now because you have an interoperable hub which is scalable, highly scalable with thousands of developers on it. You have IBC and it's limitless. Sascha: Could I add something? Yeah, I think the questions you are asking, Johnny, are very important. They are absolutely important and they are going to be answered. The thing is one step at a time. And at the moment, the step is to complete IBC. And once this is done, next steps arise with their priority. And then we can focus on them. So thinking about these questions now already is okay to do. And we like to have certainty, although we cannot predict the future. So we do not know how the technology is going to evolve, which things are going to be prioritized in its value. So it's not easy to say it right now. Immasssi: I agree, Sascha. And this is the last deliverable of the Cosmos White Paper, is to bring IBC. And I think 99% of the ecosystem of all developers are working on this right now. And this is the top priority. I don't think there's obviously there's people working on something else as well, but this should be the focus right now. And I keep hearing sometimes in the community from people that are not involved for such a long time, that they think that IBC has to come right now and just push it out and bring it already. And this goes on for a few months now. But this is a huge undertaking. This is such a huge step for Cosmos and for the entire space. You can't just do it overnight. It's been worked on for years now. And we want it to be as complete as possible for this ecosystem to succeed. Johnnie: Exactly. I also think that the upgrade that's upcoming is marking the completion of the three layers of the Cosmos stack. And in my opinion, it's the beginning. So it's not the end. It's a Immasssi: Exactly. Johnnie: It's starting now. And these guys worked all this for all these years. And they have finally delivered or are about to deliver the IBC, which completes the vision of the White Paper. So the work has to start now. And I was not expecting an answer on what is going to be building value on atom post-IBC, but just some ideas of what could drive. I mean, there was a discussion about search security, for example. And I think that discussion was quite strongly supported by Sani as well. So there are numerous various ways with which Cosmos can sign. I think it's a virtue and a vice of Cosmos that it has enabled a sovereign sovereign ecosystem of blockchains, which is going quite the opposite way of Ethereum and ERC to Ennis that are dependent in a way on Ethereum. So let's wait and see how it's going to evolve. It's going to be a very interesting year 2021. Citizen Web3: So I think that's really, really, really cool answers in terms of that it shows how all of us, not just bullish because we are biased, but there is an underlying facts. You, Johnny mentioned, Master mentioned, Sasha mentioned. It's all about the biggest value, I think, in my opinion here is the ability to exchange the data. And that's the killer feature. That's what will bring value. We don't know what it's going to be exactly, but I think the ability to exchange, to communicate that is in itself the biggest value that exists. Guys, I think it's been very, very interesting, unusual episode for us, definitely. And I will be more than happy if Johnny, if you carry on with this and we will make more episodes like this, because I think it's a great way to hear what everybody has to say about what they think about Cosmos, about the future and about the current development. Johnnie: I hope you keep on doing this because one thing I noticed with Cosmos, and I think Massey and Sasha may agree with that, it takes months or years to understand Cosmos, and it takes an equal amount of months or years to explain it. It's massive and you get sucked by it. And it's so fascinating, it's so interesting. So keep on doing you know this. This podcast is important, bringing not us plebs, but people that are really meaningful to this ecosystem. And of course, Massey is one of them. I'm just messing now. And Sasha also, he's like an advocate. Sasha always has this sober way. And you can sense it in the way he writes, and you can sense it now by listening to him. So I was very pleased to be with you guys. You know, You know you are my mentors in Cosmos. So I thank you for joining today. Immasssi: I want to say also thank you, Serge, Anna and NJ for having us. And I hope next time Joe is part of the discussion, because he's a huge piece of the ecosystem. And I always appreciate his input as well. He has some great takes and is involved for a long time. And let's get him on next call, possibly. Sascha: Definitely. I'd like to appreciate all of you as well. Anna: Thank you guys. It was nice to see you. Johnnie: I just have a message from Joey. He said, dude, I just woke up. What the fuck? Citizen Web3: Guys, it's been once again a huge pleasure. And hopefully we will definitely catch Joey next time. And thank you NJ. Thanks, Sasha. Thanks, Masi. Thanks, everyone. And see you next time. Johnnie: Bye, guys. Anna: Thank you. See you. Outro: This content was created by the citizen web3 validator if you enjoyed it please support us by delegating on citizenweb3.com/staking and help us create more educational content.