Both Polkadot and Cosmos are considered third-generation blockchains with a similar horizontal scaling approach, while Ether and Solana tend to scale vertically.

In this article, we will compare Cosmos and Polkadot in terms of the vision and current state of the ecosystem.

While the uninformed may see these two ecosystems as twins, they actually have some significant design differences that make the results very different.

Cosmos' core architecture prioritizes maximum sovereignty over the application chain and intentionally reduces the importance of the main chain, Cosmos Hub. Allowing multiple hubs to coexist is a voluntary design decision, and decentralization is the main driver behind this choice.

The second reason behind the architecture is that the Cosmos ecosystem must ensure continuity at all costs, and the fall of the most dominant chain should not bring down the entire ecosystem.

If you have multiple hubs, the fall of one of them is not enough to destroy everything.

Cosmos Hubs play a trusted neutral role by avoiding rent extraction.

This is the reason IBC routing can be done outside the Hub chain.

Osmosis, for example, can be considered a second Hub because it handles more IBC transactions than Cosmos Hub itself.

By sticking to its role as a public product infrastructure and refusing to collect rent from the ecosystem, the Hub lets other application chains shine. The best example: Terra is Cosmos' application chain, which at its peak was much larger than The Hub.

LUNA's all-time high market cap is $41 billion, compared to Cosmos Hub's $12 billion. Before the collapse of Terra, Cosmos Hub was only the third largest Cosmos chain by market cap, behind Terra ($LUNA) and the Crypto.com ($CRO) app chain.

Polkadot's growth is a direct answer to Ether's inability to scale. Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ether, noticed its limitations and went on to build his vision with Polkadot.

In this vision, parallel chains specialize in chains that interact with each other, similar to the idea of application chains on Cosmos.

A key difference between Cosmos and Polkadot is the degree of centralization.

The relay chain is the be-all and end-all, acting as the master chain of the ecosystem and the sole security provider for the parallel chain (all verifiers verify only on the relay chain), as opposed to Cosmos where any application chain has the possibility to start its own set of verifiers.

This design decision puts a lot of pressure on the relay chain.

If the relay chain fails, the entire Polkadot ecosystem is at risk.

This centralization is also reflected in Polkadot's market capitalization, which is much larger than its largest parallel chain, Moonbeam.

At their peak, Polkadot and Moonbeam had market caps of $56 billion and $1 billion, respectively.

One interesting thing to note is that Cosmos' introduction of Interchain Security will make the ecosystem more similar to Polkadot, but with one key difference.

Interchain Security on Polkadot is handled exclusively by the relay chain, whereas this feature can be deployed in multiple regions on Cosmos and is not unique to Cosmos Hub. @EvmosOrg or @JunoNetwork have already indicated their interest in providing Interchain Security.

Network access is also an important difference between the two ecosystems: parallel chains on Polkadot must pay expensive access fees through auctions.

For example, Polkadex, Polkadot's decentralized exchange, had to pay 973,324 DOT ($13.8 million at the time) to get a parallel chain slot on a 2-year lease.

Cosmos, on the other hand, has no barrier to entry and does not charge setup fees or rent for maintaining the application chain.

In this respect, it makes sense to compare parallel chains to tenants and Cosmos application chains to owners.

Ecosystem and valuation

It is worth noting that the Polkadot network has two twin ecosystems: Polkadot and Kusama.

The latter is the canary network (canary network) of the former. At least in my opinion, a fair comparison with Cosmos should include Polkadot and Kusama.

The rationale for including Kusama in the comparison is that it is the network that hosts projects with real economic value, rather than a traditional test network like Cosmos.

The circulating market value is from Coingecko, while the actual projects are taken from https://mapofzones.com和http://parachains.info.

The reason I didn't use Coingecko's ranking is that they list tokens that are not relevant in the Cosmos and DOTSAMA ecosystems. (The Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems are often referred to together as the "DOTSAMA" ecosystem)

I used the two sites above to determine the actual projects built on these two ecosystems and then obtained market cap data from CoinGecko.

The total market cap of the two ecosystems is close: $11.6 billion for Cosmos and $10.5 billion for Polkadot.

An important factor to consider is that the DOT + KSM relay chain accounts for 91.4% of the total market cap of the DOTSAMA ecosystem, while ATOM only accounts for 25% of the entire Cosmos.

Two things are observed in the data.

1. the strength of Cosmos application chains vs. the relative weakness of parallel chains.

By excluding ATOM, DOT and KSM, thus effectively comparing application chains to parallel chains (DOT and KSM are not parallel chains), the total market value of Cosmos application chains is $8.7 billion, while the total market value of DOTSAMA parallel chains is $954 million. In other words, the value of Cosmos application chain is 9.12 times of DOTSAMA parallel chain.

1. The value capture capability and higher visibility of DOT and KSM contrast with the lack of value accumulation and utility of ATOM.

Developer Share

Developer share is probably one of the most important metrics for evaluating blockchains. According to @ElectricCapital.

December 2020: Polkadot (825) + Kusama (175) has ~1,000 developers. in December 2021, this number climbs to 1,700 (1,400 at Polkadot + 300 at Kusama), a 70% year-over-year increase

In December 2020, Cosmos has about 575 developers, compared to 975 in December 2021, up 69.5% year-on-year

In both years, DOTSAMA has done better. Remember, it's July, so the latest data from Electric Capital is for the last 7 months.

One possible reason why Polkadot has more developers is that the development framework Substrate supports any language compatible with WASM (the widely used Web Assembly), while Cosmos SDK only supports GO. in other words, Polkadot aims to get more developers by giving more flexibility.

Popularity among general audience and crypto funds

Polkadot's official Youtube channel has 46,000 subscribers, while Cosmos has 11,500 subscribers.

On Twitter, Polkadot has 1.3 million followers and Cosmos has 460,000 followers.

Website traffic: see below detailed data for March, April and May 2022: Polkadot (red) and Cosmos (white)

Polkadot also seems to be favored by crypto funds, with 14 top funds holding DOT in their portfolios, while only 5 top funds hold ATOM in their portfolios. data from a study published by Messari last April.

The top crypto fund allocations are as follows.

There is no denying that Polkadot has always done a better job of marketing its brand than Cosmos.

Cosmos has always taken a low-key approach when it comes to marketing itself, tending to prioritize the quick launch of features like IBC or Interchain Accounts.

On the other hand, while Polkadot is better in terms of brand awareness, its ecosystem is not mature and its infrastructure readiness lags behind Cosmos.

Both Polkadot and Cosmos are considered third-generation blockchains with a similar horizontal scaling approach, while Ether and Solana tend to scale vertically.

In this article, we will compare Cosmos and Polkadot in terms of the vision and current state of the ecosystem.

While the uninformed may see these two ecosystems as twins, they actually have some significant design differences that make the results very different.

Cosmos' core architecture prioritizes maximum sovereignty over the application chain and intentionally reduces the importance of the main chain, Cosmos Hub. Allowing multiple hubs to coexist is a voluntary design decision, and decentralization is the main driver behind this choice.

The second reason behind the architecture is that the Cosmos ecosystem must ensure continuity at all costs, and the fall of the most dominant chain should not bring down the entire ecosystem.

If you have multiple hubs, the fall of one of them is not enough to destroy everything.

Cosmos Hubs play a trusted neutral role by avoiding rent extraction.

This is the reason IBC routing can be done outside the Hub chain.

Osmosis, for example, can be considered a second Hub because it handles more IBC transactions than Cosmos Hub itself.

By sticking to its role as a public product infrastructure and refusing to collect rent from the ecosystem, the Hub lets other application chains shine. The best example: Terra is Cosmos' application chain, which at its peak was much larger than The Hub.

LUNA's all-time high market cap is $41 billion, compared to Cosmos Hub's $12 billion. Before the collapse of Terra, Cosmos Hub was only the third largest Cosmos chain by market cap, behind Terra ($LUNA) and the Crypto.com ($CRO) app chain.

Polkadot's growth is a direct answer to Ether's inability to scale. Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ether, noticed its limitations and went on to build his vision with Polkadot.

In this vision, parallel chains specialize in chains that interact with each other, similar to the idea of application chains on Cosmos.

A key difference between Cosmos and Polkadot is the degree of centralization.

The relay chain is the be-all and end-all, acting as the master chain of the ecosystem and the sole security provider for the parallel chain (all verifiers verify only on the relay chain), as opposed to Cosmos where any application chain has the possibility to start its own set of verifiers.

This design decision puts a lot of pressure on the relay chain.

If the relay chain fails, the entire Polkadot ecosystem is at risk.

This centralization is also reflected in Polkadot's market capitalization, which is much larger than its largest parallel chain, Moonbeam.

At their peak, Polkadot and Moonbeam had market caps of $56 billion and $1 billion, respectively.

One interesting thing to note is that Cosmos' introduction of Interchain Security will make the ecosystem more similar to Polkadot, but with one key difference.

Interchain Security on Polkadot is handled exclusively by the relay chain, whereas this feature can be deployed in multiple regions on Cosmos and is not unique to Cosmos Hub. @EvmosOrg or @JunoNetwork have already indicated their interest in providing Interchain Security.

Network access is also an important difference between the two ecosystems: parallel chains on Polkadot must pay expensive access fees through auctions.

For example, Polkadex, Polkadot's decentralized exchange, had to pay 973,324 DOT ($13.8 million at the time) to get a parallel chain slot on a 2-year lease.

Cosmos, on the other hand, has no barrier to entry and does not charge setup fees or rent for maintaining the application chain.

In this respect, it makes sense to compare parallel chains to tenants and Cosmos application chains to owners.

Ecosystem and valuation

It is worth noting that the Polkadot network has two twin ecosystems: Polkadot and Kusama.

The latter is the canary network (canary network) of the former. At least in my opinion, a fair comparison with Cosmos should include Polkadot and Kusama.

The rationale for including Kusama in the comparison is that it is the network that hosts projects with real economic value, rather than a traditional test network like Cosmos.

The circulating market value is from Coingecko, while the actual projects are taken from https://mapofzones.com和http://parachains.info.

The reason I didn't use Coingecko's ranking is that they list tokens that are not relevant in the Cosmos and DOTSAMA ecosystems. (The Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems are often referred to together as the "DOTSAMA" ecosystem)

I used the two sites above to determine the actual projects built on these two ecosystems and then obtained market cap data from CoinGecko.

The total market cap of the two ecosystems is close: $11.6 billion for Cosmos and $10.5 billion for Polkadot.

An important factor to consider is that the DOT + KSM relay chain accounts for 91.4% of the total market cap of the DOTSAMA ecosystem, while ATOM only accounts for 25% of the entire Cosmos.

Two things are observed in the data.

1. the strength of Cosmos application chains vs. the relative weakness of parallel chains.

By excluding ATOM, DOT and KSM, thus effectively comparing application chains to parallel chains (DOT and KSM are not parallel chains), the total market value of Cosmos application chains is $8.7 billion, while the total market value of DOTSAMA parallel chains is $954 million. In other words, the value of Cosmos application chain is 9.12 times of DOTSAMA parallel chain.

1. The value capture capability and higher visibility of DOT and KSM contrast with the lack of value accumulation and utility of ATOM.

Developer Share

Developer share is probably one of the most important metrics for evaluating blockchains. According to @ElectricCapital.

December 2020: Polkadot (825) + Kusama (175) has ~1,000 developers. in December 2021, this number climbs to 1,700 (1,400 at Polkadot + 300 at Kusama), a 70% year-over-year increase

In December 2020, Cosmos has about 575 developers, compared to 975 in December 2021, up 69.5% year-on-year

In both years, DOTSAMA has done better. Remember, it's July, so the latest data from Electric Capital is for the last 7 months.

One possible reason why Polkadot has more developers is that the development framework Substrate supports any language compatible with WASM (the widely used Web Assembly), while Cosmos SDK only supports GO. in other words, Polkadot aims to get more developers by giving more flexibility.

Popularity among general audience and crypto funds

Polkadot's official Youtube channel has 46,000 subscribers, while Cosmos has 11,500 subscribers.

On Twitter, Polkadot has 1.3 million followers and Cosmos has 460,000 followers.

Website traffic: see below detailed data for March, April and May 2022: Polkadot (red) and Cosmos (white)

Polkadot also seems to be favored by crypto funds, with 14 top funds holding DOT in their portfolios, while only 5 top funds hold ATOM in their portfolios. data from a study published by Messari last April.

The top crypto fund allocations are as follows.

There is no denying that Polkadot has always done a better job of marketing its brand than Cosmos.

Cosmos has always taken a low-key approach when it comes to marketing itself, tending to prioritize the quick launch of features like IBC or Interchain Accounts.

On the other hand, while Polkadot is better in terms of brand awareness, its ecosystem is not mature and its infrastructure readiness lags behind Cosmos.