Cosmos is a decentralized ecosystem of parallel blockchains that can scale and interoperate with each other. Cosmos launched with Cosmos Hub, the first blockchain in the ecosystem, in 2019. The Cosmos team’s vision is to create “the internet of blockchains”—an ecosystem that enables the efficient transfer of data and assets between blockchains, and the building of custom blockchains that are optimized for specific use cases.

This vision represents a new frontier for blockchain technology and its broader adoption. Lack of interoperability and scalability have been limiting factors for the growth of the overall blockchain ecosystem. Without interoperability, or communication between blockchains, it’s a significant challenge to transfer assets and data, or to replicate applications that have been built on specific protocols.

The ability to transfer assets and data across blockchains will enable participants to make the most of their assets and participate across different protocols. It also enables developers to replicate and expand on existing applications, resulting in open innovation, community building, and new use cases for existing technologies.

In sum, interoperability and decentralization are critical for increased adoption, community building, and security of the blockchain ecosystem.

The Infrastructure Powering the “Internet of Blockchains”

Cosmos is built on unique underlying infrastructure to solve the interoperability and scalability challenge. Among its core components are:

• An open-source software called Tendermint, which is used to securely and consistently replicate an application on many machines. Tendermint consists of two key components: a Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus engine (Tendermint Core), and a generic application interface (ABCI). It enables developers to build custom blockchains more quickly, and as such, is one of the foundational components that makes the “internet of blockchains” in the Cosmos ecosystem possible.
• The Interblockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), which enables blockchains built with Tendermint to communicate with each other, and transfer assets and data through a central hub.
• The Cosmos SDK (Software Development Kit), which is a modular framework for easily building a blockchain on top of Tendermint. Cosmos SDK enables developers to build custom blockchains tailored for specific use cases.

An interoperable blockchain environment holds tremendous potential to expand the use cases and reach of existing applications, as well as encouraging broader sharing, community building, and open innovation. Cosmos’ vision is very closely aligned with Bison Trails’ mission of strengthening the entire ecosystem, and we look forward to empowering participants and developers in the community with our fully-managed infrastructure.

Joe Lallouz, CEO

Bison Trails Supports Secure Participation and QT Clusters across the Cosmos Ecosystem

Bison Trails’ mission of strengthening the blockchain ecosystem and enabling the pioneers of tomorrow is aligned with Cosmos’ aspiration to create the “Internet of Blockchains.” Bison Trails is invested in the success of the Cosmos ecosystem (the ecosystem of interoperable Tendermint-based blockchains) to continue building a robust community and encouraging innovation.

Bison Trails runs secure, fully-managed Participation and QT nodes on Cosmos, deployed and managed with enterprise-grade security best practices. We also support Terra and Crypto.com Chain, and are planning on adding support for additional Tendermint-based chains in the future.

Optimizing Participation in Cosmos

Bison Trails runs fully-managed, secure Participation Clusters (validator nodes and supporting infrastructure) on Cosmos to enable participants to stake and delegate their tokens, and earn rewards for participation while helping decentralize and secure the network. Participants can earn rewards by receiving transaction fees and earning rewards as a Cosmos validator.

Each Bison Trails Participation Cluster includes validator nodes that are hosted in a private network and sentry nodes that act as an interface between the validator nodes and the public blockchain network. Participation Clusters are deployed with remote signers, or HSMs (Hardware Security Modules), which are one of the most secure ways to generate private keys and sign transactions. This set-up ensures that the private keys for validators, the most sensitive piece of infrastructure for participants in a blockchain network, never exist outside of the HSM device - making them significantly harder to compromise.

Beyond the remote signers, the participation clusters themselves are architected to withstand attacks. The sentry nodes act as a layer of defense to the validator nodes, enabling them to stay hidden and private from the public internet, and mitigating the risk of DDoS and remote access attacks. The Bison Trails platform can quickly bring up new and fully synced sentry nodes that greatly minimize the impact of DDoS attacks against Bison Trails-run validators.

Fully Managed QT (Query and Transaction) Infrastructure

Bison Trails enables participants to run private QT clusters to read and query data from the Cosmos Hub, validate transactions, and write transfers or smart contract interactions.

Bison Trails’ QT clusters for the Cosmos ecosystem offer full nodes, archival, and light client support to enable efficient access to data from the Cosmos Hub based on participants’ needs.

• Full nodes, which store the entire blockchain data on disk, enable participants to validate blocks and transactions, and help decentralize the network.
• Archival nodes enable participants to access a complete block-by-block record of historical state data. Archival nodes are typically used by data-driven companies or financial service companies that need to be able to run more complex queries, replay smart contracts, or conduct data analysis over a time horizon (such as viewing an address balance over time).
• Light client support, which includes an additional set of APIs that are deployed through the QT clusters, enable access to blockchain data with fewer requests.

QT clusters are fully managed by Bison Trails, and are designed for high throughput, high availability, and enterprise-grade security.

The interoperability enabled by Stargate will greatly accelerate the rate at which new chains form in the Cosmos ecosystem, especially in fast growing use cases like DeFi. This interoperability makes it more important than ever to have reliable infrastructure providers secure and provide access to the Cosmos multi-chain ecosystem. Bison Trails is one of the longest running Cosmos validators and I am excited to continue collaborating with them on Cosmos. —Zaki Manian, Principal Cofounder of iqlusion and a Cosmos developer

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Why Choose Bison Trails

• 24/7 Alerting and Monitoring

  Bison Trails closely manages Cosmos Participation and QT nodes after they are deployed to ensure that the nodes are active and secure. Participation customers are kept informed of the various participation strategies, particularly around changes or upgrades to the protocol. We provide 24/7 engineering support to ensure that any critical issues that may arise are resolved within our service level agreements.

• Protocol expertise

  Bison Trails has deep expertise with the Cosmos ecosystem and Tendermint-based chains. We have supported Cosmos through the initial Gaia testnet and continue to actively be involved in the community, running nodes and participating in governance decisions. We work closely with our clients to ensure that they are informed of upcoming developments, and know how and when to get involved in the network during critical junctures.

Making it easier for multiple parties to participate through block production and read-write infrastructure is key to strengthening the blockchain ecosystem. We offer a secure, reliable way to participate and build in the Cosmos network as well as other Tendermint & Cosmos-SDK based chains. By supporting Stargate, the most recent Cosmos Hub upgrade, we are proud to be part of the realization of the original white paper and look forward to supporting the continued growth of this vibrant platform, as well as the broader Tendermint ecosystem.

Aaron Henshaw, Co-founder and CTO

Contact us if you’re interested in running your own Participation or QT nodes for Cosmos.

Contact Us

About Bison Trails

Pioneering Blockchain Infrastructure®

Bison Trails is a blockchain infrastructure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company based in New York City. We built a platform for anyone who wants to participate in 23 new chains effortlessly.

We also make it easy for anyone building Web 3.0 applications to connect to blockchain data from 33 protocols with Query & Transact (QT). Our goal is for the entire blockchain ecosystem to flourish by providing robust infrastructure for the pioneers of tomorrow.

In January, 2021, we announced Bison Trails joined Coinbase to accelerate our mission to provide easy-to-use blockchain infrastructure, now as a standalone product line. The Bison Trails platform will continue to support our customers. With Coinbase’s backing, we will enhance our infrastructure platform and make it even easier to participate in decentralized networks and build applications that connect to blockchain data.

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