What is DAG? In more traditional blockchains, the host provides the food/drinks (i.e resources) for this party. And when the guests arrive, the amount of resources can only accommodate so many people, the portions are small and then everything eventually runs out and the party ends. Think Constellation DAG like a potluck (a party where everyone brings food/drinks). With every added guest (node to the network), the more resources the party has to keep going. This is the nature of Constellation, a distributed system that scales horizontally. Is Constellation a Blockchain? Not exactly. Although inspired by the principles of decentralization, many standard blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum face scalability issues. This is why the next, generation of decentralized networks such as Hashgraph, IOTA, and Constellation have turned to DAG. What is a Microservice? “Microservices” is an approach to application development in which a large application is built as a suite of modular services. Each module supports a specific business goal and uses a simple, well-defined interface to communicate with other sets of services. Uber, for example, is not a singular app purse. It is a unified app which means it is a single interface that brings together their driver app, their rider app, and their corporate team app.
The Cosmos network consists of many independent, parallel blockchains, called zones, each powered by classical Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols like Tendermint (already used by platforms like ErisDB). Some zones act as hubs with respect to other zones, allowing many zones to interoperate through a shared hub. The architecture is a more general application of the Bitcoin sidechains concept, using classic BFT and Proof-of-Stake algorithms, instead of Proof-of-Work.Cosmos can interoperate with multiple other applications and cryptocurrencies, something other blockchains can’t do well. By creating a new zone, you can plug any blockchain system into the Cosmos hub and pass tokens back and forth between those zones, without the need for an intermediary. While the Cosmos Hub is a multi-asset distributed ledger, there is a special native token called the atom. Atoms have three use cases: as a spam-prevention mechanism, as staking tokens, and as a voting mechanism in governance. As a spam prevention mechanism, Atoms are used to pay fees. The fee may be proportional to the amount of computation required by the transaction, similar to Ethereum’s concept of “gas”. Fee distribution is done in-protocol and a protocol specification is described here. As staking tokens, Atoms can be “bonded” in order to earn block rewards. The economic security of the Cosmos Hub is a function of the amount of Atoms staked. The more Atoms that are collateralized, the more “skin” there is at stake and the higher the cost of attacking the network. Thus, the more Atoms there are bonded, the greater the economic security of the network. Atom holders may govern the Cosmos Hub by voting on proposals with their staked Atoms.