Cosmos Hub explores a diversified security model, leading the new direction of Blockchain security.

Recently, the product manager of Cosmos Hub initiated a discussion on the official forum regarding the consumer chain joining mechanism, proposing two new solutions: permissionless and lightweight permission. This initiative aims to address the competitive landscape of current inter-chain security solutions while accelerating Cosmos Hub's positioning in this field.

Previously, Cosmos Hub introduced the "replicated security" mechanism through the V9 Lambda upgrade, allowing its security to be leased to consumer chains such as Neutron and Stride. This mechanism requires each validator of Cosmos Hub to run all consumer chains, ensuring that they have the same level of security as Cosmos Hub. However, this approach also brings some limitations, such as the need for consumer chains to be pre-approved, increased costs for validators, and other issues.

To solve these problems, the two newly proposed solutions are:

1. Permissionless solution:

   • Developers can initiate a consumer chain by submitting a transaction to the Cosmos Hub.
   • Validators can choose whether to join the new chain.
   • As the number of validators increases, the security of the blockchain gradually improves.
   • The advantage is its simplicity and openness, while the disadvantage is that it requires developers to actively communicate with validators.

2. Lightweight Permissioned Solution:

   • Developers need to submit governance proposals to initiate the consumer blockchain.
   • Validators decide whether to support through voting
   • After the vote is passed, the supported validators automatically join the new Blockchain.
   • The advantage is the use of existing governance mechanisms, while the disadvantage is the high entry threshold.

In addition, a "Top-N" scheme is mentioned, which requires that the top n% of the concentrated validators must run the consumer chain. This scheme is further divided into two variants: inclusive and exclusive, which allow or limit the participation of smaller validators, respectively.

It is worth noting that, apart from replicated security, other solutions only require partial participation from Cosmos Hub validators, which may theoretically impact security. As early as May last year, comparisons were made among three common inter-chain security solutions: replicated security, selective participation security, and mesh security. Replicated security offers the strongest protection but faces performance and cost challenges; selective participation security increases flexibility but poses risks of security fluctuations; mesh security allows for cross-chain bidirectional enhancement of security, and has been a focus of attention recently.

In the future, Cosmos Hub is expected to adopt a diversified security strategy that retains replication security while introducing new solutions such as permissionless and lightweight permission to meet the security needs of different chains, and provide more value capture opportunities for the ATOM token. This diversified approach not only reflects the innovative spirit of the Cosmos ecosystem but also provides new ideas for the secure development of the entire Blockchain industry.