Research corpus InteroperabilityBLC-STUDY-0027

Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers

The Cosmos paper: independent zones running a BFT consensus, connected by a hub, speaking a packet protocol that later became IBC. Unlike Polkadot's shared-security vision, zones here are sovereign. They choose their own validator sets.

Official external source only
Design paper
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Record

Authors: Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman
Date: 2016
Publisher: Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman
Version: Source cited by the 2016 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0027
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.

Direct answer

Where to read

Official source — Cosmos white paper
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

What changed

The study separates the text from later network behaviour. This bibliographic page does not repeat that essay.

Relationships

Canonical readingCosmos study
Related paperTendermint
Related paperPolkadot
Related paperTHORChain

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Kwon, J., & Buchman, E. (2016). Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers. Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman. https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos/blob/master/WHITEPAPER.md

BibTeX

@techreport{cosmos2016,
  title = {Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers},
  author = {Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman},
  year = {2016},
  institution = {Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman},
  url = {https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos/blob/master/WHITEPAPER.md},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/cosmos}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers
AU  - Jae Kwon
AU  - Ethan Buchman
PY  - 2016
PB  - Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman
UR  - https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos/blob/master/WHITEPAPER.md
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0027",
    "title": "Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Jae Kwon"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Ethan Buchman"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2016
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman",
    "URL": "https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos/blob/master/WHITEPAPER.md",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections