The future of crypto is on COSMOS $ATOM

EVERYTHING YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.

THE RACE FOR THIRD PLACE

If we had to identify what the top places in crypto in a lot of years would be, unless something unexpected happened, we would in a safe way identify only 2, Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's pretty difficult to think of a third one, but it's obviously not $BNB. It also can't be a stablecoin, cause they require trust in either a third party company or in a "decentralized" protocol, a thing that hasn't worked that well for now ($UST). Furthermore, they require the Dollar to keep its global dominance, something that isn't so obvious anymore. Neither those cryptos that are destined to serve a single purpose, $RNDR, $VET, $LIDO, $LINK... Yes, they offer great services but they will never be able to long term keep the market cap of chains that offer more services at once, like $ETH, $SOL, $ADA... Especially, because it's often these chains that support those assets and services on top of them. They're much more simular to owning stocks in a company, just in a bit more of a decentralized manner (Am I right Gary???).
At this point we're left with all those cryptos that are in direct competition with $BTC and $ETH. However, these cryptos want to beat them, so it makes no sense for them to be in third place, either they beat them or they have failled (or in any case the remaining users are a few fanboys). Since we are trying to understand which cryptos are going to be at the top of the market in many years from now, it is only fair that I stop shortly to explain why these competitors have very low chances to beat $BTC and $ETH. When we analyze these assets ($XRP, $SOL, $ADA...) , we often concentrate our focus on how superior they are on certain aspects compared to the first two. Even though they are in fact superior on some things, people often forget the advantage that the first arrivals have. Think about it, most of us still use Metamask even though it's really uncomfortable and it has the same dated interface that it had at the beginning, and it is not like there aren't better options. But we got used to it so we stick with it, consequentially most developments happen on it (fiat on and off ramp, paypal integration, SNAPS...). And it's the same thing with $BTC and $ETH. Yes, maybe Ethereum can't compete with solanas scalability, but its various layer 2s developed by external teams sure can, and they're also pretty good at it. This means that you get to enjoy a generally superior asset than Solana, with all those things that Solana does better added to it. Obviously there are many other examples for $ETH and also $BTC.
At this point it's clear that what we are searching for is a crypto category that is not in competition with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and is also capable to have and mantain a relevancy that allows it to get to a third place market cap.

THE THIRD PLACE

It is obvious, at this point, that what we need is a crypto that can improve and expand on what the first two already offer. I'm talking about interoperability, something that is on everyones lips in the crypto space these days, but is often associated with protcols that are slow, incomplete, limited and dangerous to use, the so called Bridges. Bridge hacks have costed 2 Billion dollars in 2022 alone. It's clear that we are in need for a better solution, that is also capable of connecting all chains between each other and not just some. The type of crypto I'm reffering to, are the ones that have as their primary focus interconnection between chains, we are talking about $DOT, $AVAX, $ATOM... And recently also some Ethereum Layer 2s are joining in, like Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and others. The purpose of these chains is, as said, to interconnect various chains between each other and sometimes, but not always, gurantee more security to the chains that are connected to the main one. At this point you might be wondering, how are these chains going to expand and improve $BTC and $ETH? Right now there are and in some cases have already been, developments to connect all those chains to chains that are not directly using the same technology. For example $AVAX has BTC.b, native Bitcoin on its chain, Nomic on $ATOM is about to launch in this month the same thing, $DOT is already very connected to the Ethereum ecosystem, and, again, on $ATOM there has been discussion of a possible IBC connection with Ethereum, and even a connection with $DOT is nearly ready, and one with $NEAR is in the works. Even though I have cited Ethereum layer 2s offering a simular service, they are, rightfully, limited in connecting various chains that are part of the Ethereum world. Which means we can exclude them from the race for the third place. Same goes for project like $OAS, which connect various chains that are sector specific, in $OASs case it's gaming. Even though there probably are minor competitors and possible competitors that haven't launched yet, at this point we're only left with the most meaningfull: $DOT, $AVAX and $ATOM. As you might have already guessed from the title, I personally think that $ATOM is gonna prove itself to be our THIRD SPOT. So, I will procede with explaining what it is and afterwards what makes it better than its competitors.

COSMOS $ATOM

I don't want to get too technical, so I won't list all the various characteristics, but I will limit myself to explain in a simple way the key innovations of $ATOM and the entire Cosmos ecosystem. First thing, are the so called Appchains, in fact Cosmos was designed from the day one with the idea of connecting various chains between each other that offer a single or multiple services of the same type. To explain it in a simpler way, we're talking about chains that offer only financial services, only gaming services, only IOT services and so on. Even though you can create chains simular to Ethereum where you can do all in one place, like $JUNO for example. Cosmos was created specifically to interconnect efficently and quickly various services, which means, going from a chain to another without noticing. And to do that it uses, the second and last very important innovation, which is IBC. When we want to move from a chain to another on the EVM we have to use Bridges, which as said before aren't the safest thing. On Cosmos, instead, we use IBC. Which is a much safer and efficent protocol. Obviously we're in crypto so safety is never a gurantee, but until now IBC has never encountered big problems and most importantly it has never lost users funds. Furthermore it is worth noting that assets deriving directly from other chains using IBC, when they're transfered between chains, they stay native assets. Which means they're not a tokenized derivative which bases its value from the token held by the contract of a bridge. In regards to efficency I reffer to the fact that IBC tranfers are nearly instantaneous. Speaking of which, this leads me to the bonus point, user interface. I'm reffering to everything both wallets and applications, and you must be rightfully thinking, those are things created by independent teams, and not a direct result of Cosmos technology. That is true, but this comfort of use, couldn't be possible without IBC and Appchains. So why use Cosmos?
The simplest way to answer this question, is with the reason of why DYDX decided to move from being a simple Dapp on Ethereum to a Cosmos Appchain. They did it because it allowed them to offer a much more efficent service, not just becuse of scalability (very important for a order book DEX), but also in terms of security, having their own independent chain, thus more control on possible arising problems.
We now only have one more question to answer, how can Cosmos tech still be so undervalued? Well, mostly because unlike $AVAX and $DOT, it isn't a crypto with lots of big investors behind, this means development tends to be a bit slower. But it's just a matter of time before developers will realise the major advantages. It isn't just a case that Binance, crypto.com and many other exchanges, chose Cosmos tech to develop their own chains.

THE COMPETITION

Speaking of $AVAX and $DOT, let's find out which are the small extras that make $ATOM a superior product. Also in this case I won't get into to many details, but I will focus on the differentiating point that makes Cosmos a better ecosystem. $AVAX and $DOT but also those Layer 2s cited before, have as requirment for the connected chains dependency to the main one. This is generally a good thing, but it's also a limitation because it makes it much more difficult to connect with other independent chains, this often leads us to have to use a Bridge, once again. And this is where $ATOM makes the difference, actually in its beginnings its main objective was simply to interconnect independent chains, only recently it has been added the possibility for the various connected chains, through governance, to ask to tap into the main chain security. Once approved, it can try through another governance vote to become independent once again. The best thing is that IBC, which was talked about in the previous paragraph, can be implemented into non Cosmos chains, in fact Vitalik Buterin himself talked about the possibility of implementing IBC to Ethereum in the future. This is an incredible advantage for the Cosmos ecosystem because it's the only one, at the moment, that can therotically gurantee an all around interoperbility through all cryptos. Imagine how awesome it would be to go from Cosmos to Ethereum and then to Solana, nearly instantly without the need of a dangerous Bridge.

GAMING??

Even though Gamers seem to hate the idea of NFTs, even worse crypto in videogames, development in that sense continues at a very fast pace. It goes beyond the scope of this article to look at all of them, but I will use an example to show you how Cosmos technology is perfect for a gaming specific chain. Ubisoft, already for some time, is showing lots of interest, often in a hidden way to most of its community, to Blockchain technology and especially NFTs. First they launched Ghost Recon Breakpoint NFTs on the Tezos Blockchain, and then they made lots of investments to become validators of chains that they think are good for Gaming, one of these is the before cited $OAS. On which they want to launch their chain for one of their next videogames: https://championstactics.ubisoft.com/ , which curiously didn't appear on any of their main channels, I wonder why??? In any case, $OAS is a chain dedicated to Gaming only, that allows the creation of many other subchains hosting one or more videogames, as said before each subchain is dependent to the main one. Up until a few weeks ago there hasn't been any videogame developer that decided to create their own independent chain, maybe because it's to complicate but it could offer many advantages. Thanks to Cosmos, first and foremost they would have lots of documentation to start from, furthermore they would have more security given by a restricted validator set that would permit them to react more promptly to possible problems, an incredible interoperability that allows everyone to reach their chain and finally it would lead Gamers to have more clarity and ease of use, since the chain is limited to only the NFTs and Tokens of a specific game or publisher. Furthermore, even though it would be suggested not just for earnings but also for Governance, a Token is not neccesary. In fact you can launch a chain with for example $USDC as the GAS token, simularly to how https://nobleassets.xyz/ did it recently.
I said a few weeks ago, because recently Krafton the publisher of PUBG announced the creation of a new Cosmos chain dedicated to their new game OVERDARE: https://press.krafton.com/en-US/KRAFTON-ANNOUNCES-NAME-FOR-METAVERSE-JV-COMPANY-OVERDARE .

AIRDROPS

If you've been in crypto for a long time you will be well aware of the fact that often in the short to mid term having an advanced technology matters less, but it's much more the possible earnings created by a specific narrative that make the difference. Well $ATOM takes care of that too, as a matter of fact, a great narrative of the last bull run was that Cosmos ecosystem Stakers were getting airdrops from the various chain launching with their tech. For example $JUNO and $STARS, that if sold close after their launch would have resulted in decent gains (At the time I was just experimenting and had only 100-150$ of $ATOM Staked, which resulted in a $STARS Airdrop of more than a 1000$) . All of this isn't stopping in the bear market, even though most of the Airdrops have been much smaller than in the bull, there have been some from very important projects like $STRD, $ARCH, $SEI and in a few days the most important of all $TIA.
You might be asking yourself why all this airdrops? As I said before Cosmos is a project with much less funding behind it, much more "community" based. It became a bit of a tradition and so many projects prefer to launch by incentivizing the "community". Even projects with a lot of funding behind launching on Cosmos feel practically obligated to do an Airdrop, because otherwise it wouldn't be seen very good from the "community", thus decreasing probabilities of succes. The best thing about all of this, is that it allows you to expose yourself to the entire Cosmos ecosystem without the need of adding extra funds, or keep only the Tokens from the most promising project and sell the rest for extra $ATOM, or sell them all...
If you want to stay up to date an all the upcoming Airdrops for the Stakers of the various Cosmos ecosystem tokens, I suggest following: https://twitter.com/Airdrops_one .

CONCLUSIONS

Even though in the future there won't be as many tokens as today, with the markets maturation, but also for a matter of semplicity. People won't want to use thousands of different chains with simular characteristics. On the other hand, it's also true that the market won't limit itself to Bitcoin and Ethereum. There's plenty of services that would improve by a lot thanks to blockchain, but they need more scalability and security, and they also need to be connected to each other and to $BTC and $ETH. With the increase in crypto adoption, the need to move from one chain to another seemlessly and securely will get more and more neccesary and important, and Bridges seem not to be up to the task. It's clear, that a big narrative around the Tokens that can solve this problem is rising, and as things are in place right now, $ATOM is the best positioned. Not just on the technological front, but also on the incentives for its users and even though we haven't talked about it that much, it even has the best user interface in crypto right now, in my opinion.
I remind you that as written at the beginning of this article, this is NOT financial advice. As I said, having the best technolgy doesn't always correspond with winning. We can't also exclude that in the meantime better project could rise or that the existing competitors could recover. Personally I'm deversified in the entire narrative, instead of picking a winner (Even though, obviously, a larger percentage of my portfolio is allocated to $ATOM).

P.S. If you want to try the Cosmos ecosystem and check out the awesome user interface, you can do it by installing one of these two excellent Cosmos wallets:

Keplr - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/keplr/dmkamcknogkgcdfhhbddcghachkejeap?hl=it

Leap - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/leap-cosmos-wallet/fcfcfllfndlomdhbehjjcoimbgofdncg?hl=it

Or you can also do it with the new Metamask feature, SNAPS. Meaning that you can enter the Cosmos world without leaving the Ethereum world.