Humans.ai invited Denis Fadeev, a well-known blockchain engineer with an impressive C.V., Founder of Ignite and ex-VP of Product at Tendermint, to present to our community the latest advancements in the Cosmos ecosystem.
The mastermind behind Ignite focuses on building powerful, easy-to-use tooling that enhances developer experience. With a background in software engineering, developer relations, and frontend development, Denis Fadeev led an engineering team to make the Ignite CLI the main developer tool in the Cosmos ecosystem. The CLI has been used by dozens of production-ready blockchains (Kyve, Firmachain, Mediblock, Stride, Cheqd, etc.) and thousands of experimental projects.
Organized by Humans.ai, the AMA session was moderated by Calin Pasat, Node Foundation Director at Humans.ai. The community of devs, validators and $HEART investors lent their ears to one of blockchain’s top-notch devs, who explained that for the technology to continue its accelerated rate of growth and development, the tools that support it need to evolve alongside it.
Developing the ecosystem of interoperable blockchains
From the start, Denis Fadeev explained that he joined the Cosmos ecosystem more than 3 years ago and that from the very beginning, he focused on the Cosmos SDK documentation until the system was built.
Cosmos is designed as an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains, a huge growing network of interconnected blockchains in which users can freely move assets from one network to another. The drawback was that this ecosystem lacked the tools necessary for developers like himself to start building with Cosmos, explained the Blockchain Engineer.
In its early days, building apps in Cosmos was challenging due to the lack of resources and tooling for development. Developers needed to get their hands dirty and do everything manually. This is what motivated Denis Fadeev to build a set of tools that not only made building things in Cosmos easier but also faster. Initially called Star Chords, the tools he developed essentially allow people to create new Cosmos blockchains and enhance them with different modules and functionalities.
Ignite CLI is a developer tool, a binary you can install and run on your machine to create new chains, new Cosmos blockchains enhanced with additional modules and functionalities. With a built-in relay called the IDC Relayer, it has a frontend code generation to increase developer productivity with Cosmos.
Ignite CLI, the best tool for builders and crypto
Denis has been leading the Ignite team since the very beginning. In fact, he wrote the first version of the CLI and then created the team around it. With a community-first approach, Dennis and his team listen to the feedback of the community and adapt the tools to answer the needs of the developers who use them. In his opinion, Cosmos is a unique ecosystem, and Ignite CLI also needs to reflect this.
Denis remembers that he was inspired by simple front-end tooling available for frameworks like View and React.
“We soon realized that validators are a critical piece of the puzzle. If you’re launching a chain, you need validators, and you need to incentivize them. So, we incorporated a voucher system that allows you to reward them with tokens. This is one of the things that make Ignite CLI unique.”, shared the blockchain expert.
There is also Ignite Chain, a blockchain that coordinates the launches of new sovereign blockchains with inbuilt mechanisms to incentivize validators. Developers can also build on top of Ignite Chain. The advantage is that since it is a public chain, everyone can see the information and automatically provision nodes or apply to become validators for these new chains. Once a chain is launched, you can automatically add block explorers and build services on top of it.
As the discussion delved deeper into the intricacies of the technology, the Humans’ moderator asked “did you use the tech from Ignite chain to actually deploy Ignite chain?”
Denis Fadeev clarified that Ignite Chain was tested using the Ignite toolkit, which will also be used for maintenance, outlining that they wanted to avoid building a centralized service for this because validators would need to trust the service to reward them. With blockchain, trust is no longer an issue. Anyone can apply to become a validator and expect to be paid for their work.
Ignite Chain is ready to go
Ignite Blockchain is a public, permissionless, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchain powered by the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. The Ignite blockchain is open to the public, allowing and encouraging people from all over the world to join the network to secure and verify the records. It is intended to serve as the foundation for a sustainable and scalable business blockchain ecosystem.
Ignite Chain is powering the decentralized finance ecosystem not only for individuals or end-users but also for financial institutions and businesses that have cryptocurrency exposure. Ignite Chain is a toolkit that enables developers to create scalable user-friendly dApps with low transaction fees without sacrificing security. Ignite has made it its mission to create the best network for Web3 developers with flexible deployment, seamless interoperability, and on-chain incentives. From a technical point of view, Ignite Chain is built upon existing proven blockchain innovations and novel technologies that are created for achieving mass adoption.
As a next-generation blockchain, Ignite provides decentralized solutions to several on-chain partners ranging from small enterprises to big-tech and investment management funds. The goal of the project is to form a decentralized and distributed community able to develop, test and launch new exciting blockchain technology powered by financial products and applications.
When asked by the moderator if Ignite is production-ready, Denis ensured that all of the functionalities have been ready since September. Ignite chain is currently running in a devnet mode, meaning that it runs only Ignite servers, but all its features are up and running, and people can use it to launch testnets. Furthermore, the founder of Ignite shared that they are currently working with both validators and blockchains that are currently in development and that 2023 will see the launch of many exciting projects.
Humans AI plans to use Ignite
As the discussion drew towards its conclusion, the Node Director at Humans revealed that the company plans to use Ignite CLI to bootstrap its chain and add new/custom functionalities by creating custom modules. Ignite Chain will also help Humans.ai to easily start its network and add new validators.
Stay tuned for our next AMA on Twitter Space to find out more interesting news and learn from our special guests.
