Blockchain
A handful of contributors to the Cosmos ecosystem will collaborate in funding an initiative to bring Mesh Security to life.
Mesh Security, not to be confused with Interchain Security (ICS), is a separate security model designed to increase the economic security of the Cosmos network while enabling individual blockchains to remain sovereign.
In an interview with Blockworks, Sunny Aggarwal, the co-founder of Osmosis Labs, drew comparisons between Mesh Security and the NATO alliance.
“NATO is a security alliance, and all countries in NATO have their own armies, but if one country is attacked, they all come to the rescue to defend the other… that’s also a kind of mesh security premise,” said Aggarwal.
So instead of individual blockchains getting the security of their own market cap, they would receive the security of all Cosmos ecosystem tokens combined.
“The sum of all [token value] is going to secure the set of all these Cosmos chains,” Aggarwal said.
Extra risk, extra rewards
Validators do not need to run additional nodes under Mesh Security partnerships. Instead, delegators can use their staked tokens on their primary chain, repost them, and give them to validators on a partner chain.
In the event of validator misconduct, staked tokens will be reduced on both the primary and partner chains. Delegators get extra wagering rewards in return for taking on more risk.
Using Osmosis and Axelar as examples, Aggarawl said, “You’ll basically have almost all of the Osmosis stakes redeployed on Axelar and almost all of the Axelar stakes on Osmosis as well…so you get the sum of their market caps…now both are Osmosis if Axelar secured this amount.”
Despite appearing as competing models, ICS and Mesh security serve different use cases, according to Aggarwal.
“The ICS model is almost the economic equivalent of how rollups work, you don’t need to have your own validator at all if you choose ICS,” he said. “ICS is useful for new chains that want to launch immediately and don’t have to come up with their own staking token, their own validator set, they just want to build and launch the application.”
Mesh Security, however, is more focused on larger Cosmos chains that have their own proof of stake system, serving almost as an option for projects that have matured in the ecosystem.
Under the Mesh Security system architecture, Aggarawl said Cosmos chains can also get security from larger chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin
“One of the things I’m really excited about is Bitcoin being a plug-in to the Mesh Security model,” he said. “I am working with the Babylon team to build Bitcoin staking and ensure Bitcoin can be deployed and secure other chains in the mesh security model.”
The initiative to develop Mesh Security will be carried out in three separate phases.
Phase 1 will focus on developing the architecture and deploying it to testnets. Phase 2 will test and deploy to low-capital Cosmos consumer chains and gather support for deployment. Finally, phase 3 will be an open-source mainnet implementation.