tl;dr Summary: After a disastrous launch in March, Evmos—the blockchain that promises to bring interoperability between Ethereum and Cosmos—was relaunched on Apr 27th, 2022.
What is Evmos?
In a world where blockchains for different use cases get launched frequently, Cosmos provides a platform through which these different chains can communicate (like share data and swap tokens) with each other using Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.
However, not all blockchains are compatible with Cosmos, and this is what Evmos addresses.
Evmos is a scalable, high-throughput proof-of-stake blockchain that is fully compatible and interoperable with Ethereum but is made using the Cosmos SDK thereby combining the best of two worlds by being the first IBC-enabled EVM-based chain.
It allows users of all the 42 IBC-enabled chains with 264 apps within the Cosmos ecosystem to access dApps and smart contracts deployed on Ethereum, including DEXs, NFT marketplaces, lending & yield-farming protocols, and others.
It is also attempting to leverage Ethereum’s reach as the most popular network for dApps and smart contract development to attract more and more Ethereum developers by making it easy for them to deploy applications from Ethereum onto their chain.
A history of failure
The much anticipated Evmos launch in March got marred in controversy because of bugs and users reporting problems with claiming their airdropped tokens due to a large number of hardware and software wallet integrations.
“We have a few user experience bugs that got in the way of the airdrop and the launch. And there were users that were following incorrect guides for claiming, and their funds got stuck – that was on us because we should have been preparing for users using [blockchain wallets] Kepler and Ledger,” said Evmos founder Frederico Kunze Küllmer in an interview with CoinDesk.
But there was another issue that started even earlier.
“On Friday afternoon, I got a message from the core IBC team at Interchain saying that there was a potential vulnerability in the code, and that we should not create LP pools on Osmosis because of this vulnerability,” said Kunze Küllmer.
He recognized it as a “critical security vulnerability,” which required a planned fix with the validators. The team created and deployed the fix that unfortunately failed and resulted in the chain freeze.
“I think we underestimated the importance of testing against all of these tools. We’re trying to create this unique user experience, bringing Ethereum into Cosmos and Cosmos into Ethereum, and because of this we had a larger surface area to cover – not just the chain having multiple bugs, but for the tools being ready to handle both ecosystems at the same time,” said Kunze Küllmer.
Since then, the team at Evmos has been busy revamping their solution and making it easy for users to claim airdropped tokens.
They have implemented a dashboard to allow users to claim the airdropped tokens, stake them and participate in governance.
“We implemented additional checks on the claiming process and we also introduced our recovery for all the funds that were stuck,” said Kunze Küllmer. “We also have a clear guide for how to claim the tokens and how to recover tokens permanently stuck.”
As for the engineering part of the problem, Kunze said, “the main thing that we did as well from an engineering point of view is improve our testing processes and testing procedures.”
Since its relaunch, Evmos has already clocked in over $8.75 million in TVL and 14 dApps deployed on its chain.
