docs: remove typos and IBC documentation (#11933)
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Julien Robert
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The [Cosmos SDK](https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk) is an open-source framework for building multi-asset public Proof-of-Stake (PoS) <df value="blockchain">blockchains</df>, like the Cosmos Hub, as well as permissioned Proof-of-Authority (PoA) blockchains. Blockchains built with the Cosmos SDK are generally referred to as **application-specific blockchains**.
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The goal of the Cosmos SDK is to allow developers to easily create custom blockchains from scratch that can natively interoperate with other blockchains. We envision the Cosmos SDK as the npm-like framework to build secure blockchain applications on top of [Tendermint](https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint). SDK-based blockchains are built out of composable [modules](../building-modules/intro.md), most of which are open source and readily available for any developers to use. Anyone can create a module for the Cosmos SDK, and integrating already-built modules is as simple as importing them into your blockchain application. What's more, the Cosmos SDK is a capabilities-based system that allows developers to better reason about the security of interactions between modules. For a deeper look at capabilities, jump to [Object-Capability Model](../core/ocap.md).
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The goal of the Cosmos SDK is to allow developers to easily create custom blockchains from scratch that can natively interoperate with other blockchains. We envision the Cosmos SDK as the npm-like framework to build secure blockchain applications on top of [Tendermint](https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint). SDK-based blockchains are built out of composable [modules](../building-modules/intro.md), most of which are open-source and readily available for any developers to use. Anyone can create a module for the Cosmos SDK, and integrating already-built modules is as simple as importing them into your blockchain application. What's more, the Cosmos SDK is a capabilities-based system that allows developers to better reason about the security of interactions between modules. For a deeper look at capabilities, jump to [Object-Capability Model](../core/ocap.md).
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## What are Application-Specific Blockchains
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One development paradigm in the blockchain world today is that of virtual-machine blockchains like Ethereum, where development generally revolves around building decentralised applications on top of an existing blockchain as a set of smart contracts. While smart contracts can be very good for some use cases like single-use applications (e.g. ICOs), they often fall short for building complex decentralised platforms. More generally, smart contracts can be limiting in terms of flexibility, sovereignty and performance.
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One development paradigm in the blockchain world today is that of virtual-machine blockchains like Ethereum, where development generally revolves around building decentralized applications on top of an existing blockchain as a set of smart contracts. While smart contracts can be very good for some use cases like single-use applications (e.g. ICOs), they often fall short for building complex decentralized platforms. More generally, smart contracts can be limiting in terms of flexibility, sovereignty and performance.
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Application-specific blockchains offer a radically different development paradigm than virtual-machine blockchains. An application-specific blockchain is a blockchain customized to operate a single application: developers have all the freedom to make the design decisions required for the application to run optimally. They can also provide better sovereignty, security and performance.
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@@ -20,10 +20,10 @@ Learn more about [application-specific blockchains](./why-app-specific.md).
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## Why the Cosmos SDK
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The Cosmos SDK is the most advanced framework for building custom application-specific blockchains today. Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider building your decentralised application with the Cosmos SDK:
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The Cosmos SDK is the most advanced framework for building custom application-specific blockchains today. Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider building your decentralized application with the Cosmos SDK:
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* The default consensus engine available within the Cosmos SDK is [Tendermint Core](https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint). Tendermint is the most (and only) mature BFT consensus engine in existence. It is widely used across the industry and is considered the gold standard consensus engine for building Proof-of-Stake systems.
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* The Cosmos SDK is open source and designed to make it easy to build blockchains out of composable [modules](../../x/). As the ecosystem of open source Cosmos SDK modules grows, it will become increasingly easier to build complex decentralised platforms with it.
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* The Cosmos SDK is open-source and designed to make it easy to build blockchains out of composable [modules](../../x/). As the ecosystem of open-source Cosmos SDK modules grows, it will become increasingly easier to build complex decentralized platforms with it.
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* The Cosmos SDK is inspired by capabilities-based security, and informed by years of wrestling with blockchain state-machines. This makes the Cosmos SDK a very secure environment to build blockchains.
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* Most importantly, the Cosmos SDK has already been used to build many application-specific blockchains that are already in production. Among others, we can cite [Cosmos Hub](https://hub.cosmos.network), [IRIS Hub](https://irisnet.org), [Binance Chain](https://docs.binance.org/), [Terra](https://terra.money/) or [Kava](https://www.kava.io/). [Many more](https://cosmos.network/ecosystem) are building on the Cosmos SDK.
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* `CheckTx`: When a transaction is received by Tendermint Core, it is passed to the application to check if a few basic requirements are met. `CheckTx` is used to protect the mempool of full-nodes against spam transactions. The [middlewares](../basics/gas-fees.md#middleware) `CheckTx` are used to execute a series of validation steps such as checking for sufficient fees and validating the signatures. If the checks are valid, the transaction is added to the [mempool](https://docs.tendermint.com/v0.34/tendermint-core/mempool.html#mempool) and relayed to peer nodes. Note that transactions are not processed (i.e. no modification of the state occurs) with `CheckTx` since they have not been included in a block yet.
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* `DeliverTx`: When a [valid block](https://docs.tendermint.com/v0.34/spec/blockchain/blockchain.html#validation) is received by Tendermint Core, each transaction in the block is passed to the application via `DeliverTx` in order to be processed. It is during this stage that the state transitions occur. The `middleware` executes its defined `DeliverTx`, along with the actual [`Msg` service](../building-modules/msg-services.md) RPC for each message in the transaction.
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* `BeginBlock`/`EndBlock`: These messages are executed at the beginning and the end of each block, whether the block contains transaction or not. It is useful to trigger automatic execution of logic. Proceed with caution though, as computationally expensive loops could slow down your blockchain, or even freeze it if the loop is infinite.
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* `BeginBlock`/`EndBlock`: These messages are executed at the beginning and the end of each block, whether the block contains transactions or not. It is useful to trigger automatic execution of logic. Proceed with caution though, as computationally expensive loops could slow down your blockchain, or even freeze it if the loop is infinite.
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Find a more detailed view of the ABCI methods from the [Tendermint docs](https://docs.tendermint.com/v0.35/introduction/what-is-tendermint.html#abci-overview).
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@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ This document explains what application-specific blockchains are, and why develo
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## What are application-specific blockchains
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Application-specific blockchains are blockchains customized to operate a single application. Instead of building a decentralised application on top of an underlying blockchain like Ethereum, developers build their own blockchain from the ground up. This means building a full-node client, a light-client, and all the necessary interfaces (CLI, REST, ...) to interact with the nodes.
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Application-specific blockchains are blockchains customized to operate a single application. Instead of building a decentralized application on top of an underlying blockchain like Ethereum, developers build their own blockchain from the ground up. This means building a full-node client, a light-client, and all the necessary interfaces (CLI, REST, ...) to interact with the nodes.
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```text
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^ +-------------------------------+ ^
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## What are the shortcomings of Smart Contracts
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Virtual-machine blockchains like Ethereum addressed the demand for more programmability back in 2014. At the time, the options available for building decentralised applications were quite limited. Most developers would build on top of the complex and limited Bitcoin scripting language, or fork the Bitcoin codebase which was hard to work with and customize.
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Virtual-machine blockchains like Ethereum addressed the demand for more programmability back in 2014. At the time, the options available for building decentralized applications were quite limited. Most developers would build on top of the complex and limited Bitcoin scripting language, or fork the Bitcoin codebase which was hard to work with and customize.
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Virtual-machine blockchains came in with a new value proposition. Their state-machine incorporates a virtual-machine that is able to interpret turing-complete programs called Smart Contracts. These Smart Contracts are very good for use cases like one-time events (e.g. ICOs), but they can fall short for building complex decentralised platforms. Here is why:
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Virtual-machine blockchains came in with a new value proposition. Their state-machine incorporates a virtual-machine that is able to interpret turing-complete programs called Smart Contracts. These Smart Contracts are very good for use cases like one-time events (e.g. ICOs), but they can fall short for building complex decentralized platforms. Here is why:
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* Smart Contracts are generally developed with specific programming languages that can be interpreted by the underlying virtual-machine. These programming languages are often immature and inherently limited by the constraints of the virtual-machine itself. For example, the Ethereum Virtual Machine does not allow developers to implement automatic execution of code. Developers are also limited to the account-based system of the EVM, and they can only choose from a limited set of functions for their cryptographic operations. These are examples, but they hint at the lack of **flexibility** that a smart contract environment often entails.
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* Smart Contracts are all run by the same virtual machine. This means that they compete for resources, which can severely restrain **performance**. And even if the state-machine were to be split in multiple subsets (e.g. via sharding), Smart Contracts would still need to be interpeted by a virtual machine, which would limit performance compared to a native application implemented at state-machine level (our benchmarks show an improvement on the order of 10x in performance when the virtual-machine is removed).
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* Another issue with the fact that Smart Contracts share the same underlying environment is the resulting limitation in **sovereignty**. A decentralised application is an ecosystem that involves multiple players. If the application is built on a general-purpose virtual-machine blockchain, stakeholders have very limited sovereignty over their application, and are ultimately superseded by the governance of the underlying blockchain. If there is a bug in the application, very little can be done about it.
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* Smart Contracts are all run by the same virtual machine. This means that they compete for resources, which can severely restrain **performance**. And even if the state-machine were to be split in multiple subsets (e.g. via sharding), Smart Contracts would still need to be interpreted by a virtual machine, which would limit performance compared to a native application implemented at state-machine level (our benchmarks show an improvement on the order of 10x in performance when the virtual-machine is removed).
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* Another issue with the fact that Smart Contracts share the same underlying environment is the resulting limitation in **sovereignty**. A decentralized application is an ecosystem that involves multiple players. If the application is built on a general-purpose virtual-machine blockchain, stakeholders have very limited sovereignty over their application, and are ultimately superseded by the governance of the underlying blockchain. If there is a bug in the application, very little can be done about it.
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Application-Specific Blockchains are designed to address these shortcomings.
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@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ The list above contains a few examples that show how much flexibility applicatio
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### Performance
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Decentralised applications built with Smart Contracts are inherently capped in performance by the underlying environment. For a decentralised application to optimise performance, it needs to be built as an application-specific blockchain. Next are some of the benefits an application-specific blockchain brings in terms of performance:
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decentralized applications built with Smart Contracts are inherently capped in performance by the underlying environment. For a decentralized application to optimise performance, it needs to be built as an application-specific blockchain. Next are some of the benefits an application-specific blockchain brings in terms of performance:
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* Developers of application-specific blockchains can choose to operate with a novel consensus engine such as Tendermint BFT. Compared to Proof-of-Work (used by most virtual-machine blockchains today), it offers significant gains in throughput.
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* An application-specific blockchain only operates a single application, so that the application does not compete with others for computation and storage. This is the opposite of most non-sharded virtual-machine blockchains today, where smart contracts all compete for computation and storage.
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### Sovereignty
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One of the major benefits of application-specific blockchains is sovereignty. A decentralised application is an ecosystem that involves many actors: users, developers, third-party services, and more. When developers build on virtual-machine blockchain where many decentralised applications coexist, the community of the application is different than the community of the underlying blockchain, and the latter supersedes the former in the governance process. If there is a bug or if a new feature is needed, stakeholders of the application have very little leeway to upgrade the code. If the community of the underlying blockchain refuses to act, nothing can happen.
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One of the major benefits of application-specific blockchains is sovereignty. A decentralized application is an ecosystem that involves many actors: users, developers, third-party services, and more. When developers build on virtual-machine blockchain where many decentralized applications coexist, the community of the application is different than the community of the underlying blockchain, and the latter supersedes the former in the governance process. If there is a bug or if a new feature is needed, stakeholders of the application have very little leeway to upgrade the code. If the community of the underlying blockchain refuses to act, nothing can happen.
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The fundamental issue here is that the governance of the application and the governance of the network are not aligned. This issue is solved by application-specific blockchains. Because application-specific blockchains specialize to operate a single application, stakeholders of the application have full control over the entire chain. This ensures that the community will not be stuck if a bug is discovered, and that it has the freedom to choose how it is going to evolve.
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