Delphi Labs is shifting its research focus to a new crypto ecosystem… and it’s not Ethereum
Crypto research firm Delphi Digital has shifted the focus of its research and development protocol arm Delphi Labs to the Cosmos ecosystem.
Delphi Labs is Delphi Digital’s protocol R&D arm, with a team of about 50 that aims to incubate “Web3 primitives.” The R&D arm had previously been focused on research and development of protocols on Terra, but was forced to look more closely at other ecosystems after the collapse in May.
Delphi Digital is an independent research and investment company founded in 2018 offering institutional analysis of the digital asset market, which launched its Labs wing in 2021.
In a lengthy report published on September 8, Delphi Digital said its team analyzed a number of different blockchain ecosystems to determine which were best suited for their needs, particularly in relation to decentralized finance (DeFi), but ultimately decided on The Cosmos ecosystem. .
In the 3 months since the Terra collapse, the Delphi Labs team has been hard at work figuring out what we see as the future of DeFi, what platform best enables this, and ultimately where we should best focus our building efforts going forward https:/ / t.co/7mZAkKc8XK
— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) 8 September 2022
Describing it as “an ecosystem of interoperable blockchains,” Delphi Labs decided Cosmos was the best ecosystem to focus its R&D on. It pointed to Cosmos’ ability to take advantage of a growing number of app chains and cross-chain interoperability as major positives.
The firm also outlined speed, chain liquidity, decentralization, cross-chain interoperability, technical maturity and code portability as key factors in its decision to back Cosmos, despite the ecosystem being somewhat lacking compared to competitors like Ethereum.
Delphi Digital suggested that despite Ethereum hosting the majority of DeFi apps, the speed and cost of using the Ethereum base layer is the main drawback of the blockchain, resulting in a poor user experience.
Related: Why interoperability is key to blockchain technology’s mass adoption
The report noted that rollups allow Ethereum to overcome this problem, but sees interoperability between chains and outage or latency issues as major issues.
Polygon (MATIC), Optimism (OP), Starknet (STARKNET), Cosmos (ATOM), Avalanche (AVAX), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), Near (NEAR) and Celestia (CELT) were all compared within report, with Cosmos scoring the highest overall.
