Unveiling Juno Blockchain: An Overview
Juno is a layer one blockchain designed for crunching the Cosmos ecosystem’s smart contracts. It is entirely community governed and designed to help solve congestion issues on the Cosmos network by resolving smart contracts off-chain.
Although designed for handling smart contracts, Juno is a fully independent blockchain that processes smart contracts for any blockchain created with the Cosmos Software Development Kit.
How does Juno work?
As it is a fully sovereign blockchain, the JUNO token has various uses, including securing its Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism and participation in its governance protocol.
In addition, the JUNO token can be used to pay for transfer fees, also known as gas fees, as collateral in various smart contract use cases and as a centralizing token for any apps on its platform.
In short, it is the primary token of its ecosystem, the same way ETH is the primary token for the Ethereum Network.
What makes Juno unique?
JUNO simply stands out because of its full interoperability with the Cosmos ecosystem, having been built through the Cosmos SDK with the IBC protocol in mind.
The Cosmos Software Development Kit, or Cosmos SDK, is the world’s most popular framework for crypto projects. With over $6 billion in assets managed on public blockchains built through this framework.
As such, Juno can handle any contracts developed on any of the networks built using the Cosmos SDK and accepts the Inter-Blockchain Protocol, giving it utility among many projects, apps, and platforms.
The IBC is an open-source protocol for relaying data between blockchains and connecting them together. A good way to think of Juno would be as a smart contract hub of the Cosmos ecosystem.
This is because it is here where a lot of the Cosmos-based smart contracts are processed.
JUNO Tokenomics
As a blockchain, Juno’s purpose is to solve smart contract bottlenecks which limit scalability and create high costs for transactions and deployment, frustrating both developers and users.
Juno offers an accessible platform for developers worldwide to create secure, decentralized applications. As a dedicated smart contract hub for the Cosmos ecosystem, upon launch, Juno decided to airdrop almost half of its genesis supply to Cosmos’ ATOM holders at a ratio of 1:1.
According to Juno’s genesis supply breakdown, around 47% was airdropped to ATOM holders, about 30% was locked on-chain through community pools, and 15% went towards the core development and vested over a 12-year schedule. A little under 4% went towards JunoHacks, 50% of which has now been distributed.
Finally, just under 3% went towards paying the Core-1 Team. However, this has also got a lengthy 12-year vesting period.
Essentially, this means you might own 0.1% of all the JUNO in circulation, but the rate at which it is released to you is pre-defined and drip-fed over 12 years, to ensure there is no unnecessary sell pressure placed on the JUNO token itself.
JUNO will eventually become a deflationary asset in 2033.
The hope is that JUNO will be in such widespread use by this time that the price will increase as people scramble to collect JUNO for running their various smart contract applications.