Ignite (Company)
Basics
- The company behind CometBFT (Tendermint consensus).
- Fka Tendermint. Got rebranded to Ignite on 23-2-2022: "Ignite says it’s now a “product-first” company focused on its Cosmos portfolio manager and blockchain development platform."
Audits & Exploits
- Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].
Bugs/Exploits
- From Blockthreat (7-4-2022):
"Tendermint fixed a race condition which allowed one to bypass faucet withdrawal limits after it was responsibly disclosed by CredShield."
Tech
- Their own first product built on Tendermint is Cosmos, the internet of blockchains.
- Tendermint is a practical Byzantine fault tolerant algorithm that uses PoS as its validator set selection method.
- “A general purpose Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithm for running replicated state machines over the internet in possibly adversarial conditions. Tendermint lets you build arbitrary state machines in any programming language, whether that is a key-value store in Go, a voting system in C++, or a cryptocurrency in OCaml. In each case, the application implements a simple interface, and Tendermint handles the rest, including connecting to peers, syncing the latest state, gossipping transactions, and maintaining a consistent log of transactions.”
- For a comparison between PBFT, Tendermint, SBFT and HotStuff look here.
- Has a project called Governmint, Ethan proclaimed: "Governments will be trown over by Governmint!"
- companies building on Tendermint include Blockfreight, Vidroll, REN and Stratumn
- Tendermint X: open-source, performant ZK Tendermint light client for the EVM, built by Succinct (19-12-2023).
Internal Strife
"Internal tensions have begun to spill out into public view, precipitated by a story from Decrypt on Jan. 29 reporting Kwon was stepping down as CEO to focus on a new project.
A source with knowledge of the matter tells CoinDesk Kwon is not only the CEO of Tendermint (which is also known as All in Bits Inc.), he is also the sole board member. That means all the authority in a company that has backing from Bain Capital Ventures, Paradigm and 1confirmation rests in Kwon. Whether that’s still the case remains unknown. Cosmos responded to a request for comment by asking that CoinDesk submit questions in writing, but then declined to answer them.
Kwon responded to Decrypt’s report by calling it "FUD" Meanwhile, people within Kwon’s company have come to find his behavior untenable [he has for instance been erratic on twitter talking about the apocalypse], according to the same source speaking on the condition of anonymity. This has been raised with him multiple ways internally, the source said, though until this week no one felt safe going public with their concerns. On Monday, Zaki Manian, director of Tendermint Labs, went public with his position in a strongly worded thread on Twitter. Later in the thread, Manian writes, "For the past month, Jae has subjected every internal communication channel to religious discrimination, loyalty tests and abusive rants."
Team, Funding, etc.
- Tendermint Inc. = All in Bits
- From a post about restructuring (19-2-2020):
"Tendermint Inc will part ways with its IBC and Tendermint Core teams as they start a new, independent Berlin-based GmbH, with the support and sponsorship from the Interchain Foundation (ICF)." The post also talks about the specific people going away and a number of departures and following startups.
- Peng Zhong; CEO (29-3-2021)
- Kwon, Jae; (ex) CEO & founder. Stepped down and stayed as member of Interchain, as 'part of decentralization' (30-1-2020) some people doubt the validity of this reason.
- Buchman, Ethan; cto co-founder, lead engineer left to start Informal Systems.
- Christopher Goes; a protocol developer & researcher at Tendermint/Cosmos (co-founder at Cryptium Labs)
- Alessio Treglia; CTO, Alessio joined Tendermint in 2018 as Senior Technical Consultant. He was later promoted to Director of Engineering & VP of Engineering. And as of 2022, Alessio is the CTO of Ignite (Formerly Tendermint).
Funding
- Gets funding from Interchain (of which Jae Kwon is the president and Ethan Buchman the vice-president)
- Has backing from Bain Capital Ventures, Paradigm and 1confirmation (Of Cosmos’ investors, 1confirmation has replied (2-2020) to CoinDesk about the Jae Kwon controversy, noting internal tensions can be “a positive signal.”)
- Is part of the portfolio (9-3-2020) of 1confirmation.
Tendermint Ventures
Basics
"The company says the Tendermint Ventures fund, denominated in ATOM and IRIS tokens, will be the largest in the Cosmos ecosystem. “Tendermint Ventures is similar to ConsenSys Ventures,” Peng said. “We’re going to identify promising projects, building using Cosmos tech and provide venture capital to accelerate their growth.”"
Investments
Team
- Jin Kwon; the Tendermint chief of staff
