from Osmocon Video Part 1: 02:00:05 - 02:15:50

@pyramation

tl;dr

Dan is working with Osmosis to build composable front-end tooling for the Cosmos (on the model of the composable SDK/IBC). To get mass adoption, we need good UX, which requires a great dev experience, which is what Dan’s projects: Telescope, OsmoJS, and Cosmology are designed to accomplish. At a high level, Telescope takes the best/most important elements from various Javascript libraries across the Cosmos and weaves them together into a tool that can generate new libraries that automatically piece together the elements that devs want to use: e.g. trade w/ Osmosis, buy carbon credits on Regen, mint NFTs on Stargaze, deploy UIs with Akash. Also, Dan is super-hyped about the open-source, collaborative spirit of the Cosmos and Osmosis.

Dan Lynch personal intro:

-been building since the 90s — design and technology

-first website in 1995

-design houses with autoCAD

-worked in visual effects, computer graphics in LA — worked for Pixar

-went to Berkeley: elec. eng. and comp. sci

-STEM education [lots of visuals here that aren’t on the video]

-got obsessed with data and programming, building tools in browsers

-drag-and-drop databases

-Javascript and the Cosmos

Why the Cosmos?

-scalability and interoperability: 260 apps and tools, 60ish IBC-enabled

-the energy in the Cosmos is amazing, open-source development, collaborative

-no one is withholding innovation to capture value

Wen mass adoption?

-it will be when we have good UX

-which will be when we have good DX (developer experience)

-this requires modularity and composability

-interdependent composable modules: essentially apps need to be the sum of the modules and they should be changeable without breaking the application

Cosmos is already pretty modular—what about the front-end?

-what is the Cosmos SDK of the front-end?

-60+ app-chains in the Cosmos with diff. functions

Anatomy of Cosmos app

-made of Go Cosmos SDK modules & CosmWasm smart contracts

We don’t have this for the front-end:

-devs are constructing front-end software

-not a lot of shared code

-lots of wiring

-current system, so many libraries: SecretJS, AkashJS, RegenJS, OsmoJS

-if every chain has their own JS, do we just require 20 different libraries written by 20 different teams w/ their own opinions

-complexity & simplicity — this is braided complexity

-we want something simpler, more modular and composable

-cf. 50s and 60s punch cards: this was innovative at the time

-what are we doing today that will seem archaic?

-what we’re doing now is not software engineering, but software construction

-boilerplate code, wiring things up—inhibiting innovation

-Electronic Arts (created 1982) - ‘the software artist’ — just dedicated to creating the best software

-right now: the analogous artist would be making Jimi Hendrix plant a tree, harvest the wood, build a guitar and recording studio just to record a song

-that’s what building crypto apps is like right now

Enter Telescope — catalyzing software artists

-metaprogramming: minimize # of lines of code to express a solution

-see Cosmos SDK protos, CosmWasm smart contracts, and all the appchains

-Telescope introspects these: and on the other side you get these multi-chain client packages that work cohesively

-Telescope is the printing press for Cosmos SDK front-ends

-essentially you can combine your favorite appchains to start building dapps in the Cosmos

—so devs don’t have to do manual braiding of all the different libraries, and you don’t have to wait for a new chain to develop its own libraries

-so Telescope is pluggable, composable

Demo: [can’t see slides]

-starts on Terminal, installs Telescope

-install new module called app [bad internet]

[plays video demo, hard to see on recording]

-installs dependencies from Regen, Akash, Osmosis

Telescope auto-generates a Typescript library with all of your Osmosis modules, Juno modules, smart contracts — it auto-completes your way through everything you can do with the application in seconds — and you have all these composable appchain functionalities

Telescope brings modularity to Cosmos front-ends

-Telescope is the glue bt UI building and blockchain communication

-we want to bring web2 devs in to web3

-they’re used to throwing JSON at a server, not encoding things, dealing with protobuffers, that sort of complicated thing

-we want to make all that complexity go away

-we also want to create tooling: to create widgets: trade w/ Osmosis, buy carbon credits on Regen, mint NFTs on Stargaze

Cosmology: on Cosmology DAO — you can swap for COSM tokens, deploy with UIs with Akash, mint NFTs on Stargaze, and buy carbon credits