The Interchain Stack solves several primary problems in blockchain: sovereignty, scalability, sustainability, and modularity.

Sovereignty: many blockchain architectures encourage all economic activity to take place on a single chain. This approach leads to centralization in governance, ongoing costs for smart contract developers who build on these chains, and high fees for users of congested chains. By contrast, the Interchain Stack enables developers to build sovereign blockchain apps that freely relate and transact to other chains.

Scalability: no matter how many transactions per second a blockchain can claim, with a sovereign appchain, developers can always improve throughput with horizontal scalability. Scalability can be achieved by (1) duplicating a blockchain to relieve congestion or (2) splitting up the apps on a blockchain into multiple application-specific blockchains. Interchain token transfers allow these multiple chains to continue as one network.

Sustainability: blockchains built with the Interchain Stack use an efficient Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm for securing the network: Comet BFT. This PoS algorithm reduces the Cosmos carbon footprint by more than 99% compared to Proof-of-Work blockchains like Bitcoin that has a carbon footprint roughly the size of Switzerland.

Modularity: dozens of new chains are coming online every month, each with their own custom needs and use cases. The Interchain Stack strives to enable a high level of modularity, enabling developers to swap in and out different consensus algorithms, modules, and frameworks as needed. Today, the Interchain Stack is even compatible with the EVM, allowing EVM-based appchains and rollups with Cosmos SDK.