About Juno (JUNO)

Built with the Cosmos development toolset, SDK, Juno facilitates the creation of interoperable smart contracts and dApps.

JUNO is the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network’s native asset used to secure and govern it.  JUNO could be considered the fuel for all of the interoperable smart contracts deployed in the Juno project ecosystem which is described as a “sister” hub to Cosmos which itself is often called a hub of ecosystems. Quite the universe, indeed.

According to project documentation, Juno smart contracts can be used to create a wide range of applications, including DeFi protocols, metaverse/gaming platforms and NFT marketplaces.

A project-authored Medium post explains how Juno leverages Tendermint BFT consensus to reach agreement on the network. As a member of the Cosmos ecosystem, JUNO utilizes the network’s Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol to interact and share information with other Cosmos-integrated platforms.

Per Switcheo, smart contracts deployed on Juno are connected to the IBC as well, creating an interoperable environment with viability of contracts spanning across all Cosmos-based networks.

As of November 2022, Juno supported the development of over 50 decentralized applications including a native DEX, JUNOSwap. The network is currently governed by the JUNO network DAO.

Juno is designed to act as a cross-chain smart contract hub within the Cosmos ecosystem. CosmWasm is Juno’s native smart contract platform. Powered by the powerful WebAssembley (WASM) virtual machine, CosmWasm enables developers to actively code smart contracts in Rust, a feature not previously available in the Cosmos ecosystem. This functionality is facilitated by WASMs role as an intermediary language, Messari explained. 

When was JUNO created and how much was it worth?

Juno is a community-driven initiative involving various developers, validators, and delegators within the Cosmos ecosystem. Messari research explained that Juno was built with the goal of preserving Cosmos’s interoperability, performance and reliability while simultaneous creating a kind of sister platform to offload ATOM’s smart contract development processes.

As a community-led project, Juno has not received outside funding from industry backers. Thus, the platform’s native asset JUNO was not subjected to a private or public token sale.

The initial JUNO distribution in October 2021 saw tokens airdropped to eligible ATOM stakers. According to documentation, the airdrop coincided with the release of Juno’s mainnet.   

CoinGecko data shows that JUNO initially settled around $10 following its launch. Then it increased to $15.65 in a matter of a few days before losing roughly 40% of its value shortly thereafter. This price volatility ultimately set the stage for a rally beginning in late September of 2021 which saw the token increase by more than 400% to an all-time high of $45.74.

JUNO’s price took a nosedive in the wake of an April 2022 hacking incident but for the most part its trajectory has been heavily impacted by growing market uncertainty in the crypto market overall.

 As of November 2022, JUNO was trading for less than $3.

How is the price of JUNO determined?

Juno’s price is partially a factor of its deflationary nature. Only 185.5 million JUNO tokens will ever exist, 63 million of which are currently in circulation. In terms of tokenomics, roughly 47% of JUNO’s total supply was released via airdrop to eligible ATOM token stakers, and another 30.8% allocated to a community pool. Some 15.5% of supply was reserved for core development efforts, while an additional 3.66% was sent to JunoHacks, the platform’s bug bounty program. All remaining supply was disseminated to Juno’s core development team.

Why does JUNO have value?

Through its integration with Cosmos and the IBC, Juno is able to facilitate the development of interoperable smart contracts and dApps. The network seems poised to play a major role as Cosmos’s core smart contract development hub. But what makes JUNO value so viable is its unique perch in the crypto space as a layer-1 blockchain project that is entirely community-driven, also a risk factor given Juno’s infancy and as evidenced some out-of-the-gate missteps.

Is JUNO secure?

JUNO and its parent protocol are both members of the Cosmos ecosystem, a network generally noted for its robust security. According to the Juno website, CosmWasm allows software written in different languages via different programs to securely interact on the network. But there have been issues. The network has been hit by attacks. A hack in spring of 2022 was deemed to have been started by a malicious smart contract hiding in plain sight, masked to look like a simple program, Currency.com said. A few weeks after the attack, a typo, made by Juno developers, inadvertently moved $36 million worth of seized JUNO tokens to an inaccessible wallet.

What are the main benefits of JUNO? 

• JUNO facilitates the creation of interoperable smart contracts and dApps. Thus far, JUNO has supported the development of some 50 dApps with utility spanning DeFi, metaverse/gaming and NFTs.
• JUNO’s native smart contract platform CosmWasm is integrated with the WebAssembly (WASM) virtual machine, a functionality which allows developers to program contracts in a variety of languages, including Rust.
• Juno’s CosmWasm development software is said to help eliminate many of the obstacles that hold back other smart contract ecosystems. These obstacles include high fees, centralized governance and poor scalability. 

What do critics say about JUNO?

That it’s playing in a crowded space with competition from established smart contract platforms like Ethereum and Polkadot.

In April 2022, Juno endured a hack, knocking it offline for more than a day and raising questions. And then in August of 2022 the network drew criticism after it decided to remove funds from a suspicious account using a controversial governance vote, Currency.com said.