Jae Kwon is a software engineer known for creating Tendermint and co-founding Cosmos with Ethan Buchman. He later founded NewTendermint and Gno.land. Gno.land mainnet, chain ID gnoland-1, launched on 2026-09-12 as a fresh chain rather than a hard fork of the earlier betanet.
Background
Kwon earned a computer science degree from Cornell University and worked as a software engineer at Yelp. His own biography describes his early work on Tendermint and the later Gno project.
Tendermint and Cosmos
Kwon published the Tendermint consensus paper in 2014 and co-founded the Cosmos project with Ethan Buchman. Their 2016 Cosmos white paper described an interconnected network of sovereign blockchains. Tendermint, the Cosmos SDK, and the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol are related parts of the wider ecosystem; they should not be attributed to Kwon alone.
Gno.land
After stepping away from day-to-day leadership at Tendermint in 2020, Kwon founded NewTendermint and began developing Gno.land. Gno is a deterministic, Go-like smart-contract language. The project documentation records the gnoland-1 mainnet launch on September 12, 2026, as a new chain rather than a continuation of betanet.
Key Dates
- 2014 — Kwon publishes the Tendermint consensus paper and begins the Cosmos project with Ethan Buchman.
- 2016 — The Cosmos white paper sets out a vision for interconnected sovereign blockchains.
- 2020 — Kwon steps down from his day-to-day leadership role at Tendermint Inc.
- 2022 — He begins the NewTendermint and Gno.land work.
- 2026-09-12 — Gno.land mainnet launches as the new gnoland-1 chain.
Related Terms
See Also
- How Do Crypto Bridges Work, and Why Are They Such a Hack Target?
- Why DAO Governance Votes Often Fall Short
- Are Layer 2 Networks Actually Decentralized?
- Swap crypto with ChangeNOW
Sources
- Jae Kwon biography — summarizes Kwon’s education, early work, Tendermint history, and Gno.land role.
- Cosmos white paper on the official Cosmos GitHub — identifies Kwon and Buchman as the authors of the early Cosmos vision.
- Gno.land network documentation — records the gnoland-1 mainnet launch date and clarifies that it is a fresh chain.