The Cosmos Hub is built using the Cosmos SDK and to build a binary called gaiad (Gaia Daemon). The Cosmos Hub and other fully sovereign Cosmos SDK blockchains interact with one another using a protocol called IBC that enables Inter-Blockchain Communication. In order to understand what the Cosmos Hub is you can read this introductory explanation.
You can find an introduction to the Cosmos Hub and how to use gaia as a delegator, validator or node operator as well as how governance on the Cosmos Hub works in the documentation.
If you're interested in running a node on the current Cosmos Hub, check out the docs to Join the Cosmos Hub Mainnet.
If you're running a validator node on the Cosmos Hub, reach out to a Janitor on the Cosmos Developers Discord to join the #validators-verified channel.
To participate in or utilize the current Cosmos Hub testnet that upgrades cosmoshub-4 from gaia v5.0.x to gaia v6.0.x, take a look at the vega-testnet repository. This testnet is for the Vega Upgrade expected in Q4 2021. For future upgrades of the Cosmos Hub take a look at the roadmap.
For an overview of upcoming changes to the Cosmos Hub take a look at the Roadmap.
With each version of the Cosmos Hub, the chain is restarted from a new Genesis state.
Mainnet is currently running as cosmoshub-4. Archives of the state of cosmoshub-1, cosmoshub-2, and cosmoshub-3 are available here.
If you are looking for historical genesis files and other data cosmos/mainnet is an excellent resource. Snapshots are also available at cosmos.quicksync.io.
Check out contributing.md for our guidelines & policies for how we develop the Cosmos Hub. Thank you to all those who have contributed!
We have active, helpful communities on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram.
For updates on the Cosmos Hub team's activities follow us on the Cosmos Hub Twitter account.