A Note on the Future of the Cosmos Hub

Disclaimer : I am relatively new to building in Cosmos (more on my story here ), and have been building Duality for the past year+. There is also currently a proposal in progress for Neutron to acquire Duality which may be perceived as a conflict of interest. I ask that you please read as much as possible if you’re interested in commenting on it, this way we can have an informed, nuanced discussion on it. Also not sure if I have to say this or not but just in case : this is not financial advice. Here goes nothing ! The Value of Focus Tldr : Focus is the most important but scarcest resource. A piece of conventional startup wisdom that has been given to me more times than I can count is : more companies die of indigestion than starvation. When you’re working at a startup for the first time and someone tells you this, it sounds incredibly counterintuitive. How could it be the case that more startups fail from doing too much ! Clearly you’d be more likely to never make a shot if you don’t take enough shots on goal. But the reality is resources at startups are scarce : runways are finite and stagnation kills attention. To illustrate why scarcity matters, consider companies…

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Just appreciating the thoughtfulness of this post. Still mulling over my thoughts - but well done ser.

Thank you ! Looking forward to your feedback

This is a great post and overall it’s elegantly expresses the thoughts and concerns of the general consensus of the community here. I’m still digesting everything but it’s a great initiative to get some ideas for on the best course of action moving forward.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed in duality moving to neutron because it seems as the hub is getting an unfair deal here however that doesn’t mean I’m strongly against it either nor that it should get pushback on it’s implementation. Doing nothing is far worse and duality whether a consumer chain or a consumer dapp it still is a net positive to AEZ.

really lovely post. I am digesting things, but appreciated the honest appraisal of where the hub can, and CANNOT differentiate and capitalize to fuel growth and success.

Seems to me that we are reaching new heights in terms of cosmos hub forum content.

I’m very open to this even though the hub isn’t getting the best deal, it’s a lot better than doing nothing. You have my vote

FYI this isn’t a proposal proposal, there just weren’t any better tags.

I do want to compile some community review and feedback and then aggregate it into a few, separate formal proposals !

Good stuff. Well articulated ideas. Looks like the Hub is finally starting to gather some momentum towards a possible action plan.

Looking forward to formal proposals.

thanks for that post Elijah and for the (surestimated!) shoutout (: really glad you wrote this. finally, we can say at least Atom and more broadly Cosmos are still attracting well-made-minds ! just my two cents on «optimistic governance»: • the oversight committee needs to be truly independant. we’re often seeing oversights members that are, even with no direct conflict of interests, in the close circle of parallel projects, validators with interests into competitors, or multi-hats folk. We should avoid that. That’s complicated but we should. • the committees must have a define mandate period. every X months, the general governance should be able to renew/“fire” them. Even if the objectives one should last longer. There is not enough rotation imo, in many aspects of the current gov model (same for how valsets work imo but another topic!). The oversight committees should be diversified. Technical folks obviously, economists, lawyers, but also… people with cultural ethos. Philosophical strengths. And why not…RWA (Real World Agent) who have nothing to do with blockchains in general. Anyway. Thanks again, i hope this “note” is going to be used as a let’s do it…

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Hi, thank you @Elijah for this insightful post that points to relevant topics. It is true that without focus (a specific goal), every path is the right path. What makes Cosmos special is its decentralized character, meaning there are many different teams, stakeholders, and motivations in the ecosystem. Thus, setting a common goal for public goods can be challenging (e.g., ATOM 2.0, CosmWasm). It would be an interesting exercise for the entire ecosystem to identify where we align and on which level. If we assume that the general sentiment is that ATOM should survive and thrive, then focusing on the “moneyness” of ATOM with a security component is logical. An analogy to natural regeneration processes in a forest could be helpful. The Cosmos HUB could function as the main part of “seed production to seedling establishment” within the broader connected Cosmos ecosystem. And recognizing that the mountain will not come to Mohammed, we could: • Conduct a more comprehensive survey about goals, high-level vision, etc. during Cosmoverse. • Identify developers who are highlighting painful experiences (for instance, https://twitter.com/stablechen/status/1693640162150846702 ) and…

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What a great post @Elijah !
I fully support @tom supplement and like to add something: It’s absolutely true that there is no rotation and besides the already mentioned defined mandate periods there should also be a maximum. Comparable to the PotUS it should be mandatory to step down and make room for new blood after a fixed period.
It might also be an idea to implement multiple oversight comittees assigned randomly to upcoming funds to further obviate corruption.

Thanks for this @Elijah I’ll keep the objective function and the broader vision for the Cosmos Hub for later (we have a roadmap in the works) and share some thoughts on the oversight committee: • There should be multiple oversight committees. It could be one per DAO, or multiple DAOs could use the same one, but it shouldn’t be the same people overseeing all DAOs • Oversight committees should have their own voice, separate from the DAOs they are tasked to evaluate. They would be responsible to produce regular reports on the performance of the DAO and they could use the social media channels of the Cosmos Hub to publish them • The votes of all committee members should be public, ideally on-chain. The community should be able to access the voting history of any particular member very easily • It should be straightforward to remove specific people from any oversight committee. Other committee members should be able to vote on that, and the community as well • In fact, the expectation should be that the oversight committee will change over time so that only the most engaged members stay on I’ll also note that committees are not a silver bullet. The ICF had to discontinue…

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Elijah: Process power ( ) : the Hub is one of the most successful on-chain institutions ever and is made up of many passionate stakeholders. The definition stated for process power is ‘‘ Process power : benefits from existing organizational structures and processes’’. Whilst I agree that as a decentralised organisation, the Cosmos Hub has seen relative success from the perspective of various passionate stakeholders, co-ordinating with one another to take the Hub forward in its journey as a start up, I also believe a lot of process power is lost due to the lack of coordination and alignment between stakeholders and their vision and/or internal objectives for the Hub. So I believe this is an area that needs to be worked on tremendously to realise the Process Power that the hub has and is able to utilise. Elijah: Counter positioning ( ) : the Hub is the most secure chain within the IBC connected ecosystem. Currently the Hub has strong counter positioning as one of its foundations for success, however I also believe that this positioning is not a competitive moat. The way I see it is that its positioning as the most secure chain within the IBC connected…

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Really excellent post.

This is a wonderful post. Thanks for this @Elijah . Given that there is renewed interest in governance accountability. I’ll add a specification (still needs a lot of work) that I’d written a while ago into the mix in case anyone would like to have a look and use that as a springboard for a type of oversight committee that has subject expertise without neglecting representative community involvement. cc: @tom @Thyborg github.com alatuszam/gov/blob/main/starwatchers.md ``` # Overview ### Problem Statement **Premise:** Through a community pool spend proposal, the Cosmos community pool can be accessed via an on-chain vote. If the vote passes, funding is immediately transferred from the community pool to the recipient wallet. **Problem:** ATOM stakeholders seek transparency and accountability for projects that they fund via the community pool. **Solution:** A community-facilitated and sortition-oriented watchdog committee can provide a viable and easily accessible solution for holding projects accountable for the appropriation of Cosmos Hub common resources. ### One-liner The Cosmos Hub community pool has common-pool-resource attributes but lacks key…

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the oversight committee needs to be truly independant. we’re often seeing oversights members that are, even with no direct conflict of interests, in the close circle of parallel projects, validators with interests into competitors, or multi-hats folk. We should avoid that. That’s complicated but we should. Yeah agree, although it will be tough to do perfectly. I also think it needs to be people that are seasoned at making tough decisions just as much as they are thoughtful about the difficulty of nailing something original. I want to nominate you ( @tom ) and @WillB for either (or both). In the mean time I’ll keep my eyes on the lookout for other community members who might be a good fit. Some other people who I’ve found (despite some conflicts of interest) engage in thoughtful conversations maybe against their best (short term) interests are : @effortcapital , @Govmos , @LitBit , @ala.tusz.am . I’m sure there are many others too. Definitely need some more discovery of who everyone thinks would be great and who would actually want to do it. the committees must have a define mandate period. every X months, the general governance should be able to renew/“fire” them. Even…

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It is true that without focus (a specific goal), every path is the right path. What makes Cosmos special is its decentralized character, meaning there are many different teams, stakeholders, and motivations in the ecosystem. Thus, setting a common goal for public goods can be challenging (e.g., ATOM 2.0, CosmWasm). It would be an interesting exercise for the entire ecosystem to identify where we align and on which level.

Really well put.

It’s an impossible task for the community to coordinate in a perfectly focused direction, but this is a strength not a weakness. The goal should be to embrace the decentralization of interests, but within the scope of a common vision.

Great post. I’d agree with most of it and say that just being money/security focused is largely simplifying and doing what cosmos/the ICF has been doing. I know the bear market is rough and there’s a constant chip on the shoulder of ATOM holders when comparing to ETH, but its a top 50 crypto, has been for a long time. Its poised to just keep growing as the ecosystem has more promise now than ever, so thanks for just trying to get some focus on things that fit with the long vision.

Hey Thanks for the response - and all the previous convos we’ve had on related material. There should be multiple oversight committees. It could be one per DAO, or multiple DAOs could use the same one, but it shouldn’t be the same people overseeing all DAOs I agree this is optimal. But it’ll be tough to find the right people for many different jobs that are both qualified and lack conflict of interests. Who are some people you’d nominate ? Oversight committees should have their own voice, separate from the DAOs they are tasked to evaluate. They would be responsible to produce regular reports on the performance of the DAO and they could use the social media channels of the Cosmos Hub to publish them I think this is a great idea. The votes of all committee members should be public, ideally on-chain. The community should be able to access the voting history of any particular member very easily Also agree. It should be straightforward to remove specific people from any oversight committee. Other committee members should be able to vote on that, and the community as well In fact, the expectation should be that the oversight committee will change…

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My dream would be to see a proposal on optimistic governance co-authored by @ala.tusz.am @Thyborg and @tom .

I’m hoping that if I write about it on the forum then it might come true .

I also think the biggest obstacle won’t be designing a good system, it’ll be about finding the right people. I also think that to attract the right people there should be a long-term vesting schedule to the tune of $10k USD in ATOM to make it more attractive for the right candidates to take some time and participate in.

Whilst I agree that as a decentralised organisation, the Cosmos Hub has seen relative success from the perspective of various passionate stakeholders, co-ordinating with one another to take the Hub forward in its journey as a start up, I also believe a lot of process power is lost due to the lack of coordination and alignment between stakeholders and their vision and/or internal objectives for the Hub 100% and I believe this starts with renewing focus. Currently the Hub has strong counter positioning as one of its foundations for success, however I also believe that this positioning is not a competitive moat. Agree this is not a long-term moat. For example - What happens when Ethereum and Solana become IBC enabled ? The Hub will no longer be the most secure IBC connected chain. This is why it is important to start building a unique, powerful feature set. The second would be the ‘Hub Minimalism’ …… it is an important aspect of a agreement between a consumer and provider. All good points. Should the hub want to go after the large Security market, as mentioned in this discussion, then wouldn’t it make sense to reduce these attack surfaces and reduce the risks…

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Thanks for the reference to us ! We are happy to share our insights and will continue doing. But as we run a validator (PRO Delegators) we want to keep a relatively safe distance with governance positions in the Hub. Being part of the discussions seems absolutely OK, being part of the committees directly is another step. Maybe we will be ready to cross that step in the future, but for now we want to remain committed to our technical operator role ahead of the challenges coming with ICS v2-3 etc…

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Elijah: Tldr : Focus is the most important but scarcest resource. This is sooooo right that I couldn’t even say how much I agree with you on that. It’s vastly underestimated and that’s what cause most of capital misallocation in the global crypto industry. Trying to solve too many problems in a centralized fashion is extremely costly indeed. Focus on the other hand forces specialization and skills improvement. This is the reason why we, as a team, see the Cosmos Ecosystem as such a valuable project, capable to solve immensely complex endeavors whilst still having dedicated and very focused teams (the app-chains). This App-chain thesis is the core of having a focus based economy. Each team does what it does best and have to specialize even more as the time pass. At some point in time the competition becomes cooperation as there’s not even a point to try forking and starting a new chain, builders would just collaborate on improving the existing one. This is where the complexities of governance come to the forefront ! These challenges will be very interesting to watch in the coming years. On the ATOM’s role into this we have built a model around shared security that puts…

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This is why we need you on a committee !

I’ll do my best to find the time to add this to the long list of positions that I currently have in and out of cosmos on both the public and private contributions that I make for each of them !
I am still open for discussions and will do my best to offer the most I can to such committee

Yeah don’t feel any pressure to do it. If you have other people in mind feel free to shout them out.

This post was great. It echoes a lot of what many are feeling, but put very eloquently by someone with fresh eyes.

Longtime contributors to Cosmos have obviously made it what it is today (both good and bad), but I think the Hub and Cosmos as a whole need new thought leaders to move it forward. Now we have promising leadership emerging with people like Spaydh and the Duality guys.

There’s a lot of distrust, anxiety and frustration that has built up, and I think what we’ve seen for the Hub is the Atom 2.0 saga will probably be seen as a turning point when we look back. We’ve had time to see what’s broken over the past year, but now we need thoughtful, balanced leaders who build things with purpose and advocate strongly for what the Hub can become.

There’s a lot of distrust, anxiety and frustration that has built up, and I think what we’ve seen for the Hub is the Atom 2.0 saga will probably be seen as a turning point when we look back. We’ve had time to see what’s broken over the past year, but now we need thoughtful, balanced leaders who build things with purpose and advocate strongly for what the Hub can become.

My thoughts almost exactly. It’s time to rebuild trust and realign incentives. That starts with governance reform. Everything else is just noise in my opinion and will distract the Hub from a healthy rebuild.

This has been a great read @Elijah and I really want to emphasise how much I appreciate you taking the time to put this all to words.

I think the work being done by Blockworks (@effortcapital), RMIT and us (Binary Builders) is very much aligned with what you’re saying. I know you’re in touch with effortcapital, but would be eager to start a convo and get some feedback on how some of the modules we’re designing could play into this vision!

Let’s start a convo !

Feel free to dm me on twitter and I’ll coordinate a gc

nice of you @Elijah, i don’t even know if i would be useful to design a governance upgrade proposal, even if i have some ideas.

@ala.tusz.am is waaaaay more measured than i am. and i’m sure he could by just himself revamp the gov philosophy

and there are Binary, Blockworks, etc working on it, let’s hope they share your vision. (:

if i had a strength and only one strength, it’s i’am affiliated with no entity. i have no contract with anybody, and i own not enough tokens at all to be biased.

to be honest if i had to contribute to something, i’d be more than happy to do it being part of an oversight group.
i already have a 40h/week job, and I’m currently launching a company (non crypto related) 10->20h/week… so i have not that much time left free! but 5/6 hours a week would be feasible, if needed.

unfortunately designing a whole new gov system proposal would need way more time to be focused on, so i guess i’d have to decline.

anyway, if my english grammar doesn’t burn your eyes, happy to share some ideas some day.

No pressure.

Not sure that anyone is as measured as @ala.tusz.am so don’t sweat it.

Any help, feedback, ideas are always appreciated regardless of how much time you have to commit.

Good post.

Elijah:

Increasing market capitalization : for example, growing utilization by partnering with lending protocols, stable coins and perpetuals to get ATOM and liquid staked ATOM whitelisted for trade and for collateral in other ecosystems or creating protocols for spending ATOM privately.

How to get ATOM adoption in Ethereum DeFi & rollups? How does any LST cap impact this?

Actually I just posted an application for the ICF Council Member position. Let’s see

Thanks Elijah for such a thoughtful post about the Cosmos Hub. It’s true the Hub needs vision and focus. And I largely agree with yours, that the Hub should focus on a pair of core functions, interchain security and interchain money, and that it should have stronger governance to support itself. This was a big part of what ATOM2.0 tried to say, though you probably said it better As for lack of focus, I see this more as a symptom of what has been a deeper issue for the Hub: its lack of an organized team for most of its life. It really wasn’t until 2023, with the work especially from Informal and Hypha, that a team organization for the Cosmos Hub really stabilized for the first time since basically its launch in 2019. This is a remarkable and poorly understood fact, but contains a lot of explanatory power. I’ve written up a separate thread about that history. I also did a video about it. The Hub has been uniquely decentralized, but also fractured. We can maintain our decentralization, but we need to better organize. The Cosmos project has always put the stack first, and in the organizational turmoil of 2020-2022, it did not have the capacity to maintain a Hub team. Today it…

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First off I really appreciate yours and Billy’s threads as well as your thoughtful response (and kind words). Definitely feel like I have much more context than before but still learning the history as I go. As for lack of focus, I see this more as a symptom of what has been a deeper issue for the Hub: its lack of an organized team for most of its life. I agree. Focus comes from community leadership and coordination. The Cosmos project has always put the stack first, and in the organizational turmoil of 2020-2022, it did not have the capacity to maintain a Hub team. Today it does. But there is still a lot of organizational debt to heal and institutional structure to rebuild if the Hub is going to be a leading DAO. The Hub is already a leader in Decentralization. And it certainly seems to be Autonomous enough. Now it needs to become a leader in Organization. Couldn’t agree more. I think the next few months should be dedicated almost entirely into rebuilding a governance system that the community can trust and that drives productive action. This should start with more discussions on what successful governance systems actually look like. I think looking to Lido and…

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Elijah: To be fair I think the Hub’s community pool has not truly taken responsibility because the community does not have trust in how it is spent. While I’m naturally missing context on the history of everything, this seems to be a recurring theme in conversations I’ve had across the ecosystem. It’s easy to shit on an existing system, and a lot of people like to do it. I’m not saying that the current governance system is perfect, and it’s not really even my goal to defend it here, but it’s naive to think that any other system wouldn’t have just as many vociferous complaints. The theme of the complaints might be different though. If you tried to put together some perfect system of committees, you’d have complaints that a bunch of insiders were embezzling all the money. I agree with you that futarchy could present a market-based alternative, and I would be supportive seeing experiments with it, but as far as i know, it has never really worked at any scale. It seems like it could be tried to control a limited set of parameters with clear KPIs, and I would be very excited to see a concrete proposal for something like that. Elijah: I don’t agree there should…

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It’s easy to shit on an existing system, and a lot of people like to do it. I’m not saying that the current governance system is perfect, and it’s not really even my goal to defend it here, but it’s naive to think that any other system wouldn’t have just as many vociferous complaints. The theme of the complaints might be different though. If you tried to put together some perfect system of committees, you’d have complaints that a bunch of insiders were embezzling all the money. Yeah it’s easy to shit on existing systems, but it’s also necessary to point out the problems in order to address them. My post or intent was never to “shit” on the system either, it was to point out the things that a lot of people seem to be feeling and start a conversation to change it. The fact of the matter is that governance is not working as a well oiled machine and there is a tremendous amount of volatility in the visions that are being presented which leads to uncertainty and unproductivity. I agree with you that futarchy could present a market-based alternative, and I would be supportive seeing experiments with it, but as far as i know, it has never really worked at any scale. It seems like…

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Elijah:

I am sorry but the proposers of the funding have an incredibly strong incentive to not nominate an impartial and a fair committee ever. There is a very obvious and strong collusion vector. And moving the voters out of the default choosing process certainly takes away their ability to have an impact on choosing an impartial committee.

The point is not to appoint a perfectly impartial and wise committee to take responsibility for everything. If the voters find that the output of the team is underwhelming, and that the committee is not asking any hard questions, then they remove them all. I don’t think “collusion” really enters into it, since if they are not effective, they are all out. We need to design systems that function without perfect participants.

Also, I’m not really clear on the exact mechanism that you are proposing. How and when the committee is chosen, etc.

Could you lay out your proposal for an impartial global governance committee here in simple terms? Maybe also nominate some members. Let’s see how this thing could work.

Also, I’m not really clear on the exact mechanism that you are proposing. How and when the committee is chosen, etc. Could you lay out your proposal for an impartial global governance committee here in simple terms? Maybe also nominate some members. Let’s see how this thing could work. Unfortunately there’s not a concrete proposal I’m ready to make yet. I think more research should be done (eg into successful DAOs like Maker and Lido) and more conversations had with community members who have a lot of context on history, culture etc (like yourself @jtremback and @ebuchman ) I think the time spent getting this right though is time well spent. Although I don’t have a concrete proposal the desiderata I have in mind are : • A vision as the north start (eg interchain Money and Security) • Clear intermediate objectives defined, and a system (or policy) by which they can be collaboratively refined when new information comes in • A system (or policy) for accountability by which people are rewarded for success with respect to the predefined (or previously unforeseen) objectives. And also not rewarded for a lack of effectiveness in the predefined (or unforeseen) objectives.…

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I want to avoid funding recipients getting an edge by schmoozing with the right people. There is some degree of that now with validators in governance votes, but I think this is relatively OK, or at least as good as you are going to get in a democracy because the validator set is quite diverse.

I also want to avoid creating a much-heralded governance system which then loses the trust of the voters and is torn down. The system needs to handle failure and change well. The per proposal committees do that because they do not pretend to be a perfect global system.

Editing out the post because I accidentally sent the same thing twice oof

I also want to avoid creating a much-heralded governance system which then loses the trust of the voters and is torn down. The system needs to handle failure and change well. The per proposal committees do that because they do not pretend to be a perfect global system.

I think this is a really good point. We want to have as little complexity as we can, without sacrificing other desirable properties. It’s worse to restart repeatedly than to iterate on something working.

That said I’m only making suggestions based on what I see the incentives as being and have never pretended to have proposed a perfect global system.

The fact of the matter is a great* system can only ever be neared by proper trial and error. By making a tweak, collecting data and then drawing conclusions.

This is why I called the policy suggestions I made “interventions” in the original post. Not because I was proposing an ossified roadmap for perfection, but because what I was proposing is akin to an intervention in an A/B testing*

Elijah: To be fair I think the Hub’s community pool has not truly taken responsibility because the community does not have trust in how it is spent. That’s part of it. But the community pool also never even had enough funds to consider funding core development until early this year, after the percentage was increased from 2 to 10. Of course just because it has the funds doesnt mean it has the structures, or as you say the policies. We need to build those up. Elijah: ICF should also continue to double down on growing the Cosmos Hub Yes this has been a major focus for the ICF, but there are naturally constraints on what it can do. There was also an initial separation of concerns between ICF and AiB, with AiB expected to lead organization of Hub development, as the ICF nurtured the Interchain. With AiB fallout, that all collapsed back on the ICF. A big part of what the ICF had to do the last 3 years was figure out how to re-organize a Hub team in the first place, after the original team and incentive structure broke apart. The ICF is probably not the right body for ultimate accountability of the Hub’s core development teams - that would be better served…

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Appreciate the response.

I liked your framing for this paragraph in particular.

Of course, and they are. Historically this has been difficult to define in the absence of a Hub team. And there has been significant demand on the interchain stack from a diversity of projects across the interchain. We need to find ways for these projects to meaningful support core development of the stack they depend on and currently use for free, and to define the relationships between core stack development and the Hub. The interchain stack also does not have unified technical organization, which makes coordination across the layers more challenging. That said there are new directions for the Hub like AtomicIBC that will for instance drive requirements in CometBFT.

Corollary question : What kind of process would you like to see for defining roadmaps ?

Hey Ethan, thank you for getting involved in the thread.

ebuchman:

But that’s not to say the ICF doesn’t have many other ways to support the Hub and the growing AEZ, and having the Hub take over responsibility for its own development will allow the ICF to focus on other means to support the Hub.

Shouldn’t that be clearly communicated by the ICF so the Hub community knows what it is expected of it ? I don’t remember the Hub’s on-chain governance being really aware of the ICF’s intentions and plans in the past.

The hub can certainly take responsibility and accountability by deciding the direction the AEZ takes and the ICF could provide support to push in that same direction ?

Elijah:

Corollary question : What kind of process would you like to see for defining roadmaps ?

Not sure how useful an answer I can give in this comment. Some collaborative process to align product, engineering, and funding with strong leads and regular community input and feedback. Clear organization of features/directions according to level of development and acceptance by the community with strong standards of acceptance and means to deliberate and decide priorities. Ethereum seems to do a pretty good job.

WillB:

Shouldn’t that be clearly communicated by the ICF so the Hub community knows what it is expected of it ? I don’t remember the Hub’s on-chain governance being really aware of the ICF’s intentions and plans in the past.

Yes ICF has been publishing more about its funding and activities. It should get better at coordinating with community pools.

WillB:

The hub can certainly take responsibility and accountability by deciding the direction the AEZ takes and the ICF could provide support to push in that same direction ?

Hub should fund its own direction and development. ICF should support.

A simple ‘‘support’’ stance would make sense in the context where there is an entity dedicated to the Hub, but there is a void there. Your solution is that the Hub fills its own institutional void. I appreciate the consistency because you basically had the same opinion 30 months ago (February 2021) when you published this under the ICF blog : ‘‘Today the Hub has a minimal set of facilities for decentralized organizing, but these coordination capabilities will need to be expanded significantly to become a premier venue for developing interchain products and services, and bringing them to market. A self-improving social and technical infrastructure will enable the Hub to become a nexus for a wide variety of individuals, collectives, companies, institutions, DAOs, and autonomous agents to work together, aligning incentives toward a common goal.’’ ( The Cosmos Hub is a Port City. A vision of what comes next for the… | by Interchain | Interchain Ecosystem Blog ) Not much changed since then imo. The Hub is still quite disorganized while the ICF seems to be waiting for that to solve itself, while acknowledging that organizing is the hard part. The disputes at Tendermint, AiB, ignite…

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WillB: Not much changed since then imo. The Hub is still quite disorganized while the ICF seems to be waiting for that to solve itself, while acknowledging that organizing is the hard part. Did you not read the thread ? Everything has changed since then! In that time, IG, Hypha, and Informal all built teams dedicated to the Hub (none of which existed at the time of that blogpost!), and the IG and Informal Hub teams merged. Its only really since the start of this year that we finally had a stable, organized, and focused Hub team, and the launch of ICS is a testament to that. You might also recall that much of ATOM2.0 was about better governance systems for the Hub. Alas. WillB: The disputes at Tendermint, AiB, ignite etc. are regularly used as excuses as to why the Hub doesn’t have the economy that it should, 4.5 years after the genesis block. Its not an “excuse”, its history. I’m not trying to dwell in the past or blame anything, but I think the history is important for understanding - rebuilding a team from scratch after a major organizational fallout is hard, time consuming work. We finally got there, but it took 3 years. In the meantime we also…

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Assuming we will drastically reduce inflation. If the Liquid Atom will be limited to , say 25%, then how the stakers should be incentivised to stake enough ATOM to provide enough security for the Hub and the Atom Economic Zone?

i guess there is some brainstorming around that currently.

one solution seems to be a tax on liquid staked Atom, which would make stakers earning better rewards than liquid stakers.

my take is this is not a sufficient incentive, but who knows what’s being cooked.

With proper LSD implementation (including voting proxy), LSD Atom will be always more practical and useful than native one. You can stake LSD Atom in a DeFi and earn double rewards for example (native staking + yield farming).

@Spaydh and I just collaborated on a follow-up post on the role Neutron can play in this process. Feel free to check it out and provide your thoughts.

Co-authored by @Spaydh and @possibility Setting the Stage Tldr : Neutron should lead the charge on the adoption of ATOM within the interchain. I recently wrote a blog post about the need to define clear objectives for the Cosmos Hub. There I...

Thank you for your message and your suggestions. since everyone agrees that focusing on a common goal is the best thing to do. It seems that shared security is part of this path. If I followed the validators’ conversations carefully, it will be difficult to have more than 10 consumer chains in the AEZ. What we can see from the current revenues of STRIDE and NEUTRON is that we are very, very far from the mark. Being a small holder with only 6000 ATOM, since the launch of NTRN I have received 0.4 NTRN, or 0.12 dollars (for 42000 invested). Let’s add this STRD with 0.3 or 0.27 dollars for more than a month. Promising blockchains like duality which was supposed to use ATOM as fee gas and is found on NTRN (where stakers will only receive 25% of the fees and no ATOM used as fee). Even with a massive influx of liquidity and activity * 100 my 42,000 euros of investment only brings in 40 dollars/month. We all agree that this is ridiculous. If we want ATOM inflation to be close to 0, we need additional income to that of simple staking My question is simple: what are the solutions for AEZ to make ATOM a profitable blockchain? Is it possible to increase the maximum consumption chains…

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Hi all, I think one of the hub’s greatest strength as it has entered the security provision market is being opiniated . Ethereum cannot afford to be opiniated, because its very value proposition is credible neutrality. It can’t support a rollup project or team. It can only adjust its roadmap in ways that support all rollups. This has fairly deep implications. For example, it is likely to completely prevent Ethereum from ever implementing some of the opcodes that would make rollups a lot easier and efficient to build, simply because there exists enough different implementations today that making an opcode that benefit them all equally/converging towards a standard is impossible. Cosmos Hub, on the other hand, not only has a reason but also has the means to be opiniated. Replicated Security is horizontal scaling, today, its cost increases linearly with the number of consumer chains. While this might be vastly improved moving forward, this constraints means that, at least in the short term, there is an upper bound to the number of consumer chains that can run before breaking the status quo. As a result, to maximize its expected value, the Hub should try to attract to…

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This has all been so great to read & think about.

Briefly,

My thoughts keep returning to voting. How can community governance work while votes are by nature/design bought & paid for?

And now with the LSM; some votes can be bought (Atom) & then almost immediately sold (stAtom). They could even be malicious outsider votes.

Nothing governance does will be trusted by the community if the community perceives voting to be nothing but a whales & top wallets game.

Quadratic voting looks like something worth examining. (Axelar has an interesting write up on their version of it in their Security Overview docs.)

I’m sure there are many other examples of mitigations that I’m not even aware of.

What are they? Because this is step one.

Even the best governance framework and policy set in the world has to rest on a foundation of voting & elections that anchor trust & fairness.