[Prop#986] [Passed] Funding Hydro development & integrations in 2025

Changelog: 11-Dec-2024 - Posted the original draft, which targeted 18-Dec-2024 for the on-chain proposal // 16-Dec-2024 - Postponed the on-chain proposal to January to allow for a longer discussion period on the forum // 7-Jan-2025 - Reduced the total amount requested following the pre-approval of a $75,000 AADAO grant for third-party ecosystem teams. Updated the “sequence” section to remove the temporary “Funding” multi-sig in favor of a direct transfer to the “Hydro Team” DAO, which will itself fund the “Hydro Grants” DAO // 8-Jan-2025: Updated ATOM conversions (1 ATOM = 6.5 USD), added links to the Q4 report and posted the proposal on-chain In November 2023, the Cosmos Hub funded Informal Systems for 2024 . The Informal Hub team eliminated the Hub’s technical debt and shipped two products: • Forge as a way to permissionlessly launch a chain, solving all the pain points of the past versions of ICS and making it possible for the Hub’s validators to run it in a few clicks. • Hydro as the first decentralized market-maker. Hydro allocates liquidity through sequential auction rounds in which projects attract user votes with tributes Through this process, it became obvious…

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The Hydro team has asked me to share my thoughts on this proposal (as an FYI, I will share my thoughts on any proposal if the community asks me to). Based on my cursory familiarity with Hydro so far, it seems to be highly positive for unlocking ATOM liquidity for the rest of the ecosystem. I was highly impressed that they were able to fill their first and second caps so quickly (the latter in 4 minutes!). If the community is excited to support this protocol as per this proposal, I will make sure we at Interchain Inc. work closely with the Hydro team to have Hydro be a safe and yield-efficient use for community members’ ATOM. My general opinion in evaluating all the products on the Hub is: if it’s working, let’s keep it. I think we should encourage experimentation of all forms. Hydro seems to be working, and I appreciate that the Hydro team will fully separate into its own team to double-down on the product and separate from the rest of Informal’s functions. I also appreciate Hydro’s clear language around an exclusive Cosmos Hub focus, given they are asking for Cosmos Hub funding. In the future, my hope is the Hub can be an exciting enough ecosystem and opportunity for teams…

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Hydro represents a promising opportunity for the Cosmos Hub, both as an innovative project and a tool to strengthen the network. Here’s why its development deserves attention: Hydro’s mechanism of tribute ATOM stakes encourages participants to stake their ATOMs as a prerequisite for engaging with the protocol. This directly increases the amount of staked ATOMs, leading to a more secure and decentralized network by reducing the risk of concentrated control or malicious activity. By creating a compelling use case tied to staking, Hydro has the potential to attract new users to Cosmos Hub. This not only grows the ecosystem but also introduces new stakeholders who are invested in the network’s success. As more people participate in staking, the overall health and security of the ecosystem improve. The higher the staking ratio of ATOMs, the more resistant the network becomes to attacks. Hydro’s model aligns with the principle of security through participation, where increasing the number of active validators and delegators adds layers of protection to the chain. Cosmos is built on the idea of interconnection and decentralized sovereignty. Hydro, by paying tribute through ATOM…

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Like Quasar Said
quote
Hydro’s mechanism of tribute ATOM stakes encourages participants to stake their ATOMs as a prerequisite for engaging with the protocol. This directly increases the amount of staked ATOMs, leading to a more secure and decentralized network by reducing the risk of concentrated control or malicious activity.
End quote

Fully agree with Quasar and the proposal general. Hydro is a killer app on cosmos hub and i can only wish we had more apps of such.

Congrats to everyone making Hydro possible and i wish you become a self funding profitable app. Untill then, agent.kwosh supports the prop.

@Thyborg thanks for sharing the above. Please response to questions in bold Thyborg: The discussion period will be shorter than usual to ensure that the results of the on-chain vote are available by 1-Jan-2025 and product development can proceed without pause. Why? To achieve proposal vote outcome by January 1, 2025: • On-chain proposal must go live ~December 16th • Forum discussion would be limited to 5 days • This is substantially shorter than our standard 14-day discussion period Additionally: • The voting period spans the holiday season (December 24 - January 1) • Community engagement is typically minimal during this time • Even the Hydro team likely has reduced activity during holidays Given the above – What specific development or “product work” requires Jan 1st clarity? How would a Jan 15th decision materially impact product progress, especially during a traditionally quiet period when contributors aren’t working anyway? Thyborg: The Informal Hub team in 2024 consisted of 14 people, split between Forge, Hydro and Hub maintenance. For 2025, we believe it is possible to achieve our Hydro objectives with a reduced team…

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Thyborg:

Over the past couple of weeks, the Hydro team has been helping several Cosmos projects submit well-scoped grant proposals to the AADAO so their applications can be processed before the end of the program.

AADAO Grants committee should have a decision by 12/20.

In view of all of the above, the proposal and the community can jointly benefit from this funding request going on-chain at the end of this month, rather than in 4 days.

Critical prerequisites:

• Receive AADAO’s funding decision (~December 20th)
• Determine legal entity seeking and receiving funds
• Minimize msig signers’ exposure and risk

Lots of questions, and I’m sure you’ll have follow-ups for each of my answers. I suggest you join the Twitter space we’ll organize early next week, we’ll address them there.

Can you share the space details? I’ll try to make it, but the questions are straightforward.
And it’s good to provide your response here for the record.

On-Chain Proposal Timeline

• Why bypass the standard 14-day discussion period? Can you explain the urgency?
• What specific development work would be impacted by not having closure on your proposal by Jan 1?

Operational “Margin”

• Can you justify charging the Hub $100K in overhead costs associated with each FTE working on Hydro?
• This amounts to $600K total - is this an appropriate use of community funds?

Entity Formation

• Will the receiving entity be properly formed before the on-chain proposal? (if you do rush it)
• Will the proposal include complete entity details?

Funding Amount

Given AADAO’s imminent decision on your $350K grant request:

• $350k represents ~30% of your total $1.2M funding request. Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait for their decision before proceeding?

First, thank you @Thyborg for starting this discussion and @Cosmos_Nanny for the questions you raised. I see many questions about planning and financing, and I don’t have more questions on that side. I’m looking forward to the upcoming Twitter spaces to hear answers to Grace’s questions and other community inquiries. It is no secret that I’m very excited about Hydro’s vision. Liquidity is the core of any blockchain ecosystem, and Hydro brings a new way to solve this. Instead of ATOM just sitting in the community pool, it becomes an active tool for ecosystem growth. Projects can now get liquidity they would never have accessed before. First, the project is remarkable because it changes how we think about liquidity – from a top-down process to a collaborative model. It empowers long-term ATOM stakers, who must lock their tokens for multiple months, to directly participate in liquidity deployment through a transparent, community-driven system. Then, the community’s interest is impressive. When capacity was raised for the second round, it was completely filled in less than 4 minutes, showing how much people want this project. Now, dedicated ATOM stakers have a direct voice in…

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Ideally you can answer them here on the governance forum too. All are valid questions for an ask of this size

arlai-mk:

When capacity was raised for the second round, it was completely filled in less than 4 minutes

And I went on the site 5 mins after the round opened

So still not a Hydro participant…

Really incredible to see the progress on Hydro as a product - Informal Systems has done a great job paving the way expanding the Cosmos Hubs offering beyond just security, and I think the broader Cosmos is starting to get excited about bidding on ATOM (in more ways than one). Hydro has shown a couple of core competencies that I think are in line with this new era of Cosmos Hub: • Rapid shipping - iteration loops are fast, and community feedback is taken in real time ( recommend joining the telegram channel here ) • A product people want (multiple protocols participating, more to come) • Solves a problem - protocols want more ATOM liquidity, and it can be hard to source it directly from the open market in size • Meaningful roadmap - the addition of vote optimizers, automated hedging, insurance premiums, advanced data gathering for optimized LP, Valence integrations, etc. are all key to turning Hydro into something industry leading • Omnichain in nature - any mature project can participate, and Hydro invites non-ICS projects to be able to interact with the Cosmos Hub • Active governance participation: ATOM holders gain a direct role in shaping the network’s future by…

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Wow, some people are really so much better than me at expressing their excitement through words.

Carter_Lee_Woetzel:

I believe Hydro is going to be a mission critical part of the Cosmos Hub Renaissance of 2025.

That’s actually something I also wanted to say, but somehow missed it in my comment though that is a key point in my view.
We are all so much excited by all recent news, still trying to realize what it means, but for me Hydro is one of the key products that are going to reshape how the Cosmos Hub is going to be seen: Innovating, bringing products that are useful and wanted by the community as well as other projects, and hopefully self-sustainable soon.

That’s also why I did not hesitate one second when I saw the opportunity to build on top of Hydro.

Well, thanks @Carter_Lee_Woetzel for saying things much better than I could, and I’m looking soo much forward to 2025 and what it will bring!

Regards,
arlai

Hey there, Grace. An Atom Zone space has been scheduled on X for Monday. Be sure to open the link so you can set a reminder to join us.

Looking forward to discussing your questions one by one in the space.

Here is the link to join on Monday.

Looking forward to also seeing everyone reading and replying in this thread there!

I’m impressed by the hard work and dedication @btruax and the Hydro team have shown. Their transparency, responsiveness, and collaborative approach have made it much easier to navigate and support Hydro’s development. The team has demonstrated a strong commitment to building a sustainable, ATOM-aligned product that benefits the entire ecosystem. We are currently in the process of finalizing 5 Hydro-aligned grants, which include: • Zephyrus and Eris for vote aggregation tools • Range and Immunefi for security and risk management • Margined for delta-neutral LPing strategies In addition, we are actively working with Brian and the Hydro DAO to secure additional funding aimed at bootstrapping development for the broader protocol. This includes continued support for key partners like Valance, as well as Numia and other data analytics providers. These partners play a crucial role in enhancing Hydro’s transparency, performance tracking, and overall user experience. One of the aspects I appreciate most about Hydro is its clear alignment with community-first principles. Brian has made it clear that no funding will go to the Hydro team. Instead, any additional leftovers will be…

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Thank you for sharing this detailed proposal. It’s clear that Hydro is already demonstrating its potential as a key contributor to the Cosmos Hub, especially with how quickly the auction caps were filled during the pilot rounds. This shows the strong demand and the value Hydro brings to projects seeking liquidity within the ecosystem. I also agree with points raised by others, like @Quasar ’s observation about Hydro’s ability to increase staked ATOM and enhance network security. By tying participation to staking, Hydro directly supports decentralization while giving ATOM stakers a meaningful role in ecosystem growth. That said, I share some of the concerns raised by @Cosmos_Nanny regarding the shortened discussion timeline. While it’s important to maintain momentum, I’d like to better understand the urgency for a January 1 decision. What specific developments require clarity by that date, and how would a slight delay impact progress, especially during the quieter holiday period? Additionally, the budget’s overhead costs, as pointed out by @Cosmos_Nanny , feel significant for a 6-person team. More transparency on how these costs directly benefit Hydro’s development and align…

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Hey everyone, this is am important proposal that I encourage everyone to vote “Yes” on. In 2022, I spent months putting myself in the shoes of the Cosmos Hub, researching ways to accrue value, and proposing a path toward achieving that value accrual. Lending ATOM is a key step along that path. Hydro so far has been a proof of concept to prove whether there is demand to borrow ATOM for a fee. The answer is a resounding “YES!” given how quickly each of the two rounds have sold out. Given the success of Hydro, it is in the Hub’s best interest to double down on Hydro not just in terms of increasing the amount of ATOM lent via Hydro, but to also upgrade Hydro from a PoC to sustainable product by adding features and increasing automation. These features and automations won’t build themselves. While Hydro is currently able to surface the intent of the Hub to direct liquidity to various places, Hydro relies on a multisig to get the liquidity from point A to B. This multisig is a reasonable compromise for a PoC to accelerate go-to-market with a small budget, but it is not a long-term sustainable solution as deals get more complex, happen more often, and get larger. My team at…

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my contribution to this conversation is about the funds requested: • i would strongly suggest that the funds are given over time and in USDC not in atom (on a per month basis) • since Hydro is a benefit for all the chain and all projects that want to deploy on different chains, i think it’s only proper to get chains to help funding the project, in particular the auditing of the contracts as many chains have deals with auditors • AFAIK Neutron has a lot of grant money that did not use, they should cooperate too (you know why) I agree with Grace here the timing and limits of the proposal are strange and while in general the proposal make sense, the points that Grace underline, dont. [Prop#986] [Passed] Funding Hydro development & integrations in 2025 Community Spend @Thyborg thanks for sharing the above. Please response to questions in bold Why? To achieve proposal vote outcome by January 1, 2025: On-chain proposal must go live ~December 16th Forum discussion would be limited to 5 days This is substantially shorter than our standard 14-day discussion period Additionally: The voting period spans the holiday season (December 24 - January 1)…

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Thank you @Thyborg for this detailed proposal. The vision and execution of Hydro has been quite amazing, as well as the community response and how fast the second round filled! This clearly points to the strong demand for innovative liquidity solutions in Cosmos. We at the Mars Foundation are pretty excited about Hydro’s plans for automated delta-neutral strategies. One of the top use-cases that Mars Perps unlock is better risk-adjusted yield opportunities. Delta-Neutral LPing is such a great strategy because it allows users to hedge vol risk and can offset IL (if not invert it completely) by collecting the funding rate. Mars managed vaults (already audited & planned to be launched in early Q1) are going to be introduced for exactly these use-cases, providing an out-of-the-box vault infrastructure to create these types of strategies seamlessly. A vault can be managed either by an active person, a bot, or as in Hydro’s use-case, by a Smart Contract. In that sense, the allocation to build hedging smart contracts is in my view quite compelling. Beyond the technical aspects, I appreciate how this proposal shows a deep understanding of what’s needed to create sustainable DeFi…

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I urge a veto of this proposal because: • If hydro is continued, we build further dependencies on the LSM, which was authored by the north Korean military who were contracted by iqlusion and funded by ICF via iqlusion. When contacted by by the FBI, Zaki Manian, CEO of iqlusion chose not to inform ICF or the wider community, and chose to allow the majority of the code fo ship in an unaltered form while claiming that it had been fully rebuilt. LSM is fine. North Korean military being funded by us isn’t fine. Shipping north Korean military code isn’t fine. Audits aren’t enough. It just needs to go, because the LSM poses a cosmos hub death risk from a reputational and security angle. • I think hydro will have a negative impact on the price of atom. For similar reasons, osmosis moved primary liquidity away from the osmo token. Having primary liquidity in atom will drive the price of atom down anytime anybody wants to exit one of the many hydro driven projects. This was the very clear finding of the Osmosis community. • Willful violation of the 2-week review period by a team that has enforced it in the past. Rules for thy but not for me. Wait like you told everyone else to…

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There is nothing community first about building stuff that depends on code written by the North Korean military.

Nothing.

It is a community last thing entirely.

Syed:

went on the site 5 mins after the round opened

Who is using hydro?

@Thyborg - who is using hydro?

I am asking this question because these 5-minute sellouts smell funny.

…who is using hydro?

Thyborg:

Lots of questions, and I’m sure you’ll have follow-ups for each of my answers. I suggest you join the Twitter space we’ll organize early next week, we’ll address them there

Please provide written answers.

Yesterday I asked who is using hydro.

Today, I am asking again.

Who is using hydro?

How many users does hydro have?

is anyone here on the forum a hydro user?

So far, I have met zero hydro users, other than the projects launching on hydro and really those aren’t the kinds of users I am concerned with.

I have tried to meet hydro users.

Everyone says the same thing: it was full when I got there. So I am interested in learning how it got full.

Thyborg: A new separate entity will receive the distributed funds. This new company (name & domicile to be determined) will be created specifically for Hydro product development. As a company, Informal Systems will be focusing on engineering services, security audits and public good development for devcos and foundations with clear service agreements. Interesting. I am making bullet points here, please answer bulleted questions. • @Thyborg will you be leaving informal systems? • Will there be overlap between people working on hydro and people working at informal systems? I am asking if anyone will work for both orgs. The Informal Hub team in 2024 consisted of 14 people, split between Forge, Hydro and Hub maintenance. For 2025, we believe it is possible to achieve our Hydro objectives with a reduced team of 6 Full-Time Equivalent staff: 1 Project Lead, 1 Technical Lead, 1 Product Lead, 2 Developers & 1 Growth Lead. We will use the same per-head total rate averages of $325K per year, which includes approximately $225K in salary (and relevant overhead such as employer taxes and benefits) and a standard margin to pay for operational expenses like legal, HR,…

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Thanks everyone. I believe all questions & comments were addressed in today’s Twitter space. As mentioned during the space, we agree to push back the on-chain posting to early January ; if the proposal is approved, the Hydro team mandate will run from mid-January to mid-June.

Not that my vote changes gov outcomes, but I’ll be voting YES on this. As both @Carter_Lee_Woetzel and @CuriousJ have said above - Hydro has definitely managed to generate excitement and utility for ATOM, much to the tireless efforts of @Thyborg and @btruax (Brian is literally glued to his desk, 20 hours a day, making Hydro better!!)** Excluding the “Hydro Ecosystem Grants” budget, the ask of $850k is completely reasonable, for what is effectively the only first-party app for ATOM. As Carter said, reframe the ask to “how much value can Hydro provide”: Carter_Lee_Woetzel: I think it is worth asking the question of “…how much value will Hydro provide to Cosmos Hub over the course of the next 5 years…” as I think it can help recalibrate on how people think about the capital being requested by the builders here. (Hint: value created is capable of being $100M+ imo). As for the Hydro Ecosystem Grants budget - I also think this is entirely reasonable. In my last few weeks at AADAO, while not directly involved, I have listened to discussions around the Hydro-related grant applications (that @CuriousJ mentioned above ). For Hydro to grow and thrive, we need an…

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@Thyborg, why do you ignore the questions that are asked of you?

Question 1. Who is using hydro?
Question 2. Will you be leaving informal systems?

As for Q1, I don’t see any active users on the product that requests funding. The visitor statistics are unhealthy. It looks like bots are cheating.

The product that makes a request for funding does not have an organic user base. Above on the graph I have given the number of visits to Hydro for the last month. The graph looks like a saw. There are days when NO ONE visits the site. The graph of Hydro visits indicates that the product is useless. Nobody needs it. And surges of interest in this product are possible only by forcibly driving traffic to the site through Telegram, Twitter, and so on.

For comparison, I will give a graph of my own product, which I made from scratch, for the funding of which I did not ask anyone for a dollar. As you can see from my graph, a normal product that is needed by at least someone does not have such dips in daily visits that we can see on the Hydro graph.

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Now my final question. Why should we spend millions of dollars on a product like Hydro that no one needs and that no one uses? When will the looting of the Cosmos Hub community pool stops?

If you are a user who wasn’t able to get in before the caps filled, you have very little reason to go back until the next round starts. Same with anyone who DID get in, voted and are now waiting for the round to be close to ending.

Relying purely on website visits without the context is pretty weak.

You are missing the core concept on how Hydro works, there is no point to daily visit the site (especially if you are in the TG group). The content on the FE doesn’t change daily.

Aksing who is “using” Hydro tells me you didn’t bother to much to research what Hydro is and how it functions

This seems like more of you patting yourself on the back and advertising your own project. Like others have said, there is really no reason to go to the hydro site except during the 4 mins before it fills up and to check for rewards or newly introduced proposals to vote for. Traffic may be relevant in the future when it opens up out of beta but volume will still be more important. Lots of us asked for this and the whole community needs it. If CosmosHub doesn’t keep this new $ATOM first mindset and start building value around the Hub and token, it will die. ICS, Skip, Hydro, etc is what we’ve all been trying like hell to bash through the ICFs stubborn heads forever, CosmosHub has to be the mothership of Cosmos, all dApps don’t need their own chain, and $ATOM has to be needed because we’ve been here too long relying on it’s speculative nature. Of all the crap that we’ve needlessly thrown ATOM at in the past, you choose to complain about the thing that brings value and helps solve the biggest issue with Cosmos, limited & fractured liquidity. Hydro, Skip, ICS, ArkProtocol bringing native CosmosHub NFTs on chain, and the whole new outlook on making CosmosHub a real chain that…

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Thanks for revising and updating the main post @Thyborg. I believe that our team has addressed the commentary, feedback and questions left on this thread.

If anyone has additional questions, please let us know. We are entering “Last Call” phase here before posting our prop on-chain. We’re happy to continue addressing questions and feedback during the voting period as well. DM me on TG or Twitter or set a meeting with me if you’d like a 1:1.

On behalf of the PRO Delegators’ validator, we would like to inform the community of our decision to cast an abstain vote on this proposal to ensure transparency and avoid any conflict of interest. One of our founding members, Phil_RX, actively serves on the Hydro Committee, and we believe that maintaining the highest ethical standards is essential in such cases.

While both Govmos and our validator team strongly support the Hydro project, we encourage our delegators to cast their own independent, informed votes. This approach allows us to remain aligned with the community’s interests while upholding fairness and integrity.

Thank you for your understanding,

Hey Hydro Community, We’ve hit a little bump and had to submit a second funding proposal on-chain. Here’s what happened: When I submitted our first proposal ( #984 ) using a popular proposal creation UI (the same one I’ve used for Cosmos Hub upgrade props for 15 months), it didn’t include the requested 180,000 ATOM in the transaction. This means if executed, #984 won’t transfer any funds. You can check the tx here to verify: Mintscan To fix this, I’ve submitted a second proposal ( #986 ), which includes the full funding request and all the correct details. Shoutout to @lexa from Hypha for spotting the issue and helping me test the second proposal on the Cosmos Hub testnet before submitting it. I want to apologize to validators and ATOM stakers for the inconvenience of having two proposals to vote on. We recommend voting Yes on both, as only Prop #986 will execute any actions. Thanks for your patience and understanding. You can easily cast your vote on Mintscan or Keplr here: mintscan.io Mintscan Interchain block explorer and data analytics for sovereign blockchain networks.…

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Glad we caught the issue early, at least!

I’m hopeful that the devs for the tool will push a fix soon. We’d love to get them set up on the testnet so folks can try out their proposals using the tool before pushing to mainnet.

lexa:

I’m hopeful that the devs for the tool will push a fix soon. We’d love to get them set up on the testnet so folks can try out their proposals using the tool before pushing to mainnet.

They said they’ve already fixed it, so hopefully testnet is next on their backlog.

Just to re-emphasize the question of the budget, Hydro’s team members aren’t getting paid $325K per year. I’ve prepared a breakdown below, and we’ve given more details about this in this Twitter space here.

During the hour-long twitter space, we did a deep dive on many additional topics. It’s worth a listen for sure!

Please reach out with any follow-up questions - DMs open!

Hydro's Per Head Breakdown1071×815 86.9 KB

Cost seems unreasonable… like top 0.1% salary worldwide. Who are those people asking so much money for this ? They want to be paid like a CEO of a big tech company making millions of profits

Voting no. Sorry, find better and less greedy people.

I’m voting no, but I want to say that cost isn’t the reason. Cost here is… Basically just meh. Not something I object to though, and sorry to say but in fact it is less than 0.1% of humans who can use the cosmos software stack. Hence the compensation. Neat stretch goal though: 0.1% population as users of the SDK …I have some concerns about hydro and systemic risk, but if this thing passes that’s okay with me. I won’t be vetoing, don’t think people should veto, and wish everybody good luck! Also I would love answers to the questions here: [Prop#986] [Voting] Funding Hydro development & integrations in 2025 Community Spend Interesting. I am making bullet points here, please answer bulleted questions. @Thyborg will you be leaving informal systems? Will there be overlap between people working on hydro and people working at informal systems? I am asking if anyone will work for both orgs. The Informal Hub team in 2024 consisted of 14 people, split between Forge, Hydro and Hub maintenance. For 2025, we believe it is possible to achieve our Hydro objectives with a reduced team of 6 Full-Time Equivalent staf… Actually given that no questions have been…

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Too many red flags… not a single important question answered, funds are set to go to an unknown yet unregistered entity with no transparency or accountability. Also, is there at least one person here who is actively using hydro? voting no for sure.

The kicker for me here is that @Thyborg is refusing to answer questions in written form, referring everyone to the Twitter spaces.

Maybe it’s better to veto. I figured he would actually answer questions.

Syed:

Not that my vote changes gov outcomes, but I’ll be voting YES on this.

Why on Earth would you vote Yes on a proposal whose author refuses to write the answers to very reasonable questions?

I agree with this statment. It feels like he is dodging the questions on purpose and there are some very legitimate questions here. I might switch my vote to veto just because of this.

Although I think Cosmos Hub is in a dire need of some kind of constitution just for stuff like this. How and where can discussion occure for the proposals, how and for what purposes can community pool funds be used for etc.

Hey a few people have asked me to comment here! For clarity, the “Skip” validator is not associated with us in anyway. How it votes doesn’t reflect what we think or would vote. I am new to hub governance and can’t speak to a lot of the convo here. I also don’t want to tell anyone how to vote or ask people to vote. I will say a few things about how I think about Hydro as a product, where I do feel comfortable commenting! • We are not focusing on protocol owned liquidity as a core part of our strategy, but we think it could be valuable for ATOM and for the ecosystem. There’s a bunch of examples of protocols like Hydro (e.g. Royco, Proof of Liquidity, Curve wars etc…) where liquidity bribes find strong product market fit in active defi ecosystems and drive value to an underlying token. • There is demand for ATOM liquidity today, and I personally expect this will grow. I have had conversations with teams that have indicated interest in Hydro because ATOM is highly visible and liquid, compared to their own tokens or their ecosystems token. This especially comes from lending protocols like Mars and Neptune. • I think as Interchain Labs and other contributors built out more…

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bpiv400:

I’m keen to see more TGEs on the Hub

Then please, show that if a cosmos hub app is attacked, you’ll actually do something about it.

Appealing to apps is not single dimensional.

Bounty: $4000 identify the person or persons who attacked the cosmos hub Validation

it is of vital importance to actually address security issues Cosmos chain teams sabotage @cosmoshub in order to gain competitive advantage, with the tacit blessing of @interchain_io and its contractors, here’s proof: two weeks before the incident, they cosmos hub was running IBC v3.0..0 on mainnet >6mos after v3.0.0 was retracted for security issues. And I told @buchmanster, @JTremback, other members of informal hub team, and the full ibc team about the issue >2wks before the exploit and I ci…

Show the apps that if the worst does happen, The foundation actually gives a shit. And well if it doesn’t, do not expect the apps to actually show up.

the prop got accepted anyway. time to short atom

I don’t think it’s worthy of a short.

But it does suck.

surely nfa, but considering the general trend of atom going down while everything going up during this bull run I bet we will see 5.0-5.5 price in the coming weeks, especially with $1m worth of atom to be dumped to feed the hydra

for me this proposal is a last nail in the coffin of the cosmos ecosystem. If you wanna build an app… why would you choose cosmos over solana? makes no sense to build on a swamp

This aged well, my friend. ATOM went down even more than I expected, was $3.5 a few days ago. Hope you listened and shorted the sht out of it

These comments are off-topic. I propose an admin close this post.

Hi folks! I’ve reopened the post - as we transition moderation please feel free to send a message when feedback is needed. I apologize for not posting when freezing the post:

Contextual commentary, opinions, and feedback are welcome. However, specific to off-topic:

Given Props are part of a mechanical process - we do encourage off-topic discussions as above (pricing) to happen in the appropriate category or using an adjacent topic to keep this mechanism clean and focused on the prop’s discussion. The post is reopened to transition the normal open<>close period.

Thanks!

Hi, thank you for reopening the post. I don’t know who you are sir, and I don’t know how to message you, and I fully reserve the right to speak words. Specifically there’s a very good reason this wasn’t done as a DM: this was a fantastic opportunity to lead a push for actual censorship resistance in all aspects of cosmos. I do request that you do not take any personal offence here. No one should be able to request that posts be closed and have that request accepted. Anyone should be able to request anything they’d like to. Additionally, posts should not automatically close after a set period of time. The conversations on this forum have already lasted years, with the exception of those that were closed to prevent what @lexa referred to as necroing. Me? I fear no word even necrophilia. We want long, high context conversations that can bring value to the community. Post closures prevent this from happening. Disagreements can be productive. I understand full well that there are members of the community like @btruax who wish to simply silence points of view they disagree with, but i live differently from that. Please limit censorship of this forum to ensuring…

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first of all, thats your subjective opinion. you are free to share it here but it does not mean you have a right to request to close this post because you disagree with someone.

also, if you feel like this post is lacking on-topic comments, why don’t you help @Thyborg to answer numerous questions regarding this shady proposal that @jacobgadikian and a few other community members have raised earlier? thanks

Viv,

I wanted to thank you for your not-financial-advice. Clearly you grasp the layers between proposals and the price of atom at a deep level. If I had shorted based on your not-financial-advice, I would have made money.

Thanks for bringing that opportunity to the community!

qxnico: Given Props are part of a mechanical process - we do encourage off-topic discussions as above (pricing) to happen in the appropriate category or using an adjacent topic to keep this mechanism clean and focused on the prop’s discussion. The post is reopened to transition the normal open<>close period. …but you’re wrong. @viv was posting his thoughts on the impact THIS PROPOSAL would have on the price of $atom. This thread is the right place to do that. I understand that @btruax and other informal systems team members may disagree, but if they do, they can do like any pleb and use their words like a big boy / girl. Instead, Informal Systems chose to silence the entire discussion, which is fully valid and well placed. @viv then came back and gloated that he was correct that THIS PROPOSAL had the effect on the price of $atom that he anticipated, making at least one person (me) aware of gov prop driven volatility opportunities and I’m grateful for it. In the future I may attempt such shorts. I think it’s important to remain grounded - this proposal wasn’t a “mechanical process”. It funded Informal (or another unnamed entity) to work on hydro. Funding…

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The way the votes of large validators were distributed on this proposal says only one thing. Cosmos is the most corrupt ecosystem among all cryptocurrency projects. The main reason for corruption is the lack of change of power. In all normal democracies, power is changeable. For example, if we take presidential power, then in all democratic countries, such as the USA, the presidential term is limited to two terms of 4 years. If we take the CIS countries, Africa, then power is for life. The same is in Cosmos. The power of validators in Cosmos is for life. No rotation like in Polkadot, Solana. Hence the complete lack of development and total corruption. Those info-gypsies who seized power in the Cosmos ecosystem today will bring it to the bottom. I am talking about such validators as Stakecito, Posthuman and other influencers who are only interested in selling paid subscriptions to their telegram channels and cultivating an audience. These info gypsies don’t care at all which project to validate and they validate everything. And then we see such wonderful votes as in the proposal with earthquake in Turkey and casting vote YES from validator Posthuman. Everything that was in this…

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• What is its name?
  it’s not registered yet but it’ll likely be called “hydro labs”

• Where is it registered?
  likely in the BVI

• Is it raising money?
  no

• Who is it raising money from?
  it’s not raising money

• Does it exist?
  not yet

• Are people hired?
  not yet

• How’s progress?
  we’re talking to a legal counsel there

• Blockers?
  not right now

• Timeline?
  ideally it’s done in the next 2-3 months

Cool.

Ok, so

• who is holding the funds?

• Has the atom been sold?

the hydro team dao & the hydro grants dao, as per the proposal

$667,500 worth of atom has been sold, as per the proposal

How will it keep going if:

• It isn’t raising money
• Hydro doesn’t have a revenue model for the team

…so basically if hydro labs isn’t going to earn money or raise money, why would hydro labs be a corporation?

• Do you still work at informal systems?

10000128931344×1120 112 KB

…and of the dao members, how many work at informal?

the revenue model will be fees on the deployments, as per the proposal

yes I’m still employed by informal, and the other dao members as well

the plan is to switch over contracts once the new entity is set up

Thyborg:

switch over contracts once the new entity is set up

You figure that the generated fees will be sufficient?

Seemed to me there was funding for well under a year.

this prop funded us for 6 months. fees are a function of how successful we are at getting new bids but also of the general state of the market, and in particular atom’s price

so we’ll build new features that improve hydro (automated deployments, delta-neutral LP-ing, multi-token atomic bids etc.) and pray that the ICL makes atom moon in the meantime

Huh, the original governance proposal wasn’t described as faith based.

But now it’s faith based, and requiring prayer.

I hope it can generate those $667,500 back asap, until then Hydro is at a loss

One thing it won’t generate anything for is $atom

Other assets will get $atom liquidity.

Recommend that as part of the ongoing evaluation that anyone sensible be doing, we track hydro projects

Bet it’s so bad that @btruax tried to close this post.

well, challenge accepted. with time, I’m quite confident the tributes hydro gives back to atom stakers will largely exceed what the community pool gave it