Request for Proposals: ATOM Tokenomics Research

UPDATE Tokenomics proposal submissions are now closed. Thank you to everyone that has submitted a proposal! We have received a total of 9 proposals from some of the best teams in the space. In the coming days, we will begin reviewing the proposals and working with teams to further refine scope as needed before making a final selection. We should have further updates on the next steps in the process soon. Cosmos Labs is seeking qualified tokenomics research firms to provide data-driven research to support a redesign of ATOM’s economic model. The tokenomics will center around a new fee model based on various on-chain and off-chain revenue sources. The redesigned model will align token incentives with Cosmos’ new enterprise-facing roadmap, ensuring sustainable demand, controlled inflation, and aligned stakeholder interests. The ultimate goal to keep in mind: under this new model, ATOM becomes the medium by which anyone can get exposure to the network effects of broader Cosmos SDK adoption by enterprises, banks, and governments. Background Cosmos is embarking on an exciting new enterprise-driven roadmap. Regulatory changes and social proof around stablecoins and payments…

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We’ve begun sharing the RFP out with several research teams and have gotten some initial interest by many of these teams to submit proposals. We will update this thread as we receive proposals to transparently communicate the teams that have submitted.

This is also an open call to the community to refer teams and researchers to this proposal as you see fit. We aim to get a wide variety of proposals to ensure the process remains competitive and we work with the highest-quality research teams.

A general outline of how the process will unfold moving forward can be found in the tokenomics rework process post here: ATOM Tokenomics Research Kickoff

Hi @RoboMcGobo,

Thanks for this.

Can you clarify what information will be shared with community re the RFP? e.g.

1. Name of the teams submitting proposals
2. The proposals themselves (with or without budget details)
3. The evaluation criteria/scoring
4. The evaluation results for each team
5. Any additional material

Thank you.

Thanks for this reply @arlai-mk . Right now, we plan on sharing:

1. The name of all teams making submissions
2. The proposals themselves, without budget details
3. The vendors that are selected, as well as next steps for each

It’s possible this may change as vendors start submitting (at the end of the day we will need their permission to publish their proposals), but for now this is the plan.

Thanks @RoboMcGobo for driving this. As discussed together, I would like to provide the research firms that are considering submitting a proposal some context about Hydro , which I think can be a useful component of the new tokenomics. Hydro’s development started in late 2024 at Informal Systems, one of the core contributors to the Cosmos tech stack. The Hydro team spun out of Informal and received funding for Q1 & Q2 from the Hub community pool via Prop 986. In Q3 & Q4, Hydro has operated from the yield generated on ATOM liquidity deployments. Hydro doesn’t have its own token and hasn’t raised external capital. Since its mainnet launch in late 2024, Hydro has deployed over 4 million ATOM across 20+ Cosmos DeFi protocols through sequential monthly allocation rounds. Protocols request liquidity and offer incentives, ATOM holders vote on allocations and receive the incentives, and Hydro deploys the capital. The model works well, but it does require protocols to submit requests for liquidity in order for capital to be deployed. This means there may be other DeFi opportunities available, potentially offering higher yield, that this system is not able to take advantage of. To…

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Title: The Future Token Model of ATOM — Value Capture in Cosmos as a Zero Layer 1. Background: Why ATOM Historically Failed to Capture Value Cosmos has long faced a structural criticism: “The more chains Cosmos has, the less valuable ATOM becomes.” This happened because: - Each chain issues its own token - Security does not depend on ATOM - IBC does not require ATOM - Cosmos SDK does not require ATOM - There is no unified economic center As a result: Cosmos technology is strong, but ATOM historically captured very little value. The new token model aims to fix this. 2. Core Goal of the New ATOM Token Model Cosmos is shifting from an “app‑chain ecosystem” to a Zero Layer (0L) infrastructure. The new token model aims to: “Make ATOM the economic anchor of Cosmos as a Zero Layer.” This means ATOM must capture value from: - Shared security - Interchain MEV - Interchain settlement - Ecosystem capital flows - Enterprise chain adoption 3. Five Major Future Value Sources for ATOM 3.1 Interchain Security (ICS) — Security Rental Income ICS allows new chains to: - Rent security from ATOM validators - Avoid building their own validator set…

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Thyborg:

2- Sell ATOM when it outperforms, buy when it underperforms

Any market-timed selling/buying, even if done formulaicly as described, should not be built into tokenomics. It’s ultimately price manipulation even if its simple and mechanical. ATOM price needs to be determined by the overall success of the protocol and Cosmos Labs and the community need to have that as their focus.

Any strategic buying and selling needs to remain at the ecosystem layer.

Subject Title: ATOM Tokenomics: Beyond Hot Reactions – Towards a Holistic Strategy for Sustainable Value Generation (by Snow-Fall) Dear Cosmos Community (Forum and Telegram), During this holiday season, even if my activity is slightly reduced (family obligations!), I’ve taken the time to carefully review the rich and varied discussions on ATOM tokenomics held on both these platforms. As a small, independent, and active validator ( @Snow_FalI on X, snow-fall.io ) , I wish, like a relayer of these exchanges, to synthesize certain points and offer our constructive perspective, aligned with the current market. I share the general frustration regarding the relative silence of many large validators. These discussions are vital for ATOM’s future and require everyone’s engagement, including those who capture the majority of the rewards. Where is their voice in this crucial debate? 1. Community Pool Treasury Management: Diversification Yes, but Value Creation First and Foremost (Response to Кирилл, RoboMcGobo, Vanya, Jeremy Parish) Кирилл’s proposal to diversify a portion of the Community Pool (CP) into stablecoins to generate yield and fund buybacks is a valid avenue for…

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The monetization model already exists. We’re just not capturing it. At Cosmoverse 2025, Cosmos Labs said ATOM should benefit from “licensing stack-oriented products to banks and institutions.” But they didn’t say how. Here’s how. The problem everyone’s dancing around: 200+ chains use Cosmos SDK. Fortune 500 companies, governments, banks—all hiring agencies who charge $500K-$5M to build on Cosmos. Figure is doing $9.9B in tokenized credit on Provenance. Ondo has multi-billion treasuries. SWIFT, SMBC, MUFG all building on the stack. Two CBDCs in development. These agencies are getting paid real money. ATOM captures zero. Why? Cosmos SDK is Apache 2.0. Free forever. Agencies profit from Cosmos without ATOM holders seeing a cent. The solution isn’t complicated: Enterprise licensing model with legally enforceable ATOM staking requirements. Same playbook as Red Hat ($34B IBM acquisition) or R3 Corda (banks already pay $250K/year for blockchain licenses). Create two tiers. Base SDK stays free and open source. But agencies building for enterprises need “Cosmos Enterprise Stack”—LTS support, compliance tooling, legal indemnification, 24/7 support, certified configurations. The…

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Thanks for taking the time to put together such a great summary.

klendhaar:

1. Community Pool Treasury Management: Diversification Yes, but Value Creation First and Foremost

Definitely agree with value creation first and with the small, simple treasury approach. Aside from the uncertainty of good treasury management (people screw things up over time), the size of the treasury would have to be huge to offset tokenomic dynamics happening at a protocol scale. We don’t want a cabal of people no matter how OG they might be to be in charge of somehow balancing/offsetting ecosystem dynamics with treasury actions.

klendhaar:

1. The Central Debate: Utility, Revenue, and the Illusion of “Sell Pressure”

Agree, bottom line has to be capturing value properly back to the token/protocol from the value supplied by the tech and the protocol participants. This loss of value capture is basically the Achilles Heel of Cosmos and turns the protocol into a free public service. It’s really surprising how long it has been allowed to continue quite frankly.

klendhaar:

1. The True Long-Term Strategy (2-5 years): Monetization, Inflation Management, and Deflation

Agree with a couple caveats/thoughts.

1. Agree that the real question is value creation not rearranging the deck chairs… by tweaking validator rewards or other small scale issues. If the issues we face in Cosmos could have been fixed by little tweaks, that would have happened a long time ago.
2. Not sure about having a massive DEX because it would kind of be like government funded enterprise and disincentivize DEXes being crated in the ecosystem because they would have to compete with it. I could easily see this having negative knock-on effects for general ecosystem growth. Overall we need to keep the protocol / ecosystem relationship symbiotic and not get too fancy with the protocol in a way that competes with the ecosystem.

Saying that ATOM’s price should only be determined by the success of the protocol would mean that ANY tokenomics mechanism that has a positive impact on price counts as manipulation. Inflation, token burns, fee capture (such as Skip is using with IBC currently to burn ATOM), liquidity incentives, grants, etc. all affect price and are common tools used by many blockchains.

Price manipulation would be something that interferes with fair price discovery, but what we’re suggesting here is a transparent, rule-based, continuous mechanism that uses only public market data.

Hello everyone, I am not very technical so I don’t know if it’s something possible, but isn’t it possible to create an optional mechanism at the stack’s level, where blockchains using the stack could automatically send to the hub those small quantities of tokens that create UX issues, while being incentivized for it to encourage them using this service. May be something like : when on the whole blockchain, the value of non native tokens that are not more than 1$ per wallet and have not been used by the wallet for the past 3 months, reaches 1000$ in total, it is automatically sent to the cosmos hub (using just one transaction to optimize fees, may be a transaction payed in atom ideally), and may be the cosmos hub could use a mechanism to generate revenue from this, while keeping those token liquid in case the wallet want’s to use his 0.005 chihuahua token. May be put this money in a vault or some similar mechanism. The revenue generated by all these dust of tokens coming from all blockchains using this service could be redistributed (in ATOM maybe) to : • the wallet that has those tokens (would be dusts but its his/her money so it is normal to redistribute to it) •…

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The crypto space is an attention market, not a tech market. People aren’t investing in growth, they’re buying into noise. No one cares about a project’s viability or technical progress—if they did, the market cap of useless meme tokens wouldn’t be in the billions.

In this cycle, a viral tweet is worth more than a thousand lines of solid code. Hype is the only currency that actually trades.

This is how many people currently feel but many people feel many different ways at many different times.

I agree that ATOM needs to appear in the news for one reason or another. I made a proposal to that effect: ATOM Tokenomics Research Kickoff - #40 by EL14

Think about the consequences of setting up a system that guarantees massive selling of ATOM when () the price moons. No one will want to hold the token because the price is essentially capped. The whole goal of creating a crypto protocol is to generate economic value and recapture value back to the token commensurately in order to incentivize continued development and growth. Selling ATOM when it outperforms would completely contradict that goal.

No teams would want to build in an ecosystem where the native token is not allowed to rise too fast in price.

I think this is great. Thanks a lot @klendhaar for collecting and organizing all of this. (I agree with a long term goal of organizing community discussion more efficiently as well) klendhaar: Emergency ICF buys ATOM with BTC/ETH Immediate Stop the bleeding The only nuance I would add is that the ICF should be selling BTC and ETH simply because it needs to be fully ATOM alined and there is no reason for it to hold BTC and ETH over time. Now is obviously the time to begin selling all of that given the (horrid) price action. klendhaar: Stabilization Inflation tapering (-0.5%/mo) 12-18 months Avoid shock, restore confidence I also agree that inflation calibration - in relation to security needs, as emphasized by @Gregory_C and others - is fundamental and immediate. klendhaar: Infrastructure Activate IBC fee capture 90 days Signal competence, prepare for growth Seems clear that this is a simple step in the right direction. This can also be calibrated over time. klendhaar: Growth B2B Sales + Atom Intents 6-18 months Inject external capital + UX Solved Its great to see the proposal addresses intents as a UX…

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@klendhaar maintaining the epic work here to bring needed clarity and urgency to this discussion and to make sure to include the and summarize everyone’s voices.

I need to read through again but this should likely be broken down into specific proposals and proposed one at a time starting with the most urgent elements - ICF BTC, ETH selling, Inflation rate recalibration - and then subsequent sections in the coming weeks.

"I believe I’ve finished compiling the proposals for the ATOM rescue plan. Everything is delivered in this ‘novel’—given the word count, I think the title is fitting .

We will indeed need to separate the 4 phases (the medical analogy) to discuss them with greater clarity and refocus the debates. @drooo is right.

Members of the ICF and Cosmos Labs, are you around and ready to take action???
Do you need ‘my services’ to moderate these upcoming threads, keep the discussions focused, etc.? I would be honored, but the choice is yours. Do you need the help of a small validator who wants to make things move ?

Shall I start posting?"

Thanks for this message @klendhaar . I’m removing it from this forum post so it can be moved to its appropriate spot in Tokenomics > Tokenomics Ideas . Let’s please keep this section for comments on the RFP and proposals looking to satisfy this RFP. Thank you!

As requested :move it to Tokenomics idea
Operation Xmas ATOM Rescue: A Manifesto for 2026

Thanks to the Hydro team! I completely agree with your advice and proposal to restore value to Atom.

You’re doing a great job.

UPDATE

We have elected to extend the deadline for proposal submission to January 23. We’ve seen additional interest from vendors that have entered the process late, and in the interest of keeping the process competitive and ensuring we work with multiple high-quality research teams we feel that this extension is warranted.

We have received a total of 6 proposals so far

For me the most exciting part of this initiative is how it shows that decentralization and solid research can truly work together. Regular community members and developers can collaboratively design tokenomics that actually work and provide long term incentives for the ecosystem. Fingers crossed for high quality submissions

Update

Tokenomics proposal submissions are now closed. Thank you to everyone that has submitted a proposal!

We have received a total of 9 proposals from some of the best teams in the space. In the coming days, we will begin reviewing the proposals and working with teams to further refine scope as needed before making a final selection.

We should have further updates on the next steps in the process soon.

@RoboMcGobo Hello Robo,

It seems you may not have seen my previous message on TG, where I was trying to explain my proposal in a clearer way.

I’m therefore about 24 hours late, but I’m sending you my proposal now.
You can add it to the 9 others,(if you want ) and potentially use it as an external revenue source to help guarantee additional income for ATOM.

Thank you in advance.

Hey @RoboMcGobo ,

is there already a timeline for the publication of the proposals and the discussion rounds?

Deadline was January 23, and it’s now been several days with zero update, no list of submitted teams, no “review underway,” no confirmation the process is even moving forward into the right direction.

Are we getting an update soon, or is the plan to continue with silence? Let’s be real, the lack of basic transparency is creating and leading to unnecessary anxiety for ATOM holders who were told this RFP was the path to fixing value accrual.

If submissions were low or delayed, just say so. If strong ones came in, share the teams so we know progress is being made.

Silence isn’t building confidence at all.

Tagging this up in case you missed it. I’m assuming you didn’t see it:

RoboMcGobo:

Update

Tokenomics proposal submissions are now closed. Thank you to everyone that has submitted a proposal!

We have received a total of 9 proposals from some of the best teams in the space. In the coming days, we will begin reviewing the proposals and working with teams to further refine scope as needed before making a final selection.

We should have further updates on the next steps in the process soon.

9 Proposals is a pretty strong showing (stronger than we expected tbh) and we’re actively reviewing them now. It will take some time to do so, and as part of the review process we’re also actively working with teams to refine the scope a bit to ensure we get the best possible people working on this and can hit the ground running when we’ve made a selection.

I will also add the above update into the body of the original post just in case anyone else missed it.

Thanks for the update, Robo, I appreciate you confirming the 9 proposals and that review is underway.

I missed this when I posted earlier today (my bad, was checking the thread at the wrong time). Glad to see submissions came in stronger than expected and the process is moving.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next steps, team names, shortlist, or rough timeline for refinement/selection would be great when ready.

Thanks again.

~Abaddon

Hi folks! The latest update on the tokenomics can be found in the Hub Unit report for January, which you can read here!

Hub Unit Report January 2026 Hub Unit

[Group 2085663659] Happy New Year everyone! We’re kicking off the new year with another Hub Unit Update. With a number of our outstanding projects expected to come to fruition this coming month (as well as the start of a few new secret projects), we’re excited to see what February brings to the ecosystem. In the meantime, let’s dive in. Background and Context The Hub Unit is composed of team members from Cosmos Labs (handling community and ecosystem growth initiatives related to the Hub) and …

any updates? #ReleaseTheFiles #MAGA

The Hub as a Destination: Framing the RFP for High-Utility Applications Reading through the RFP and the diverse proposals from teams like Hydro and the insights from validators like Snow-Fall, a central theme is clear: we are all searching for a way to move ATOM beyond ‘Free Bridge Syndrome’ . The current research focuses heavily on tweaking parameters—inflation cuts, fee models, and security rentals. But perhaps we should also be asking a more fundamental ‘Phase 2’ question: What if the Cosmos Hub became a primary destination for high-utility, high-traffic applications? Historically, we’ve pushed applications to sidechains to ‘protect’ the Hub, but the provided data shows this has led to a ‘Free Public Service’ model that captures zero value from the millions in weekly IBC volume . What if there were a project that is a high value, hub native token, that has exogenous demand, generating 10M+ transactions a month, creating a source of real yield (non inflationary fee revenue) for validators? Based on the modeling discussed here, that level of density would: Generate non-inflationary yield that could finally replace the ‘circular’ rewards we are trying to outgrow .…

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