The Future of ATOM : A Community Member’s Vision

Guinch’s opinion for the Cosmos Hub Transforming the Cosmos Hub into the Economic Center of Cosmos TABLE OF CONTENTS • Introduction • TLDR • Existing Products • Native Liquid Staking Infrastructure + LST Factory • A Native DEX • A Perp DEX • A Lending / Borrowing Market • A Native Hub Stablecoin • Privacy & Financial Confidentiality • Tokenomics • Performance Improvements and Gaia Decentralization • Strategic Alignment, Branding & Communication • Strengthening Teams Dedicated to the Hub • ATOM Task Force Platform • ATOM Observatory • An ATOM Super Dapp • Conclusion 1. INTRODUCTION The fundamental problem with ATOM today is quite simple.The Cosmos Hub is extremely important strategically in the Cosmos ecosystem, but it still captures very little direct economic value.However, several important building blocks already exist: • Skip.go: probably one of the best infrastructures in Cosmos today, with advanced routing, interchain execution, and MEV-related capabilities. • Stargaze: brings a cultural and creative dimension to the Cosmos ecosystem. • Hydro: very interesting for liquidity coordination and certain…

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Wow, I’m not going to read all of that. I’ll leave that to the people who will understand more than a tenth of it. But heart for the effort​

Hi Guinch,

I haven’t read everything yet; unfortunately, I talk a lot on Discord and Telegram, but not enough here.
As I’ve told you, I’m not convinced that the hub should host all the features on your wish list.
Cosmos is designed to be the Internet of blockchain, where every chain performs a small function, but performs it well.
The real challenge here is finding a way to bring value to the hub rather than keeping it entirely on the sidechain, as we’ve seen in the past.
Developing commercial modules is one way to do this: you have free access to the base, but advanced features come at a cost.
Interchain agreements, such as the one just announced with Injective, are another.
Both generate revenue for the hub without necessarily adding new features.

This is a preliminary comment, I will try to achieve to read you post

I understand the vision of Cosmos as an ecosystem of specialized chains, and I agree that the Hub should not necessarily try to replicate every application chain directly. However, in my opinion, simply being the IBC bridge/router connecting all ecosystems and DeFi applications is not sufficient for ATOM long term. The core issue is economic value capture. Once liquidity and users move through the Hub and settle on application chains X or Y, the majority of the economic activity, fees, trading revenue, lending revenue, liquidation revenue, perp revenue, etc. is ultimately captured by those application tokens — not by ATOM. This was actually one of Sunny’s major arguments during the Osmosis merge discussions, and honestly I still believe that point remains fundamentally true today. Routing alone creates strategic importance. But strategic importance does not automatically create sustainable token value accrual. That is why I believe at least some native economic primitives are vital for the Hub itself. Not necessarily to compete with every appchain, but to ensure that part of Cosmos’ economic activity actually settles value back into ATOM itself. Otherwise, we risk…

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Homeboy wrote an essay about how can the hub succeed.

Homeboy wrote a list for Santa Claus.

Nice post man. Two points where I have direct skin in the game:

On validator decentralisation (section 11), this is probably the most underappreciated item on your list. You can build all the financial primitives you want, but if the validator set consolidates to 10 cloud operators, the economic security you’re building on is fragile.

Independent bare-metal validators aren’t disappearing because they’re worse operators. They’re disappearing because they’re worse at marketing. That’s a structural problem the Hub hasn’t seriously addressed at the governance level. Delegation from the community pool to validators running genuine public infrastructure would be a start.

On ATOM Observatory: some of this already exists in fragmented form. We run genesis archive nodes for all four Cosmos Hub chains and a custom chain indexer (OpenAPI 3.1, blocks/tx/stats). Not a dashboard, but the data layer is there. If there’s appetite to coordinate on a proper
Observatory or on providing data sets, I’d be interested in that conversation.

Really appreciate this feedback. On validator decentralization, I completely agree. This is probably one of the most critical long-term topics for the Hub, and honestly one of the least discussed compared to all the DeFi or financial primitive narratives. You can build perps, lending, intents and massive liquidity rails, but if the validator set slowly converges toward a handful of cloud operators with massive marketing power, then the economic security underneath the entire system becomes structurally weaker over time. And I think your point is extremely important: many independent bare-metal validators are not disappearing because they are bad operators, but because the current ecosystem structurally rewards visibility, brand power and distribution more than actual infrastructure quality or decentralization contribution. That’s probably something governance and the ICF will eventually need to address more directly. Personally, I think mechanisms around: • delegation programs like the one already proposed by ICF, potentially expanded with additional criteria specifically rewarding decentralization contributions and sovereign infrastructure operators, •…

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What in the mother of Eassay maxxing am I (not) reading?

Thanks Guinch. Glad the points landed =) I wont say anything else about self hosting and bare metal. Will just sign under every word you wrote there… On the Observatory: you’ve named the gap precisely. The raw infrastructure exists in fragments across different operators. What’s missing is exactly what you described. The coordination and productization layer that turns it into something an investor or researcher can actually use. We’ve been quietly building toward that with ValidatorInfo . It started as an explorer but it’s grown into something closer to what you’re describing. A staking RAG (questions answered from live chain data, real interviews with validators, etc), skip:go swap integrated, P2P chat, decentralised forum. The data layer underneath it runs on our own archive nodes and indexer (we are expanding this all the time). It’s not the full Observatory, but it’s the closest thing currently running in production on Cosmos Hub. The honest problem is sustainability. Sovereign infrastructure of this kind requires consistent funding to maintain properly. Right now it runs on validator commissions that don’t fully cover the cost. That’s probably the real structural…

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serejandmyself:

The honest problem is sustainability. Sovereign infrastructure of this kind requires consistent funding to maintain properly.

MkUltra could be usefull for this kind of funding.

You are welcome in the Atom builders group on telegram, Dm me if you are not part of the group

Hey Guinch, love the ideas, especially the Hydro ones. As you know, we’re currently in the process of migrating Hydro’s contracts to the Hub.

We’re also planning to build a direct onboarding flow which will allow users to move ATOM & USDC from centralized exchanges directly into Hydro’s Inflow ATOM & USD vault on the Hub.

This will work with or without a Cosmos wallet. The wallet-less flow will work using WAVS. Hydro will generate a proxy contract for them which automatically routes deposited funds into the vault. Withdrawals can later be authorized through a decentralized WAVS operator set verifying email confirmations and collectively signing the transaction on-chain.

This will make it easier for users to onboard into Cosmos (since no EVM wallet or gas is needed), will offer them yield right away, and will increase activity on the Hub.

Interesting vision.

It feels increasingly important for the Hub to think not only about economic alignment, but also about the long-term infrastructure and coordination challenges that come with a growing interchain ecosystem.

As more chains, services and eventually autonomous systems interact across Cosmos, lightweight verification, synchronization efficiency and scalable trust models may become critical pieces of the stack over time.

Feels like there is still a lot of unexplored design space ahead for the Hub and broader interchain ecosystem.