Hub Weekly Update #3: May 28, 2026

hub-3 1500×600 295 KB This is the third of the Hub Weekly Thursday recaps, straight from the Hub Unit team, per the cadence we committed to in the From Chaos to Stability to Growth post. You can read week one and week two if you missed them. Every Thursday, we will call out significant Cosmos Hub updates on the forum, with a short companion thread on X, recapping announcements, live events like validator or community calls, and ecosystem updates! For more info, see the linked posts, and contact @RoboMcGobo on Telegram to submit news for the weekly. This Thursday, Robo is away, so I’ll be sharing the update! Fear not - for he will come back tomorrow after his mandatory touch-some-grass day. This week: the first tokenomics cohort report is coming, a call for feedback on the USDC working group, and our next community calls are coming to discuss the Hub’s liquidity layer: • The next roadmapping public sessions are now scheduled for live discussion. The topic? A native liquidity layer for the Hub, discussing different paths and tradeoffs. Tune in to the Validator Call (June 8th), and the Community Call (June 22), where we’ll be going over this. • A third update…

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Hey, for a next community call, it would be interesting to speak about a skip.go related topic :

One idea worth discussing is the introduction of a small protocol-level fee in ATOM within the Skip.go routing infrastructure. The goal would be to ensure that every application, wallet, or interface using the Skip.go API contributes directly to the Cosmos Hub economy, regardless of the frontend chosen by the user.

This could create a sustainable value capture mechanism for ATOM, as any volume routed through Skip.go would generate fees at the protocol level rather than relying on individual interfaces to voluntarily share revenue. It would also align incentives between the growth of interchain activity and ATOM holders.

I think this topic deserves a broader community discussion, especially as IBC Eureka and cross-ecosystem routing continue to expand.

I strongly disagree with the idea of introducing a protocol-level ATOM fee within Skip routing. One of the greatest strengths of the Cosmos ecosystem is that IBC was designed around sovereignty, neutrality, and voluntary cooperation between chains. No chain should be required to pay rent to another chain simply for participating in the interchain ecosystem. If a user swaps assets on Osmosis, Injective, Neutron, Noble, or any future IBC-enabled chain, why should part of that activity be taxed in ATOM? The value created by an application should primarily accrue to the application, its users, and its ecosystem - not automatically to Cosmos Hub. A protocol-level ATOM fee would effectively introduce a privileged position for the Hub within infrastructure that is increasingly becoming ecosystem-wide. This moves Cosmos away from its original vision of independent sovereign chains and closer to a hub-and-spoke model where one chain extracts value from the rest. There are also practical concerns: -Alternative routers can and will emerge. If a fee becomes significant, developers may simply route around it. -It creates misaligned incentives between Cosmos Hub and other…

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I understand the concern, but I think the discussion needs to be framed around the current direction of the Cosmos Hub rather than the original Cosmos vision from several years ago. First, Interchain Security is being removed from the Hub codebase, so it is no longer the primary value accrual mechanism for ATOM. Shared security is increasingly becoming an AtomOne proposition rather than a Cosmos Hub proposition. Second, the original Cosmos vision remains fully intact: sovereign chains connected through trust-minimized interoperability. Nothing about monetizing Skip.go prevents chains from remaining sovereign or building alternative infrastructure. Third, Skip.go is not a neutral public utility that appeared out of nowhere. It was built by one of the core teams driving Cosmos Hub development and is closely connected to the broader Hub ecosystem and foundation efforts. If Skip.go becomes a critical piece of interchain infrastructure, it is reasonable to ask how that infrastructure will be funded and maintained over the long term. No infrastructure remains free forever. Sustainable infrastructure requires sustainable revenue. The question is not whether monetization should…

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Thanks for the callout, Guinch! We are looking at many ways to monetize infrastructure that integrates ATOM. I agree that it’s a good topic to put on the schedule and hear what both sides of the ecosystem think of this. IBC in itself can and will remain permissionless, but Skip has been a layer that has existed on top of that, so there could be many ways to explore this that meet everyone’s needs without affecting core IBC’s values.

We’ll throw it in the calendar, right after the liquidity layer call! We could have a call that goes over not just Skip, but many ways that infra could become ATOM-centric.