ATOM stuck on halted UX Chain (umee-1): request for recovery path from IBC escrow

Hi everyone, I hold 2,700.003 ATOM (IBC) on UX Chain (formerly Umee, chain-id umee-1). UX Chain announced a wind-down earlier this year, and the network has been halted since July 10, 2026 (last block 24,110,081). I missed the withdrawal window, so these ATOM can no longer be transferred back to the Cosmos Hub via IBC. As I understand it, the underlying ATOM are still held in the Cosmos Hub’s IBC escrow account for the Hub <> UX Chain transfer channel. They are not lost, just unreachable while UX Chain is halted. My details: • UX Chain address: umee13x95n9s3v9k92qxjv2efzdstexkpzn3pwrjufn • Cosmos Hub address (destination): cosmos13x95n9s3v9k92qxjv2efzdstexkpzn3pu40rdp • Amount: 2,700.003 ATOM Questions for the community: • Is there any existing effort or plan to return IBC ATOM stranded on UX Chain to holders? • Would a Hub governance proposal be possible to release escrowed ATOM to holders, based on the final state of UX Chain at the halt height? • Are other ATOM holders affected? If so, please reply here so we can see the total amount and coordinate. Other chains (e.g. Akash and Injective) have already voted on IBC client recovery proposals for UX Chain…

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Hey! I’m sorry to hear that this happened to you. A recovery path here is extremely difficult but not impossible (i’ll get to this in a second). First I want to explain what we (i.e., Hub governance) can’t do: The Hub can’t just release the 2700 ATOM to an address from the IBC escrow account on the Cosmos Hub side. If we were to do that, and the UX chain were to be re-started later, that ATOM could be double-spent later, which would lead to an accounting mis-match in the IBC escrow on the Hub-side. The only way to release IBC’d ATOM from the escrow account is if there’s a corresponding ATOM burn on the counterparty chain (UX in this case). That burn would require that UX chain be live and producing blocks, which it is not currently. That’s also why this situation is a bit different from the client recovery proposals on Akash and Injective that you mentioned before. In those cases, the chain was still live so recovery of the IBC client was possible. What you’d need to do in order to recover the client is contact the validator set for UX (you can see them here: Validators - UX Chain (UMEE) Mainnet Explorer ) and convince a majority of the vote power to restart the chain, put…

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