ATOM Integration & Listing on Paxos’ Regulated Brokerage Infrastructure [Proposal- Community Treasury Spend]

Hub Proposals Community Spend
1

Changelog

  • 2026-Sep-01: Posted initial draft

  • 2026-Sep-01: Author Updated, Added Reference Links**

  • 2026-Sept-09: Entered New go live date and additional forum transparency

**

[Proposal] Community Treasury Spend: ATOM Integration & Listing on Paxos’ Regulated Brokerage Infrastructure**

Co-Authors: Paxos

Target Recipient: Paxos Trust Company, N.A.

Requested Amount: 300,740 USDC

Payment Terms: Settlement Upon vote-passage

Target Launch Date: September 18

1. Executive Summary

This proposal requests a one-time Community Treasury Spend of 300,740 USDC from the Cosmos Hub Treasury to complete the technical integration, liquidity onboarding, and institutional listing of ATOM on the Paxos Enterprise Brokerage and Custody Platform.

ATOM has successfully cleared Paxos’s standard risk review (Status: Greenlit). The Cosmos team and Paxos have been engaged for the last couple of months to scope this partnership and are excited to bring this to the DAO for decision. Technical integration and liquidity provisioning are currently underway to meet a targeted platform launch date of September 18.

By funding this one-time integration fee, the Cosmos Hub establishes a link into mainstream FinTechs and Traditional financial ecosystems through an OCC-regulated provider. Paxos has agreed to permanently waive all recurring costs for this integration and maintenance fees ($0/month), ensuring long-term alignment with the Cosmos Hub Treasury and a single, transparent integration costs.

Paxos has over 600+ globally onboarded Institutions and 10+ different Brokerage clients using Paxos for crypto trading infrastructure, including Charles Schwab, Paypal, Venmo, and Mercado Libre.

2. Paxos Institutional Infrastructure & Sole Gateway Positioning

Paxos operates as a premier regulated digital asset infrastructure platform, providing enterprise-grade custody, brokerage, and settlement solutions to top-tier institutional market participants and consumer FinTech platforms.

Regulatory Rigor & Trust Framework

  • Tier-1 Regulatory Oversight: Regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC - US National Trust Charter), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS - Major Payment Institution License)

  • Security & Audits: Fully compliant with SOC I and SOC II Type II standards.

  • Asset Protection: Customer assets are held strictly in bankruptcy-remote, segregated accounts backed by digital asset insurance coverage.

**
Regulated Infrastructure Gateway**

Paxos functions as a regulated enterprise infrastructure gateway connecting digital assets directly to leading retail brokerage and FinTech applications. Across our wallet infrastructure (both our QC and MPC offering) Paxos has over $20B+ in AUC. Integrating ATOM onto Paxos infrastructure provides listing capabilities for the asset across Paxos’s distribution network. Public examples include:

  • Interactive Brokers: 5.3M+ active brokerage accounts

  • CMC: 2M Global Users

  • Charles Schwab: 39M brokerage accounts

**
Compliance Notice:**

Infrastructure Enablement Model: This proposal funds the technical enablement, compliance framework, and liquidity gateway on Paxos. Once ATOM is active on Paxos’ core platform, each individual brokerage client retains sole discretion over if, when, and how they choose to turn on ATOM trading and custody for their respective user bases, in accordance with their internal product roadmaps, regional regulatory approvals, and business priorities.

We plan to update the forum quarterly in the first year regarding progress here.

Continued Partnership: Institutional Staking Offering

Following the initial launch of ATOM custody and trading infrastructure, Paxos will plan to add Institutional Staking Offering on the roadmap. Paxos is currently engaged with several partners here to bring:

  • Native Yield Distribution: Enables enterprise partners and institutional custody clients to participate in Cosmos Hub staking directly through Paxos infrastructure.

  • Recurring Alignment: Drives long-term staking participation, enhances network security, and establishes a recurring yield mechanism for enterprise capital deployed within the Paxos ecosystem.

3. Go-To-Market & Strategic Marketing Execution

To maximize institutional visibility and partner uptake upon launch, Cosmos Labs and Paxos will execute a co-coordinated Go-To-Market strategy:

  1. Enterprise Asset 1-Pager and Co-Branded Collateral: Publication of an institutional-grade ATOM product sheet and asset overview tailored specifically for decision-makers at Paxos enterprise partner firms highlighting ATOM’s utility and economic model.

  2. Official Custody Announcement: Joint press release led by Cosmos Labs with Paxos’ support and amplification, and formal announcement broadcast across Paxos’ client channels.

  3. Multi-Phase Social Campaign: A structured marketing campaign covering:

  • Phase 1: “Plan to List” infrastructure announcement.

  • Phase 2: Official launch date and custody activation.

  • Phase 3: Custody milestones and institutional integration updates.

  1. Direct Client Engagement: Direct outreach by Paxos product and relationship management teams to engage key institutional and brokerage partners on ATOM enablement options.

  2. Additional Opportunities: Paxos regularly partners with customers, asset issuers, chain ecosystems and more on additional content, speaking events, webinars and more. This partnership opens the opportunity for follow-on content, case studies and more as adoption through Paxos scales.

4. Spend Execution & Treasury Settlement Mechanics

Upon successful passage of this governance proposal, $300,740 USDC will be disbursed from the Cosmos Hub Community Pool to the designated Paxos settlement address.

Settlement Terms Summary

  • Amount: 300,740 USDC (represented as 6-decimal Noble USDC IBC token on the Cosmos Hub).

  • Disbursement Conditions: Funds released directly to Paxos Trust Company following governance approval.

  • Fee Structure: One-time payment covering all integration, legal, regulatory clearance, and technical provisioning. Zero recurring monthly maintenance fees.

Deposit Address: cosmos1fhwnl8tls2z4leyyvluyqq8erzmwzepcku8zkg

References:
Paxos Trust Company, NA
DOGE Announcement
Charles Schwab Token Expansion

10 Likes
Hub Weekly Update #15: September 10, 2026
2

Super excited for this proposal and I think it has the potential to be one of the more impactful Cosmos Hub gov proposals in a long time. Here’s why:

The proposal opens up dozens of new potential markets for ATOM

ATOM is listed on nearly every crypto-native trading platform. Every major centralized exchange (and ofc all Cosmos-native DEXes), as well as nearly all perps platforms. That’s a good position to be in, but it also means the marginal value of the next crypto exchange listing is close to zero. Anyone who was going to find ATOM through those venues has already had years to do it.

On traditional brokerage platforms, on the other hand, ATOM is basically unrepresented (with the exception of some of the more forward-thinking platforms like Robinhood). That’s where the overwhelming majority of retail and institutional interest lies today. Most people who own investments own them in a brokerage account, and ATOM has basically no penetration in those markets.

This proposal allows a significant number of brokerages (including huge names like Schwab, Interactive Brokers, and Paypal) to easily deploy ATOM for trading to their customers with integrated liquidity support. This one integration unlocks access to potentially dozens of new markets and millions of new potential ATOM holders.

For a sense of scale on the distribution: Charles Schwab reports 39M active brokerage accounts and Interactive Brokers reports 5.3M.

The timing is perfect

Traditional financial venues are building out crypto trading for their clients right now, and nearly every asset is still unlisted. That gap will close over the next couple of years, and ATOM has a chance to be early to a market that is just starting to gain interest in crypto again.

Deploying this integration now puts ATOM in the listing conversation alongside ETH, SOL, and BTC and avoids having to compete with hundreds of assets for listing on the same venues once the inevitable rush to market occurs in the near future.

The cost is reasonable

Despite it being an ongoing maintenance expense and liquidity obligation on Paxos, they’ve agreed to waive all recurring fees on this integration in perpetuity and limit the Hub’s expenses to just the buildout fees and cost of initial liquidity support.

Overall I’m supportive. This feels like an incredibly strong proposal being brought at the perfect time, and I’m excited for the chance to bring this integration to ATOM!

9 Likes
3

Strongly supportive of this proposal.

Bringing ATOM into regulated traditional brokerage infrastructure like Paxos could open the door to millions of new retail and institutional users.

The potential for major brokerages to offer ATOM, combined with future institutional staking, makes this a very strategic investment for the Cosmos Hub. Great initiative! :tada::tada::tada:

6 Likes
4

Thank you for this detailed proposal, and I like the concept behind this. However, I have a few questions:

1. How was the $300,740 figure determined? Your terms and services and it don’t mention any listing fees, only share of trade fees between Paxos and partnerships. But it is written that ATOM trade fees are being waived. What was the rationale behind this alternate fee/payment structure for ATOM, and why this number?

2. Has any other chains gone through this process with Paxos?

3. What specific, measurable KPIs will be used to demonstrate the successfulness of this initiative — number of activated brokerage partners, trading volume, custody AUM, staking participation?

4 Likes
5

Thanks for the well thought out proposal! A few questions if you don’t mind,

  1. Do you have any idea which brokerages on your platform have an interest in actually enabling trading / custody for ATOM? It would be helpful to know that the integrations costs are going to lead to a meaningful customer base. Any historical references you have from past integrations of similar tokens with staking rewards could be useful.
  2. For the institutional staking offering, do you plan to launch your own validator or engage a white label validator for this offering? The Cosmos Hub has historically seen issues with large centralized providers (like Coinbase) eating up a lot of voting power and then not meaningfully contributing to governance. It would be awesome if Paxos could commit to working with existing validators who are able to become compliant with any regulatory requirements that are necessary. That said, if you have already engaged with certain validators to offer this product, it would be helpful to know who they are.
  3. Are you open to setting milestones/KPIs that need to be achieve before the full 300,740 USDC is disbursed? Right now it seems like there is a lot of work to be done and while Paxos has a great reputation in the ecosystem, there have been far too many instances where community spends were give out all at once with zero assurances to the community, therefore it would be a show of good faith to come up with some KPIs to ensure the Hub is getting full value for this partnership/integration.
  4. Lastly, will any of the $300,740 be used to acquire ATOM for liquidity on the venues it will be offered? Or will brokerages need to acquire ATOM on the open market / OTC markets to offer the token to their users?

Looking forward to seeing how this evolves!

4 Likes
6

Cosmos Labs / ICF should be funding this, not the community pool.

This is squarely in line with their stated goals and ambitions. The word “institutional” appears in this proposal 12 times. So I’d like to understand why the community pool is being asked to cover it.

Cosmos Labs / ICF holds a treasury of over $150M and burns roughly $2.5M per month. This spend is a rounding error for them. The community pool holds $866k, and this proposal would consume 35% of it.

“The Cosmos team and Paxos have been engaged for the last couple of months to scope this partnership” Cosmos Labs negotiated and scoped the deal, but now wants to bill the community pool without consulting it or any community members in the months before (with a launch date in 2 weeks!).

ATOM is already well distributed. What we’re missing are demand levers and real utility. Without those, no one has a reason to touch ATOM.

My view is that the community pool should be reserved for products and applications that directly drive utility and demand for the ATOM, and only when no other funding source exists. This worked for Stargaze, Hypha, Hydro, and it could have for Osmosis.

Have any of these brokerages actually requested ATOM for their users? The proposal asks the community pool to pay for the possibility of distribution, while explicitly not committing to any. I’m not opposed to the collaboration itself. I’m opposed to funding it from the community pool.

6 Likes
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Hi @Wandering_Cosmonaut - Thanks for your questions!

  1. The figure is in line our standard blockchain integration fees to integrate a chain across our wallet products, specifically our Trading and Custody endpoints. The T&Cs referenced are specifically for brokerages who will be listing the token, and not applicable to the actual token integrations.

  2. Yes, linked in the References. AVAX and DOGE being the most recent.

3. All of the above (Sans Staking!) Staking is not in scope as this product offering will need to be scoped and rolled out after our standard risk review process that all new features go through. Scaling regulated infrastructure is an involved process but we are committed to adding this functionality down the road at no additional cost to the Cosmos Ecosystem.

8

Thank you for the input @Avi_Kleomedes - please see our responses below:

  1. Please see linked references at the bottom of the OP. Generally, our clients are prioritizing listing tokens in the Top 100. More importantly this is an evergreen integration. In the last year, Paxos has added several new partners, most notably Charles Schwab, to our platform and ATOM will be available for both current and future brokerage clients as we onboard more financial institutions launching digital asset custody strategies. Our goal in the impending gigabull market is to win Wall Street, and Paxos’ success will drive additional distribution channels for ATOM as we add more brokerages.

  2. Staking is out of scope for this proposal, but something we are actively exploring on the roadmap.

  3. The proposal is scoped to cover Paxos’ implementation, engineering, and regulatory costs to integrate a new chain onto our custody platform. We cannot gate payment on KPIs as the upside for the ATOM team is larger than what we can offer today, as we continue to onboard new institutions and brokerage clients YoY.

  4. To support ATOM trading, Paxos will route our brokerage partners order flow to the top trading desks and exchanges to support their trading volume for any trade size. Here is an overview of our execution engine: Order Routing Upgrade for Crypto Brokerage | Paxos

9

Thanks for the feedback here, glad to see you’re excited about the proposal itself, just less so about the source of funding.

Cosmos Labs / ICF should be funding this, not the community pool

The short answer to this is that we can’t. We have legal and regulatory restrictions on what we can fund and what we can’t when it comes to token listings. If you recall, the ICF has never funded a listing of ATOM on any exchange, and there’s a good reason for that. If this proposal doesn’t pass, the integration unfortunately can’t move forward.

ATOM is already well distributed

While true on crypto-native exchanges, this is certainly not true of traditional brokerages and other tradfi markets that Paxos supports. We’ve got the opportunity to open an entirely new market of prospective ATOM holders at a time when the demand is just starting to take off and these integrations are still scarce. If we wait a couple of years to ship this. ATOM will be one of hundreds of assets for brokerage clients to choose from rather than one of a handful.

My view is that the community pool should be reserved for products and applications that directly drive utility and demand for the ATOM and only when no other funding source exists

I agree with most of this and that’s why the proposal is here! This integration is solely targeted at driving additional access to ATOM at a cost that is scoped to the effort associated with the integration and value to the network. It brings net new potential holders who don’t have access to it today as they’re not crypto natives. No other funding source exists. This is the ideal proposal for the community pool to cover.

If this proposal doesn’t meet the criteria, what proposal does?

2 Likes
10

Will support this proposal.

The CP contains enough USDC to cover it without selling ATOM, and the cost is actually reasonable for this kind of integration.

The benefits have been laid out extensively above and I agree with the arguments, even though nothing is guaranteed anyway. The bottom line is that ATOM needs to reach more retail and institutional players, and that’s a path towards this goal.

5 Likes
11

I see the potential value of getting ATOM integrated into Paxos’ regulated brokerage infrastructure, especially for institutional access. But I still have some concerns about the proposal.

ATOM is already available through major institutional-facing players such as Coinbase, and Revolut is also part of the Cosmos ecosystem, right ? So what exactly does Paxos unlock that we don’t already have today?

My biggest concern is the $300k USDC upfront payment. We are paying for the integration, but there are no clear guarantees on how many Paxos brokerage clients will actually offer ATOM, how much volume this could generate, or how much institutional demand already exists.

If the Hub is going to spend $300k to gain institutional distribution, I think we should get more than just the technical integration. Why not include a commercial component in the deal?

For example, once institutional clients gain access to ATOM, Paxos could also promote Cosmos Hub products such as Hydro. Even better, could Hydro potentially be made available or presented as an option for institutional users who gain ATOM exposure? If institutional ATOM staking and locking funds into Hydros vaults is part of the future roadmap, this could create a much stronger value proposition for the Hub and bring institutional capital deeper into the Cosmos ecosystem.

One thing I would also like @RoboMcGobo to clarify: what is the actual difference between the institutional access Paxos provides and the access already available through players such as Coinbase, Revolut or other existing institutional channels? Does this proposal open a genuinely new distribution channel, or could it overlap with infrastructure or access that already exists today?

If Coinbase, Revolut or other existing players already provide similar institutional access, it would be useful to understand exactly what additional value Paxos brings.

I would be much more comfortable voting YES if the proposal included measurable KPIs, some form of commercial commitment, and a clear strategy to bring institutional users not only to ATOM, but also deeper into the Cosmos Hub ecosystem.

6 Likes
12

As a long-term ATOM holder and committed delegator, I want to voice my strong support for this proposal.

For ATOM to break out of its current cycle and achieve sustainable economic growth, we must look beyond our existing boundaries. ATOM is already listed on virtually every major crypto-native exchange. Squeezing incremental growth from the crypto-native retail sector has diminishing returns; the real untapped liquidity and adoption lie in Traditional Finance (TradFi) and regulated brokerage platforms. Integrating ATOM into Paxos’ enterprise infrastructure is exactly the strategic leap forward Cosmos Hub needs.

That said, community scrutiny is healthy and necessary. Below are my perspectives on why this initiative moves us forward and how we should address the core concerns raised:

1. Justifying the $300k Spend with Transparency and Accountability Asking the Community Treasury for $300,740 USDC upfront is a significant commitment. While waiving the $20,000/month recurring maintenance fee means this investment breaks even on paper in roughly 15 months, the community deserves maximum transparency. I urge the Paxos team to provide a clearer breakdown of this one-time cost (engineering hours, regulatory compliance, legal clearance) alongside defined integration milestones. Tying fund disbursement to demonstrable delivery stages would build immediate trust and ensure treasury resources are protected.

2. Off-Chain Trading vs. Real Network Value A common pushback is that retail trades on platforms like Interactive Brokers or PayPal occur off-chain and do not burn immediate gas. While technically true, this overlooks how institutional custody works:

  • Paxos is strictly bound by 1:1 asset reserve mandates under OCC and MAS regulation. Every ATOM purchased through a partner broker must be physically acquired and custodied. This removes circulating supply from open exchange order books.

  • Large-scale omnibus settlement, rebalancing, and wallet operations between cold and hot storage still occur on-chain.

  • More importantly, bringing non-crypto-native capital into the ecosystem creates a structural price foundation that benefits all stakers.

3. Debunking Monopoly Concerns Cosmos Hub is—and will always remain—a permissionless, open-source network. Integrating with Paxos creates zero exclusivity or monopoly. Any regulated custodian (BitGo, Anchorage, Fireblocks) or exchange can integrate ATOM at any time without asking for community permission. Paxos simply acts as a turn-key regulatory bridge for institutional brokers who would otherwise never build bespoke Cosmos infrastructure on their own.

4. The Road to Phase 2: Institutional Staking & Inflation Reduction Our overarching goal as a community is clear: transition from high inflation rewards to real economic utility and sustainable fees. Custody and brokerage access are the non-negotiable prerequisites (Phase 1). Once Paxos holds significant ATOM balances in custody, activating institutional staking (Phase 2) becomes a natural commercial next step. That transition will route institutional delegations directly to Cosmos Hub validators, strengthening economic security while cementing ATOM’s status as a premier yield-bearing reserve asset.

Conclusion Waiting passively for centralized entities to fund our growth has historically slowed Cosmos down. The Community Pool exists precisely to seize high-impact opportunities like this. If Paxos provides transparent milestone accountability for the $300k integration fee, this proposal represents an asymmetric bet on ATOM’s long-term institutional expansion.

I look forward to voting YES once these clarifications are reflected in the final on-chain proposal.

4 Likes
13

Paxos is not an exchange, we enable globally regulated platforms to offer crypto to their end users. It’s a B2B2C model. Fun Fact: Revolut used Paxos to launch their crypto solution in 2020.

Paxos can offer exponential distribution to the ATOM tokenholders because a listing with us does not limit you to any one client set. All current and future brokerages are part of Paxos’ addressable market.

3 Likes
14

Hey Guinch! Thanks for jumping in.

As cool as I think this would be, brokerages and institutional offerings operate under pretty strict regulatory requirements and are only just now dipping their toes in to simply cryptoasset holdings offerings (as Evan mentioned, even staking is something that needs to be rolled out slowly with their partners because it carries a whole different class of risk requirements).

These folks are not ready for onchain primitives like Hydro and other DeFi protocols. We can’t bake this into any commercial arrangement with Paxos or their partners because it’d be essentially impossible to execute. I think with the current regulatory environment and market conditions we’re trending in that direction, and I personally believe brokerages will offer DeFi products to their customers one day (shoutout to Robinhood and Coinbase trying to lead the way here), but that day is not today, sadly.

Evan pretty much covered this already, but the major benefit is that this integration unlocks dozens of potential listing partners rather than just one. Paxos is not a venue themselves, they provide the infrastructure for institutional venues to easily integrate ATOM into their own offerings. Without Paxos, we’d have to approach each venue individually, probably pay some sort of integration fee for each of them, and help bootstrap liquidity for each one.

The benefit that Paxos provides is that via this single, one-time integration they provide all of that for us for every venue they support, and every venue that they will support in the future. Paxos is growing rapidly so I expect there will be many cases where we see new ATOM listings that would have previously taken months or years to land happen much more quickly (sometimes likely even without our involvement).

3 Likes
15

ATOM Renaissance is favoring this proposal. The $300k ask seems reasonable, but it would be better if we see a more detailed breakdown of how the funds will be used.

3 Likes
16

Everstake is generally supportive of the proposal. Regulated brokerage distribution is a segment where ATOM has been relatively underrepresented, and the one-integration-to-many-venues model appears materially more efficient than pursuing listings individually. The permanent waiver of recurring fees is also a strong signal of long-term alignment.

A few questions for clarification:

Post-launch reporting. What does Paxos plan to share with the Hub after launch, for example, activation status across brokerage partners, custody metrics, or aggregate flow indicators, so the community can evaluate the impact over time?

5 Likes
17

Love this question. Definitely interested to read the answer.

18

What does this mean for infrastructure providers, like us at Atlas?

19

Hi Evan,

So to put it succinctly, there is no guarantees about onboarding after integration. At least Schwab integrated SOL, LINK and AVAX, so there is some precedent.

Re: staking, while it is out of scope for this proposal, it is definitely on the table as a future step and one that I don’t think should be ignored as it has serious implications for concentration of voting power. I hope you and your team would be willing to engage on this discussion before moving forward with any sort of staking on any of the platforms that list ATOM?

“as the upside for the ATOM team is larger than what we can offer today” what exactly do you mean by this? Can you elaborate?

20

This could introduce ATOM to a much wider audience. For users who buy ATOM through these partner platforms, will withdrawals to a self-custody wallet be available from launch, or will that depend on each individual platform?