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**

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[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 15

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 15.

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.

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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.

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
CoinMarketCap on PENGU Listing

5 Likes
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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!

5 Likes
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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:

2 Likes
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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?

1 Like
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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!

1 Like
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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.

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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.

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Thank you for the input @Avicenna - 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