Context:
This is clearly a paradigm shift proposition. We are so grateful to have such innovative mindsets in the broader Cosmos community and to see that the Hub is still acting as a gravitational force for the best minds. Additionally, we want to emphasize the radical change perceived in this initial post compared to previous shifts in the hub’s history (such as Atom 2.0, etc.). The author doesn’t advocate a global vision but rather exposes the idea and potential high-level design choices, allowing the community to express feelings and make suggestions. In our humble opinion, this approach is much healthier.
Analysis:
Regarding the proposition itself, we think this is clearly an interesting topic that merits a lot of attention. On the contrary, we believe simple questions require simple answers. Should the Hub install the Babylon's Comet Extension ? The answer is YES. Refusing this would simply mean the Hub falling behind competition in the Security as a Service business (SaaS).
Design Choices:
On the design side, a minimal tax from the Hub seems like a reasonable rationale to explore. It is worth to mention that validators will already take a minimum 5% fee (and more depending on the validators the users choose to delegate to). We could consider using a community tax on top of it and redirect toward a dedicated covenant or even directly into the community pool. We recommend to assess this distribution design choice in a global comprehensive debate on ICS rewards in general. We plan to initiate this debate soon enough in the forum as we received initial signaling support in this post:
Strategy Choices:
This shift in shared security introduces many new elements to an already complex puzzle. The emergence of a new type of security could be viewed by ATOM holders as a threat to the collateral value of the token in the replicated security offering. The positive feedback on this integration proposal suggests the Hub’s community might be more mature today. Instead of focusing on short-term value accrual and engaging in a pointless competition game, they seem to adapt to an ever-evolving landscape and seek cooperation whenever possible. We think this is an important thing to point out.
To this collaboration topic, we feel like we have to ask that important question which haven’t been posted yet (at least not that we know so far): Wouldn’t it be a mutual benefit to integrate Babylon as a consumer chain ?
If we think about it, this could make a lot of sense. We often refer to ICS as a mutual agreement contract that can only work where symbiotic relations can emerge. Let’s break it down:
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Babylon Chain’s Benefits: People need to understand the various primitives Bitcoin uses to secure over PoS chains. More detail about the actual handling of the custody and slashing via “accountable assertions”, “finality gadgets” and “convenant emulation” can be found in the Babylon’s original light paper. In simple terms, the protocol uses a combination of the aforementioned three primitives along with a fourth one, “timestamping.” This ensures the slashing transaction can be spent before unstaking. To reduce costs, the protocol proposes using a dedicated chain to gather and compile multiple timestamps from multiple PoS chains into one. Therefore, as the protocol grows and expands to more Cosmos chains (not only), the Babylon chain becomes a growing center point of failure. As the Babylon chain itself will be a Cosmos SDK based chain, its validators’ accountability and collateral at stake become an important part of the risk design. In our humble opinion, this makes it a perfect candidate to opt for the reputation of the Hub’s validators and the ATOM stake, better concentrating the Babylon token on its chain utility & governance parameters.
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Cosmos Hub’s Benefits: The Babylon chain offering a timestamping aggregation service could also try to compete with the Hub’s Shared Security and offer it’s own replicated security, backed by their native token and BTC “staking”. To compete, the Hub would build its own consumer chain to provide similar aggregated timestamping. To avoid such harmful behaviors, it is worth reasoning over potential cooperation. The hub could become a Security Aggregator adding Babylon’s BTC stake to its existing ATOM security and credible neutrality. In return the Hub validators would secure the Babylon chain’s consensus which plays an essential role in the overall Bitcoin Staking Protocol primitives. Expanding this new service accross the whole Cosmos further strengthen the Hub’s central position as a Cosmos Public Good contributor.
Conclusion:
In summary, this integration is a no-brainer, but we think the actual scope is much broader than the initial question asked. This pertains to a crucial opportunity for the Hub to create a fruitful partnership with Babylon’s project. As the Hub currently lacks any Business Development representatives, we invite the community to initiate open discussions regarding the potential mutual benefit that could arise from a consumer chain integration of the forthcoming Babylon’s chain. From our initial research, this could be beneficial to both parties.
Thank for reading!
Govmos (the governance arm of the PRO Delegators’ validator)
