Cosmos Hub Adds EVM — But What About CosmWasm?

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Cosmos Hub is now moving toward permissionless smart contracts via EVM, as announced by Interchain Labs (evm.cosmos.network/develop). This is a major shift, especially considering the Hub’s traditionally conservative stance on permissionless execution.

But it raises an important question:

Why enable permissionless EVM contracts before permissionless CosmWasm contracts — the native smart contract VM of the Cosmos SDK?

CosmWasm is already powering permissionless smart contracts on chains like Osmosis, Juno, Neutron, Nibiru, and more. It supports IBC out of the box and is tightly integrated with Cosmos’ modular architecture.

Yet Cosmos Hub has never enabled permissionless CosmWasm, despite multiple governance proposals (like Prop 69) that aimed to do so — all of which failed due to concerns about complexity, attack surface, and philosophical alignment with the Hub’s minimal mission.

Now that the Hub is taking the leap into permissionless smart contracts via EVM, does this reopen the discussion for permissionless CosmWasm on the Hub itself?

Is this about adoption strategy, developer base, or governance dynamics?

Curious what others in the community think.

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The main reason ICL is going for EVM is the large developer base and this will allow them to accelerate their plans.

The fate of Cosmwasm long-term is very murky. There’s just not enough developer interest in it these days.

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It’s over for CosmWasm. Hub will leave it alone, somebody else will string it along into oblivion. Bummer that a homegrown thing is dead, but it’s clearly for the best. EVM has more devs, more money, more opportunity. You could build a perfect product but if no one uses it it’s worthless. Time to forge ahead.