Changelog
- 2026-Jun-09: Posted initial draft
Introduction
Throughout 2025 and 2026, Hypha has been responsible for Hub maintenance in a format we’ve affectionately referred to as “keeping the lights on”. In the first half of this year alone, we have shipped seven major and minor upgrades, most of which have been dependency bumps or executing on design choices approved by the community and Cosmos Labs.
On June 4, Cosmos Labs announced their acquisition of Mintscan and the formation of a new Cosmos Labs Korea entity that will build the Hub’s roadmap in-house, accelerating Cosmos Labs’ plans for both Hub and stack. This reorganization of responsibilities will end Hypha’s contract for Hub support at the end of July (or at the conclusion of the ICS deprecation work).
While we have been proud to work on the Hub, we’re happy to pass the job back to a product-focused development team and think that the CLK team brings the right talent and expertise to make this next phase a success.
Hypha’s real passion on the Hub has always been the testnet: an invaluable resource for de-risking mainnet operations, improving validator knowledge of Gaia, and building new features on the Hub. The testnet has always been something of a public good on the Hub - publicly accessible, supportive, and frequently publicly funded by the community itself.
We would like to keep the testnet program publicly funded, and continue to collaborate with Cosmos Labs as an independent team in the ecosystem. Thus, we are presenting our third community spend proposal to fund the next twelve months of the Hub’s public testnet program.
Summary
This proposal funds one year of work (August 1, 2026 - July 31, 2027) at a monthly flat rate of $16,860 to cover stewardship and maintenance of the Hub’s persistent testnet. This flat rate would be withdrawn in USDC from the community pool and held in a Hypha-controlled wallet to be invoiced ahead of each month covered by the funding proposal.
This scope of work includes organizing and running testnet events, reporting validator participation to the Interchain Foundation for the delegations program, and running and administering testnet infrastructure such as snapshots and faucets. It also includes necessary coordination with Cosmos Labs around Gaia release readiness, upgrade rehearsals, testnet-to-mainnet planning, and information transfer for the purposes of reporting and accountability.
Gaia development and maintenance, verification and validation testing, QA, incident response, and mainnet coordination and upgrade monitoring are explicitly not-in-scope for this proposal.
Governance votes and outcomes
The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:
- YES: You agree to fund the Hub testnets team at Hypha Worker Co-operative with a $202k USDC budget for continued stewardship of the Hub’s public testnet over the period of August 1, 2026 - July 31, 2027. A ‘YES’ outcome will immediately release 202k USDC to the specified wallet (
TBD). - NO: You do not agree to fund the Hub testnets team at Hypha Worker Co-operative based on the terms of this proposal.
- NO WITH VETO: A ‘NoWithVeto’ vote indicates a proposal either (1) is deemed to be spam, i.e., irrelevant to Cosmos Hub, (2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of ‘NoWithVeto’ votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned.
- ABSTAIN: You wish to contribute to the quorum but you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal.
Hypha’s past work on the Hub
Hypha has been a core contributing team on the Cosmos Hub since 2022 with a focus on the Hub’s persistent testnet. Our work over the past four years has comprised:
- Weekly or biweekly validator training on new Gaia releases and features released as part of Interchain Security
- Establishing the Testnet Incentives Program to compensate validators for their contributions to the Hub’s live testnet (funded at one point or another by AADAO, ICF, and the ICF delegations program)
- Mainnet coordination of upgrades via governance, via manual halt height, and via emergency binary swaps
- Maintenance and dependency bumps for Gaia
- Integration of features requested directly by the community, such as the tokenfactory module
- Deprecation of Interchain Security
- Major upgrade testing and de-risking for all Gaia releases through local testnets, devnets, and public Hub testnets
Scope of proposed work
The Hub’s stable public testnet has been operated by Hypha since 2022 and serves as the primary environment for rehearsing upgrades, training node operators, and supporting integrators who need a live network to test against.
The testnet serves three distinct purposes:
- A training ground for validators and node operators
- A rehearsal environment to de-risk mainnet upgrades
- A stable platform for developers and integrators
Training Ground
Weekly or biweekly testnet events give validators hands-on exposure to new Gaia releases and upcoming upgrade procedures before they hit mainnet. Around 60 of the Hub’s active validators participate regularly, with engagement supported through the Interchain Foundation’s delegations program.
Ongoing coordination work includes:
- Designing and running weekly events that walk validators through new features and upgrade paths
- Providing direct support and troubleshooting to node operators
- Establishing and reinforcing operational best practices across the validator set
- Tracking performance and reporting points to ICF on a regular schedule
Rehearsal Environment
Every mainnet upgrade carries risk. The testnet is where that risk gets absorbed - validators encounter the upgrade first, issues get surfaced and resolved, and the broader validator set approaches mainnet day with confidence and accurate expectations. In Hypha’s time facilitating upgrade rehearsals and managing mainnet upgrades, the Hub’s upgrade process has gotten smoother, faster, and less risky.
Mainnet rehearsal work includes:
- Coordinating upgrade rehearsals with the Cosmos Labs mainnet team, collecting validator feedback, and reporting any findings to Cosmos Labs or the relevant upstream maintainer to support testnet-to-mainnet pushes
- Documenting resource requirements, timing considerations, and any operational edge cases surfaced during testing
- Identifying compatibility issues with third-party tooling before they affect mainnet
Development Platform
The testnet maintains a stable, live environment that developers and integrators can build against. Teams working on new Hub features, governance tooling, or ecosystem integrations (block explorers, wallets, relayers) rely on the persistent testnet for realistic testing conditions.
This work includes:
- Supporting teams running feature or integration testing against live Gaia code
- Maintaining IBC connections to other test networks
- Assisting less technical participants in learning to interact with the Hub, including governance proposal testing
Work not in-scope
Cosmos Labs’ renewed focus on the Hub means that Hypha will be transitioning many pieces of work and will no longer be responsible for the following items which were included in our 2025/2026 contracts (both with the Hub community and Cosmos Labs directly):
- Gaia codebase development and maintenance
- Release and upgrade testing
- Mainnet coordination and upgrade monitoring
- Hub incident response
Budget and logistics
This proposal asks for a budget of $202,320 USDC, to be invoiced monthly at $16,860 USDC. Our calculations for this monthly rate are given below.
| ---- | ---- | ---- |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline monthly labour | 45 hours | |
| “Busy month” padding | + 18 hours | |
| Effective billed hours | = 63 hours | |
| Hourly consultancy rate | $220 USD | |
| Labour subtotal | $13,860 USD | |
| Infrastructure costs | + $3,000 USD | |
| Monthly flat rate | = $16,860 USD | |
| Annual total | $202,320 USD |
A couple notes:
- A flat rate means that if we work more or less than the effective billed hours, we are paid the same amount regardless. We think this is the appropriate structure for a deliverables-based contract as it incentivizes the contractor (Hypha) to work efficiently rather than inflate our hours.
- Hypha is a software consultancy, with operating costs. Our consultancy rate is inclusive of our operating costs and profit margin.
The community pool currently contains roughly $1 million USDC, so this proposal will directly request USDC to avoid the need for any buffer and liquidation logistics. If the proposal passes, this amount would be transferred from the community pool into a Hypha-controlled wallet and the team will invoice this wallet in advance every month for the duration of the proposal’s funding period.
If the community puts up and passes a proposal instructing Hypha to suspend our work on the testnet, we will immediately stop our work, provide transition materials to a successor team specified to the community, and return any un-invoiced funds to the community pool.
Conclusion
To continue our testnet work on the Hub, Hypha is requesting a budget of $202k USDC withdrawn directly from the community pool to fund work from August 2026 - August 2027.
We intend on putting this proposal on-chain on June 23, 2026 to allow 2 weeks’ discussion on the forum.