I’d like to share a conceptual suggestion that might be worth exploring during the ongoing research and design efforts around the Hub and the broader Cosmos ecosystem.
Cosmos has built the strongest interoperability layer in Web3, but there is still a major opportunity that remains untapped, turning interoperability itself into a source of sustainable economic value. Not through inflation, but through real activity and cross chain flows. A direction that could be worth investigating is the idea of an Interchain Revenue Layer a standardized framework where networks, applications, and services connected through IBC can route fees, data services, or economic flows through the Cosmos Hub in a transparent and modular way. This would allow ATOM to act as a settlement asset for interchain activity, giving the Hub a clearer economic role beyond issuance based security.
Such a model wouldn’t need to replace anything that currently exists. It could simply sit alongside the existing architecture as an optional pathway for chains that want to take advantage of shared liquidity, shared routing, shared data, or shared infrastructure. The value of ATOM would then come from usage and economic motion rather than purely from emissions, and the Hub could benefit from a more resilient and diversified economic base. This could also enable new modules such as AI agents, data services, cross-chain liquidity routing, oracle infrastructure, or automation layers to plug into the Hub and settle their flows in a common format, without forcing any chain to adopt a particular design. Thanks to the rapid technological progress and AI advancements, today there are no things that are truly impossible to implement, opening space for innovations that could genuinely drive Hub and Cosmos ecosystem value.
I see Cosmos Labs as the ones setting the standards, not merely adapting to them. I’m not proposing a specific mechanism here only suggesting that exploring this direction might uncover a path where Cosmos can leverage its modular architecture to create a genuine economic flywheel. If the research team believes this is aligned with current goals, it may be an interesting area to study alongside the ongoing tokenomics work.