This is the sixteenth of Hub Weekly Thursday recaps, straight from the Hub Unit team, per the cadence we committed to in the From Chaos to Stability to Growth post.
Every Thursday, we will call out significant Cosmos Hub updates on the forum, with a short companion thread on X, recapping announcements, live events like validator or community calls, and ecosystem updates!
For more info, see the linked posts, and contact @RoboMcGobo on Telegram to submit news for the weekly.
This week: the USDC migration is live and now runs inside Keplr, the validator call recap, Gaia v28.2.0 heads to testnet, the Paxos vote is live, a Hub roadmap status update, and the ICF joins next week’s community call.
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USDC migration: the Noble USDC to Injective USDC migration went live Friday, and as of this week Keplr surfaces the migration flow directly in-wallet
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Gaia v28.2.0: the testnet upgrade runs today, with an expedited mainnet proposal to follow
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Paxos proposal: Proposal 1054 is on-chain and is set to pass today
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Hub roadmap: validation is running longer than planned, two product ideas are taking shape, and the end-of-September date will slip
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Ecosystem Growth Delegations: the first targeted RFP is live, a PebbleDB snapshot provider for the Hub, and all future RFPs now live in one index
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Community call: the Interchain Foundation joins the monthly community call on Tuesday, September 22, for a dedicated Q&A
USDC Migration: Live in Skip Go, Now in Keplr, and One-Click Coming in October
The migration from Noble USDC (USDC.n) to Injective USDC (USDC.inj) went live on Friday. If you hold Noble USDC anywhere in Cosmos, the path is open now and we recommend using it early rather than waiting on wind-down deadlines.
The ways to migrate today:
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Skip Go: the dedicated migration flow at go.skip.build takes USDC.n to USDC.inj in two clicks, with a step-by-step guide linked from the UI
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Keplr: new this week. If you hold USDC.n in Keplr, the wallet now shows a migration banner, and clicking it walks you through the same flow without leaving the wallet. Thanks to the Keplr team for turning this around quickly
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Osmosis transmuter pools: one-to-one swaps as an alternative path for smaller balances. No fees.
What is next: a one-click migration flow is targeted for October. That will also unlock the migration of the USDC held in the Cosmos Hub community pool, which will route through a governance proposal once the one-click flow is available. We will share the details on the forum ahead of that proposal.
How you can help:
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Migrate your own Noble USDC now, through Skip Go or Keplr
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If your team runs a frontend or wallet that displays Noble USDC and you have not integrated the migration flow yet, you can support the migration on your app by integrating the Skip API. Instructions here, reach out to @RoboMcGobo on Telegram for any questions
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AMM protocols: deploy your Injective USDC pools so liquidity is ready as balances move over
Ecosystem Growth Delegations: The First Targeted RFP Is Live, and All Future RFPs Have a Home
The Ecosystem Growth Delegations are the application-only part of the ATOM delegation program, aimed at advancing key ecosystem initiatives and supporting critical Hub infrastructure. Two things changed this week.
A new index for active RFPs. Going forward, every request for proposals under the program will be listed in a single forum topic: Active Ecosystem Growth Delegation RFPs. Each RFP gets its own topic for requirements, updates, and discussion, and the index is updated as RFPs open and close. Completed RFPs stay up as a public record. If you want to know what the program is looking for at any given time, that is the page to bookmark.
The first targeted RFP: a PebbleDB snapshot provider for the Cosmos Hub. In the recent validator tooling survey, reliable PebbleDB snapshots were the top-requested enhancement, and community-run snapshot services have not been able to guarantee consistent standards. The RFP is for a single operator to run a dependable snapshot service, with the delegation sized to what the service costs to operate. The service requirements:
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Publish a new cosmoshub-4 PebbleDB snapshot every 12 hours, keeping the two latest verified snapshots available
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Use tar.zst or tar.lz4 archives compatible with the current stable Gaia version
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Reserve at least 1 Gbps of bandwidth exclusively for Cosmos Hub snapshot downloads
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Automatically restore each snapshot, start the node, and confirm the chain is cosmoshub-4 before publishing
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Publish operator instructions and SHA-256 checksums alongside each snapshot
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Notify the service contact within 12 hours of detecting an outage
Applicants propose only the additional ATOM delegation needed to operate the service, on top of any baseline allocation they already qualify for. Proposals are evaluated on technical fit, ability to meet the service requirements, operational experience, implementation feasibility, expected service quality, launch timing, and the proposed additional delegation amount. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
How you can help:
- If you operate Cosmos Hub infrastructure or publish snapshots today, read the RFP and submit through the Ecosystem Growth Delegation application form, referencing “Cosmos Hub PebbleDB snapshots” in your project description
Gaia v28.2.0: Testnet Upgrade Today, Expedited Mainnet Proposal on Chain
Gaia v28.2.0 contains the full fix for the vulnerability addressed by the emergency v28.1.0 patch. The release ran through the Cosmos Hub testnet today, and the mainnet proposal is now live as an expedited proposal! If the proposal passes, the upgrade will occur on Monday morning.
Watch the forum, the Cosmos Hub Discord, and nodes@cosmoslabs.io notifications for the proposal and upgrade height. Validators: vote promptly on the expedited proposal once it is live so the upgrade can be scheduled with adequate notice.
Paxos Proposal 1054: Voting Ends Today
The ATOM integration and listing proposal with Paxos, discussed on the forum since September 1, is now on-chain as Proposal 1054.
The short version: Paxos operates regulated brokerage and custody infrastructure that powers trading for platforms such as Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab, and PayPal. The proposal requests 300,740 USDC from the community pool to fund the integration, establish liquidity, and support Paxos’s brokerage clients in listing ATOM for trading. Staking is out of scope. The forum thread has the full details and the discussion so far.
How you can help:
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Vote with your stake while the voting period is open
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Delegators: if your validator has not voted yet, ask them to
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Questions or concerns belong in the forum thread, where the conversation is active
Hub Roadmap: Two Product Shapes Are Taking Form Under the TradFi and DeFi Thesis, and the Validation Stage Is Extending
A status update on the Hub roadmap. In August we said we currently estimated publishing a public-facing roadmap by the end of September, and that we would tell you if that changed. This is that update, along with more detail on what the work has produced so far.
Where we left off in August. The August 13 issue laid out the direction in full. The short recap: the audit and problems phases produced three problem spaces where the Hub could matter most: real-world assets, interoperability, and payments. The team took three product hypotheses into the Korea working sessions and came back most excited about one: the Hub as the connection point between traditional finance and onchain finance.
Both sides of that market want what the other has. Institutions tokenizing assets want DeFi’s distribution and composability; DeFi wants access to real-world assets and the capital behind them. We said we would prioritize issuance, distribution, and access, in both directions, before the harder integration work, and that we would validate specific product shapes legally, technically, and commercially before naming them.
Where the work sits now. Since August the work has been validation and product architecture: taking that direction, deciding which product shapes to prioritize first based on differentiation, and testing technical, legal, and commercial viability before committing anything to a roadmap. We are running technical design, product design, competitive, and legal viability checks in parallel, because any one of them can reshape what a product looks like or rule it out. The initial shape has already gone through several refinements as a result, and the work has narrowed to two product shapes: programmable RWA index products over IBC, and direct issuance of tokenized deposit and RWA-based assets.
One Note. These are ideas for the products in their working form. Product, legal, or technical validation can easily change the shape of these products or kill them entirely at this stage, so do not anchor on this update as a hard commitment.
On the timeline. Work is progressing well, but the team’s focus this month shifted to the USDC migration and the Cosmos Hub upgrades and security work, both critical for ecosystem stability. As a result, we will spend a few more weeks in this phase than we expected, as we prepare the proposal for internal review and approval. Rather than replace one date with another, we will update the estimate with an in-depth breakdown of where each piece stands.
What comes next. If time allows on Tuesday’s community call, we will touch on this briefly alongside the ICF Q&A. Either way, a more detailed written update on the product shapes follows the community call next week.
Community Call: The ICF Joins for a Dedicated Q&A on Tuesday, September 22
The monthly Cosmos Hub community call is on Tuesday, September 22, at 9:00 AM ET, hosted on X, and the Interchain Foundation is joining for the dedicated Q&A session we mentioned last week. In here, we will cover a lot of the questions the community sent us in the last Q&A that were foundation-specific, and we wanted to address with the Foundation directly. These are mostly bringing clarity as to how the ICF operates, and how it relates to Cosmos Labs.
Following the ICF’s council transition, this is the first open forum for the Hub community to put questions to the Foundation directly. We will be joined by Josh Cincinnati, Vice President of the ICF Council.
How you can help:
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Send your questions for the ICF ahead of time to @RoboMcGobo on Telegram, or post them in reply to this thread, so we can make sure they get airtime
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Add the community calendar so you get the reminder
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Follow @cosmoshub on X, where the Space link will be posted the morning of the call
That’s all for this week - thanks to everyone engaging across the forum, validator channels, and Telegram. Looking forward to next week’s update! Please let us know if you like the Weekly format, and what else you’d like to hear from us.
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Join the monthly validator call: second Wednesday of October, 9:00 AM ET
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Join the next community call, featuring the ICF Q&A: Tuesday, September 22, 9:00 AM ET on X. Register for the community calendar here