Hub Weekly Update #17: September 24, 2026

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This is the seventeenth 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: a short recap of the Neutron governance attack and the Hub’s response, the Paxos proposal passed and is funded, one-step USDC transfers are live on Injective, a note on the roadmap write-up coming next week, and the community call is being rescheduled.

  • Neutron governance attack: the Hub was not exploited. Validators halted the chain to stop stolen ATOM from being sold, restarted it on Gaia v28.3.0, and 1,227,121 ATOM now sits in a validator multisig while Neutron leads recovery

  • Paxos proposal: Proposal 1054 passed, the community pool funds have been delivered, and integration planning starts this week

  • USDC migration: Injective’s one-step transfer upgrade is live today, and the Skip Go integration follows

  • Hub roadmap: a fuller write-up on the two product ideas lands in next week’s issue

  • Community call: the ICF Q&A was postponed because of the Neutron incident, and a new date is coming

Neutron Governance Attack: The Hub Was Not Exploited, the Chain Is Stable, and Recovered Funds Are Held by a Validator Multisig

On Tuesday, September 22, an attacker initiated a governance attack on Neutron by raising a proposal under false pretenses to take admin control of that chain, drained funds from protocols deployed there, and moved a portion of those funds, held in ATOM, back to the Cosmos Hub over IBC with the intent of selling them.

To be clear, there was no vulnerability on the Cosmos Hub. The Hub’s role in this incident was as the destination chain for stolen funds, not as the source of the exploit. Neutron’s contributors are publishing the postmortem on the attack itself, and we will link to it from the forum when it is up.

What Hub validators did, in order:

  • Halted the chain. Once it was clear that the attacker was actively selling the ATOM through cross-chain liquidity, validators coordinated to halt the Hub and stop the remaining balance from moving

  • Restarted on Gaia v28.3.0. A patched binary was prepared with a one-time state change applied at the halted height (33,086,741), before any further transactions were processed. It moved the attacker’s remaining balance from their address to a recovery multisig and touched exactly one account: no other balances, delegations, or user funds were touched by this binary. Validators upgraded and the chain resumed producing blocks at 12:00 UTC on Wednesday, September 23, with the large majority of the active set back online within hours. Exchanges have re-enabled deposits and withdrawals since

Where the recovered ATOM sits:

What comes next:

  • A Hub-side recap on the forum. We will post a full account of the halt, the restart, and the multisig, scoped to the Hub’s part of the story, aligned with Neutron’s postmortem.

  • Recovery coordination stays with Neutron. Neutron is restarting its network, and its contributors and the affected protocols are working out the recovery plan. The multisig is standing by for contributors to propose what to do with the funds once Neutron is restarted safely.

Thank you to every validator, exchange, and node operator who upgraded on short notice for the third time in three weeks, and to the multisig signers who took on this responsibility with almost no notice. The response was fast and well coordinated in support of another network. Because of this effort over 1.2 million ATOM belonging to Neutron users and protocols was kept out of the attacker’s hands and is now available for recovery.

Paxos Proposal 1054: Passed, Funded, and Integration Planning Begins

Proposal 1054, the ATOM integration and listing proposal with Paxos, passed on Thursday, September 17 with 54 percent turnout and a strong yes majority. The 300,740 USDC from the community pool was delivered on passage, and Paxos has confirmed receipt.

For anyone catching up: Paxos operates regulated brokerage and custody infrastructure that powers trading for platforms such as Interactive Brokers, Charles Schwab, and PayPal. The funding covers the technical integration, initial liquidity, and support for Paxos’s brokerage clients in listing ATOM for trading. The forum thread has the full background.

What happens now:

  • Integration kicks off. Paxos has begun the technical work on their side. We are meeting with them this week to walk through implementation next steps

  • Co-marketing. Paxos has asked to coordinate announcements as milestones and integrations land

  • Progress reports on the forum. Paxos has agreed to post updates on integration progress and listings.

Thank you to everyone who voted and engaged in the discussion.

USDC Migration: IBC upgrade live on Injective today, and the Skip Go Integration Follows

Injective is shipping an upgrade today, September 24, that enables one-step USDC transfers on their side. This is the piece we had been targeting for October, and it removes the last on-chain barrier to 1-click USDC migrations between Noble and Injective USDC.

Where things stand:

  • Migrating today still works exactly as before. Skip Go and the in-wallet flow in Keplr remain the recommended paths, with the step-by-step guide linked from both. The Osmosis alloyed USDC pool is a good alternative, it now holds roughly 1.7 million USDC of liquidity

  • The one-click flow comes next. With Injective’s upgrade live, the remaining work is integrating the one-step path into Skip Go. That work starts next week. We will announce it when it is live

  • Ecosystem chains are moving. Terra and Osmosis have begun their migrations, and additional chains are lining up behind them. Roughly 1 million USDC has migrated so far, and we expect the pace to pick up as liquidity deepens and the larger balances move

How you can help:

  • Migrate your own Noble USDC now, through Skip Go or Keplr

  • If your team runs a frontend or wallet that displays Noble USDC and has not integrated the migration flow yet, you can do so by integrating the Skip API. Please reach out to @RoboMcGobo on Telegram with any questions

  • AMM protocols: deploy your Injective USDC pools so liquidity is ready as balances move over

Hub Product: A More Detailed Update on the Ideas Lands Next Week

Last week we shared that the validation work on the Hub’s direction, the connection point between traditional finance and onchain finance, has narrowed to two concrete product ideas, and that we are finishing the technical, product, competitive, and legal viability checks.

That work continued this week with some delays due to the Neutron incident response. Rather than rush a partial update into this issue, we are giving the two ideas the space they deserve: next week’s Hub Weekly will carry a deeper write-up on both, along with a recap of everything that has landed on the Hub since the roadmap process began. We want your input on the ideas before anything is finalized, so please bring questions and pushback to that thread when it goes up.

Note: This is not the full roadmap, it’s just an update on the ideas and how they’ve progressed so far. We want you to have a more detailed look at some of the products and features we’re exploring for the Hub so that you can weigh in.

Community Call: Postponed Because of the Incident, New Date Coming

The monthly community call with the Interchain Foundation Q&A was scheduled for Tuesday, September 22, the same morning the Neutron incident began. With the team and most of the validator set heads-down on the response, we made the call to postpone rather than hold a distracted session.

We are working with the ICF on a new date and will confirm it here and on @cosmoshub as soon as it is set. The ICF Q&A format stays the same, so if you already sent questions, we have them. If you have not, send them to @RoboMcGobo on Telegram or reply to this thread, and add the community calendar so you get the update.

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.

  • Follow the Hub on X for updates

  • Join the monthly validator call: second Wednesday of October, 9:00 AM ET

  • Join the next community call, featuring the ICF Q&A: new date to be announced. Register for the community calendar here

4 Likes
2

Thanks Robo! Great read, really excited to see what the roadmap has in store!

3

I’m missing any mention of work on the tokenomics. I think everyone has already bitten their nails down to the quick.

1 Like
4

Ah, yes! Here, there are no major developments from last week; we have given feedback on an early draft of Phase 2 to Gauntlet and are awaiting their final delivery here so we can conduct a final review and share it with the community. Thank you for the bump there.

5

Will the roadmap work be further delayed IF another security incident pops up? Why is the roadmap / product work never a priority?

6

I believe security is vital to the roadmaps development, delays can be excused on an issue like this especially with the positive outcome of securing the stolen funds. Just my opinion and I’m not expert

7

Except it’s been two years overdue already and we are in crypto that’s beyond eternity.

1 Like