This is the twentieth 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: Proposal 1058 passed and the recovered ATOM is back on Neutron, which closes the Hub’s part of the Neutron recovery. The ICF joined this morning’s community call to explain how it operates and who sits on its council. The monthly validator call covered the reshaped delegation program and a new Ecosystem Growth delegation for an institutional ATOM staking API. ATOM is now listed on Paxos’ supported assets page. The USDC migration passed 12 million, and a short tokenomics status.
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Neutron recovery, closed out: Proposal 1058 passed on Monday with about 60 percent of bonded ATOM voting, and the Hub recovery multisig sent the recovered ATOM to the Neutron recovery multisig on Wednesday. Returning the funds to Drop and Astroport users is now in Neutron governance’s hands
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Community call with the ICF: Josh Cincinnati, Vice President at the Interchain Foundation, walked through how the ICF and Cosmos Labs divide strategy from execution, introduced three new Foundation Council members, and confirmed the ICF has stopped selling ATOM this year
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Validator call: the delegation program now runs on calendar quarters with a trailing 12-month governance window, an Ecosystem Growth delegation for InfStones to build an institutional ATOM staking API is expected to finalize soon, fresh Hub snapshots are published every 12 hours, v28 source is public, and v29 is on testnet
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Paxos: Cosmos Hub and ATOM now appear on Paxos’ Assets and Blockchains page for trading and custody, the deliverable from Proposal 1054, and we meet the Paxos team this week for a full update
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USDC migration: over 12 million USDC has moved from Noble to Injective, dYdX starts late this month or early next, and the Hub Community Pool migration multisig is still being assembled
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Tokenomics: our review of Gauntlet’s recommendations is complete and a wrap up post with findings and recommendations for governance is being prepared. No numbers and no dates yet
Neutron Recovery: Proposal 1058 Passed, the ATOM Is Back on Neutron, and the Hub’s Role Is Complete
Proposal 1058 closed on Monday, October 12 and passed. Final turnout was about 60 percent of bonded ATOM, well past the Hub’s 40 percent quorum, after sitting near 17 percent when we wrote last week’s update. Among non-abstaining votes, 99.7 percent were Yes. Thank you to every validator and delegator who voted in the final days, and to the validators who answered our outreach and pushed the proposal over the line.
With the mandate in hand, the six signers of the Hub recovery multisig sent the 1,227,121 ATOM recovered after the Neutron exploit, less network fees, over IBC to the Neutron recovery multisig on Wednesday, October 14. The receiving address is neutron1yr29fd7uzdjp2jsq8hrta8mvyd6ex7vumn0shy, as stated in the proposal text.
That transfer completes the Hub’s part of the recovery. The remaining step, returning the funds to the original Drop and Astroport contracts so that affected users withdraw through the interfaces they used before, runs through Neutron governance, and the Neutron team is posting its own update on the forum. The Hub-side record is in the response and recovery recap and the proposal discussion thread.
Thank you to the multisig signers, Nansen, Keplr, Enigma, Silknodes, Kiln, and Polkachu, who held the funds and moved them only on a governance mandate, exactly as committed.
Community Call: The ICF Sets Strategy and Funds It, Cosmos Labs Executes, and ATOM Holders Govern the Protocol and the Community Pool
This morning’s monthly community call, hosted on X, featured Josh Cincinnati, Vice President at the Interchain Foundation and a Foundation Council member since late 2023.
How the ICF and Cosmos Labs work together. The ICF is a Swiss nonprofit foundation based in Zug with no equity holders and no profit extraction, whose legal duty under Swiss law is to its mission of promoting open, decentralized software with a particular focus on Cosmos. It sets strategy and goals, funds initiatives, and evaluates progress. Cosmos Labs, through its three operating subsidiaries in New York, Berlin, and Korea, executes across product, engineering, marketing, growth, and maintenance, and provides market insight and recommendations back to the foundation.
The worked example Josh gave was the tokenomics research: Cosmos Labs recommended the scope and a design partner, the ICF added candidates, reviewed qualifications, and approved the cost, and Cosmos Labs then partnered with Gauntlet to execute.
What the ICF does not control. The ICF has no direct control over the Community Pool or protocol funds. Those are governed by ATOM holders. The ICF holds the Cosmos and ATOM trademarks defensively.
Three new Foundation Council members. The council works like a self-governing board, with one-year terms and annual elections, annual reporting and audits to the Swiss supervisory authority, and recusal rules for conflicts of interest. Josh introduced three new members selected for board governance experience first, plus complementary expertise: Biba Homsy, a Swiss and Luxembourg lawyer with senior FINMA and Credit Suisse compliance experience as President, Ryan Pripstein, a New York based founder and investor with a crypto and venture background, and Radisav Cojbasic, the founder of a zero-knowledge cryptography company with a deep engineering background.
ATOM and the treasury. The ICF holds ATOM in its treasury and no longer sells it as of this year. Operations are funded from fiat, BTC, or ETH. ATOM is used operationally for compensation vesting and lockups for Cosmos Labs and foundation members, and for the delegation program, where ATOM is delegated to validators and infrastructure providers on the Ecosystem team’s recommendations.
The full conversation, including the enterprise pillar discussion and the questions from the audience, is available as a recording on X.
Validator Call: Delegations Now Run on Calendar Quarters, an Institutional ATOM Staking API Is Coming Through the Ecosystem Growth Program, and v29 Is on Testnet
Yesterday’s monthly validator call covered the Q3 delegation results, two Ecosystem Growth delegations, and the state of Gaia releases. The slides and a recap were shared with the community yesterday, you can find them here.
Delegation program: Q3 results are out, and the next snapshot is December 31
The Q3 delegation results were shared with validators last week for review before execution. Two structural changes landed with this round:
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Calendar quarters. Snapshots now fall at the end of each calendar quarter, with the same alignment on testnet, so the next snapshot is December 31. Delegations are awarded for quarterly rounds by default, with results released to validators a few days ahead of execution so they can check the work
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A trailing 12-month governance window. Governance participation used to be measured all the way back to the genesis of Cosmos Hub 4 in February 2021. It is now measured over the last 12 months, with an 80 percent threshold, and it counts every proposal, including spam proposals, because voting NoWithVeto on those is how validators discourage them. This brought in validators who were previously disqualified and excluded 11 who were close to the line. About half of those are expected to qualify next round
The other criteria are unchanged: 95 percent uptime over 90 days, in the active set for 90 of the last 100 days, commission at 10 percent or under, no disqualifying slashes in 90 days, and six testnet participation points per quarter. The first v29 testnet point was available on Tuesday, and three to four points are offered each month.
InfStones: an Ecosystem Growth delegation for an institutional ATOM staking API
We are finalizing an Ecosystem Growth delegation with InfStones to build and operate an institutional-grade ATOM staking API. The API covers every transaction a custodian or brokerage needs to offer ATOM staking to its clients: delegate, undelegate, redelegate, and claim rewards, plus the institutional reporting those clients require for their own books. InfStones already runs staking infrastructure for some traditional enterprises positioning themselves for digital assets, which is why they were chosen: the integration is deployed where those target clients already are.
The structure is milestone-based. An initial delegation of close to 600,000 ATOM goes in once the agreement is fully executed, and further tranches are tied to performance milestones, the largest of which is signing a qualifying enterprise customer onto the API. One signed brokerage or custodian is expected to bring more ATOM into staking than the delegation itself, which is the logic of the program: the delegation pays for a specific service, and the service has to earn the next tranche. The agreement is expected to finalize soon, and we will post the full terms on the forum when it does.
This is a partner-led Ecosystem Growth delegation rather than a bid-based RFP, and it sits alongside the Paxos listing below as the second piece of the same institutional access push: Paxos puts ATOM in front of regulated brokerages, and the InfStones API gives brokerages a staking integration to plug in.
Solva: PebbleDB snapshots every 12 hours, the first bid-based RFP award
The PebbleDB snapshot RFP was the first Ecosystem Growth delegation awarded through the bid process: we defined the required scope on the forum, operators submitted applications with the ATOM delegation they would need to run the service, we spoke with each applicant, and the award went to Solva. Like every RFP award, the delegation runs for one year in four quarterly rounds.
The service is live. Cosmos Hub snapshots are cut every 12 hours at snapshots.solva.solutions, kept minimal so they download fast, with a target size of roughly 8 to 12 GB once the WASM and light client caches are trimmed from the next rotation. Validators and node operators can start using them today for new nodes, re-syncs, and recovery.
The active RFP index lists what is open, in progress, and awarded. The sponsored endpoint provider RFP, for public RPC, REST, and gRPC endpoints on cosmoshub-4, is open now and follows the same process: read the scope, submit the application at the bottom of the post with the delegation you would need, and we will follow up directly.
Validators: how you can help
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Validators with institutional partners of your own: partner-led agreements like the InfStones delegation are the kind of Ecosystem Growth deals we want to make. If you can bring a custodian, brokerage, or enterprise integration to the table, reach out to @RoboMcGobo on Telegram
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Not yet on testnet? Contact Dan for an introduction to the testnet team, or register through the testnet program docs linked in the validator call slides. Six points are required for the December 31 snapshot
Gaia releases: v28 source is public, v29 is on testnet, and the mainnet proposal is coming
The disclosure period for the v28 security fix is over, and the source code for the three private builds, v28.1.1, v28.2.1, and v28.3.1, is now public on GitHub. v28.3.1 built from the Makefile in the documented build environment matches the checksum of the private binary validators ran, so the public release can be verified against what is already running. Release binaries ship with detached GPG signatures, with verification keys and instructions in the Gaia release signing directory, and the disclosure process itself is set out in the Cosmos security policy.
v29 launched on testnet on Tuesday. It removes the dead crisis and params modules, updates Go dependencies, cleans up an obsolete balance migration, and retires the deprecated provider. The mainnet upgrade proposal is expected later this week or early next week.
Paxos: ATOM Is Live on Paxos’ Supported Assets Page, Which Is What Proposal 1054 Paid For
Proposal 1054 passed on September 17 and funded a one-time 300,740 USDC Community Pool spend to integrate ATOM onto Paxos’ regulated brokerage and custody platform, with Paxos waiving recurring maintenance fees and committing to quarterly reports on brokerage listings. The forum discussion has the full scope.
The deliverable is now visible. Paxos’ Assets and Blockchains page lists Cosmos (ATOM) on the Cosmos Hub network as a native asset available for both trading and custody on the Paxos platform, with a one-confirmation, roughly six-second processing time for the network. As the proposal set out, each Paxos brokerage client decides on its own whether to enable ATOM for its users, so listing on the platform is the first step and brokerage-level availability follows client by client.
We are meeting the Paxos team this week for a full update and to plan out integrations and comarketing efforts. The InfStones staking API above is designed to plug into exactly this kind of brokerage and custody integration, so the two workstreams can compound.
USDC Migration: Over 12 Million USDC Has Moved to Injective, dYdX Starts Later This Month
As of Wednesday morning, over 12 million USDC had migrated from Noble to Injective across the ecosystem. That pace is in line with what we expected before dYdX begins. Every dollar of Injective USDC returns fees to ATOM, which is why this migration matters for the Hub beyond the January 12, 2027 wind-down of Noble USDC.
The bulk of the remaining Noble USDC sits on dYdX, which is expected to begin its migration at the end of this month or early next through its own governance process. Everything else is on track for full migration ahead of January 12.
The Hub Community Pool migration is prepping to go to governance. a community pool spend proposal moves the Community Pool’s USDC.n to a multisig of community members, which migrates it to USDC.inj over Skip:Go and returns it to the Community Pool. A proposed signer set will be assembled this week, and the proposal will come to the forum for discussion next week.
Tokenomics: Our Review of Gauntlet’s Recommendations Is Complete, and the Final Report is Coming
A short status note. Our review of Gauntlet’s external recommendations is complete, including the pass we described last week on how exchanges, custodians, large delegators, and liquid staking providers could game the proposed mechanisms, and a final round of clerical edits to the report.
A wrap-up post and the public dashboard will be coming soon. We are not sharing numbers, parameter targets, or dates ahead of that post.
Wrap up: Until Next Week, Quarterly is Coming!
That’s all for this week! See you on the next one. We are also working on the Cosmos Quarterly #2, coming in the next 1-2 weeks. As usual, it will contain updates across all pillars and replace that week’s weekly.
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: the next one is in November, and the October 14 recap is on the forum
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Join the next community call. Register for the community calendar here