Hub Weekly Update #3: May 28, 2026

[qxnico]

This is the third of the 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. You can read week one and week two if you missed them.

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 Thursday, Robo is away, so I’ll be sharing the update! Fear not - for he will come back tomorrow after his mandatory touch-some-grass day.

This week: the first tokenomics cohort report is coming, a call for feedback on the USDC working group, and our next community calls are coming to discuss the Hub’s liquidity layer:

• The next roadmapping public sessions are now scheduled for live discussion. The topic? A native liquidity layer for the Hub, discussing different paths and tradeoffs. Tune in to the Validator Call (June 8th), and the Community Call (June 22), where we’ll be going over this.

• A third update lands from the tokenomics research workstream with Gauntlet, with the first complete cohort behavior breakdown report landing next week.

• A short status update on the USDC migration working group: we are gathering feedback via a form. Please share your thoughts if you are a protocol or app using USDC. If you want to be added to this group to have your say, please reach out to @totalspud on Telegram.

• An update on Ecosystem Growth Delegations, the IBC transfer-volume data RFP and next steps.

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Next Live Discussions: Native Liquidity Venue for the Hub

Our live roadmapping discussions are returning, where we discuss with the community key open questions or directions we can take with the Hub’s next features. The next round shifts gears, focusing on the options for a native liquidity venue that we’re exploring for the Hub.

Our current thinking: the venue should be an enterprise-grade order book rather than an AMM, given the institutional and legal use cases the Hub is aligning against. We also have early ideas around an open plugin architecture that would let community DEXes plug in as market makers and share in institutional order flow fees. Nothing is finalized; the calls will walk through the paths and tradeoffs and bring the discussion to the forums.

Sign up below:

• Validator Call - June 8

• Community Call - June 22

Add the community calendar to follow along, and stay tuned to @cosmoshub on X for registration links and updates. Validators can find the calendar link in all official validator channels.

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Tokenomics Phase 1 (continued): Labeling Engine Built, First Cohort Report Lands Next Week

Last week’s update shared the first cohort-level attribution of daily ATOM sell pressure, the framework, the methodology, and the early finding that ICO participants and whale stakers together account for roughly 22% of daily sell pressure. Full details in week two.

This week, Gauntlet built the first version of the labeling and classification engine that will sharpen that number. The work has three layers:

• Labeling the major exchange and staking addresses on Cosmos, starting with the 20-30 largest. This turns a generic “outbound transfer” into a meaningful “deposit into a CEX.”

• Detecting DEX swaps through transfer memos, the Skip API, and flows into Osmosis.

• Weighting flows by probability of sale. Exchange deposits and DEX swaps count as full sales; cross-chain transfers carry a lower weight (still being calibrated).

As a reminder, the 22% figure from last week is a floor, not a final number. The labeling work landing next week will move the figure.

What lands next week:

Gauntlet will have the first version of the analysis ready for Tuesday. That delivery includes the sell pressure breakdown for the top 95 holders, results split across regimes and cohorts, and the validated swap detection logic. Whale and mega-whale concentration analysis is part of that report, as well as behavior across retail, stakers, ICO addresses, etc…

We expect to walk through the highlights in next week’s Hub update!

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USDC Migration Working Group: Intake Continues

Since forming the working group, we’ve been collecting input from protocols, applications, and users of Noble USDC to shape the migration to Injective USDC. The best way to get on our radar is to fill in this form.

We’re still in the early formation phase, so if your team uses Noble USDC and hasn’t flagged it yet, now is the time. We’d rather over-include than miss a team with a constraint worth designing around.

In parallel, we’re working with Injective on the ecosystem-wide migration strategy and the tooling (including Skip) needed to carry it out. We’ll share the plan more broadly as it matures.

If you’re an ecosystem team currently on Noble USDC, here’s how to help:

• No urgency. Noble USDC keeps working as it does today. Nothing changes on your side until the migration tooling is ready.

• Express interest in the working group: reply to this thread, DM @RoboMcGobo or @totalspud in Telegram, or reach out to any Cosmos Labs team member.

• Flag specific constraints on your current Noble integration that we should design around, custom contracts, IBC channel assumptions, accounting integrations, audit timelines.

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Ecosystem Growth Delegations: Proposals Being Reviewed

When the delegation program relaunched with a new Ecosystem Growth tranche, the IBC transfer-volume data RFP was flagged as a high-priority ask: the dashboards and APIs the ecosystem has relied on are either not scaling or winding down, and we need durable replacements to track IBC flows consistently

We thank those who have already made proposals. For anyone who still wants to submit a proposal, the form is here. We are reviewing the submissions against the criteria outlined when making the application.

We’re evaluating applications on three criteria: coverage of IBC transfers across the live chain set, willingness to keep the underlying APIs public and durable, and a path to operating the infrastructure at a stable monthly cost rather than as a one-off engagement.

This work is ongoing, and the next step is still being scoped. We hope to have the first batch of responses to the teams sent out next week, and thank everyone for their patience.

A reminder on the broader delegation program timing:

The Q3 delegation selection still opens June 15th, with a July 1st redelegation! The testnet participation requirement activates with the next cycle, so any validator that wants to remain eligible for ICF default delegations needs to be onboarded to the Cosmos Hub testnet program by June 15.

If you want to join the testnet, visit Hypha Co-op’s website here.

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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 calls

• Join the next community call: Register for the community calendar here

[Guinch_Roze]

Hey, for a next community call, it would be interesting to speak about a skip.go related topic :

One idea worth discussing is the introduction of a small protocol-level fee in ATOM within the Skip.go routing infrastructure. The goal would be to ensure that every application, wallet, or interface using the Skip.go API contributes directly to the Cosmos Hub economy, regardless of the frontend chosen by the user.

This could create a sustainable value capture mechanism for ATOM, as any volume routed through Skip.go would generate fees at the protocol level rather than relying on individual interfaces to voluntarily share revenue. It would also align incentives between the growth of interchain activity and ATOM holders.

I think this topic deserves a broader community discussion, especially as IBC Eureka and cross-ecosystem routing continue to expand.

[FCOM]

I strongly disagree with the idea of introducing a protocol-level ATOM fee within Skip routing.

One of the greatest strengths of the Cosmos ecosystem is that IBC was designed around sovereignty, neutrality, and voluntary cooperation between chains. No chain should be required to pay rent to another chain simply for participating in the interchain ecosystem.

If a user swaps assets on Osmosis, Injective, Neutron, Noble, or any future IBC-enabled chain, why should part of that activity be taxed in ATOM? The value created by an application should primarily accrue to the application, its users, and its ecosystem - not automatically to Cosmos Hub.

A protocol-level ATOM fee would effectively introduce a privileged position for the Hub within infrastructure that is increasingly becoming ecosystem-wide. This moves Cosmos away from its original vision of independent sovereign chains and closer to a hub-and-spoke model where one chain extracts value from the rest.

There are also practical concerns:

-Alternative routers can and will emerge. If a fee becomes significant, developers may simply route around it.

-It creates misaligned incentives between Cosmos Hub and other ecosystems.

-New chains may view it as an ecosystem tax rather than a service fee.

-It risks politicizing infrastructure that should remain neutral.

Most importantly, value capture should come from providing valuable services that users and chains choose to pay for voluntarily, not from embedding mandatory fees into shared infrastructure.

If ATOM needs stronger tokenomics, the solution should be to build products and services that generate demand for ATOM by choice. Interchain Security, liquidity solutions, settlement services, and other Hub-specific offerings are examples of this approach.

The success of Cosmos comes from decentralization and sovereignty. We should be careful not to undermine those principles in pursuit of short-term value capture.

[Guinch_Roze]

I understand the concern, but I think the discussion needs to be framed around the current direction of the Cosmos Hub rather than the original Cosmos vision from several years ago.

First, Interchain Security is being removed from the Hub codebase, so it is no longer the primary value accrual mechanism for ATOM. Shared security is increasingly becoming an AtomOne proposition rather than a Cosmos Hub proposition.

Second, the original Cosmos vision remains fully intact: sovereign chains connected through trust-minimized interoperability. Nothing about monetizing Skip.go prevents chains from remaining sovereign or building alternative infrastructure.

Third, Skip.go is not a neutral public utility that appeared out of nowhere. It was built by one of the core teams driving Cosmos Hub development and is closely connected to the broader Hub ecosystem and foundation efforts. If Skip.go becomes a critical piece of interchain infrastructure, it is reasonable to ask how that infrastructure will be funded and maintained over the long term.

No infrastructure remains free forever. Sustainable infrastructure requires sustainable revenue. The question is not whether monetization should exist, but where it should occur and who should benefit from it.

In my view, the Hub’s role is evolving. Rather than being a pure coordination layer, it is increasingly becoming a provider of interoperability products, enterprise-oriented services, and shared infrastructure. In that context, it is natural for some of the value generated by Hub-developed products to flow back toward ATOM.

Yes, this creates a more hub-centric model than the original fully horizontal vision. However, I would not describe it as a traditional “hub-and-spoke” system. I see it more as a network of atomic sidechains and specialized service hubs, each providing different services while remaining sovereign.

Some of those services could use ATOM as a payment asset, settlement asset, or access token for premium modules and infrastructure. The goal is not to tax sovereign chains, but to create a sustainable business model around the stack and services that the Hub ecosystem develops and maintains.

Cosmos can remain decentralized and sovereign while still introducing some degree of vertical value capture toward ATOM. Without a sustainable revenue model, maintaining and advancing the stack over the long term becomes increasingly difficult.

[qxnico]

Thanks for the callout, Guinch! We are looking at many ways to monetize infrastructure that integrates ATOM. I agree that it’s a good topic to put on the schedule and hear what both sides of the ecosystem think of this. IBC in itself can and will remain permissionless, but Skip has been a layer that has existed on top of that, so there could be many ways to explore this that meet everyone’s needs without affecting core IBC’s values.

We’ll throw it in the calendar, right after the liquidity layer call! We could have a call that goes over not just Skip, but many ways that infra could become ATOM-centric.