Introduction
It’s not quite the end of our 2024 mandate yet but with the holiday break fast approaching, our scheduled work and expected headcount have been finalized and we’re ready to share our last report.
It is the end of the year and with Informal stepping back from the Hub and Hypha having put up a funding proposal to renew our mandate, we collectively chose to not have a year-end meeting. Instead, we’re posting this report directly to the forum.
So here is the final update for Proposal #839.
As a reminder, the 2024 Oversight Committee consists of:
- Stride contributor: Aidan Salzmann
- Neutron contributor: Avril Dutheil
- Polkachu representative: Polkachu
- Jim Parillo at Figment Capital
- Shane Vitarana at Stargaze
- James Hinck, Product Manager at Circle
No grades have yet been assigned for this quarter (it’s late in the year and people are gearing up for holidays) but discussion and grading in the comments is welcome. Grades may also be presented in the new year if the commitee so chooses.
Work done in previous quarter
(Q4 2024: Oct 2024 - Dec 2024)
HIGHLIGHTS
Testnet Incentives Program restructure and renewal
Based on feedback from validators who regularly perform at a high level on the testnet, we restructured the TIP eligibility criteria to be less punishing in situations where validators miss a single event or get jailed due to circumstances beyond their control.
Previously, TIP required perfect performance (meeting every event criteria and remaining unjailed), with exceptions made when validators communicated with us directly about running experimental setups. Feedback from highly engaged and experienced validators has been incredibly important for TIP as it helps us meaningfully adjust expectations of high performers, rather than steadily reducing expectations across the board. This ensures that performant validators continue to be rewarded and improve their experience without lowering the overall quality of the testnet.
TIP Period 10 kicked off a new system wherein validators are paid for every event they participate in, with a bonus for completing all events in a period and remaining unjailed.
These changes are summarized in a report on the forum, and the program has been renewed by AADAO up until June 2025. In the next 6 months, we intend to work with the ICF to include testnet performance in their delegations program.
Comdex rehearsals and launch
Comdex transitioned from a sovereign to consumer chain on December 10, 2024. Leading up to this event, Hypha supported multiple rehearsals with validators and reviewed the necessary files and parameters for a successful mainnet launch.
This was the Hub’s first sovereign-consumer transition since Stride and the transition itself went extremely smoothly due to well-rehearsed validators and the prepared documentation and files by Hypha. The Comdex team did a great job overseeing the transition with little Hub support during the changeover.
theta-testnet-001 farewell
After two years of service, the theta-testnet-001 has been smoothly decommissioned so that Hypha and Hub validators can focus on the provider testnet.
Preparations such as working with the chain registry, Keplr, ICF, and setting up a mega-faucet for large testnet ATOM requests made this sunset process painless.
CHALLENGES
Efficient stake redistribution on provider
WIth the introduction of the inactive validator feature in v20, we wanted both active and inactive validators to participate on the testnet and get the same experience they would on mainnet. Previously, we let any validator join the active set on testnet. Now, we are adjusting the stake distribution more frequently to make sure that only active Hub validators are active on the testnet.
We haven’t developed automated tooling for this yet, so it is a manual process which is obviously time-consuming.
ADJUSTMENTS
Planned and executed
In progress
Planned and delayed
Planned but removed
Added
Upgrade and feature testing
- Fresh, stateful testing for v21, v22
- Testnet upgrades for v21, v22
- Continued development of user stories test framework
Testnet Incentives Program
- Transition to points-based incentives
- Game Day: Permissionless ICS, theta testnet scavenger hunt
- Demo Days: Consumer chain rewards, CVMS demonstration, sovereign-to-consumer changeover with permissionless ICS
- Period 9 completion: $15k to 32 validators
- Stake redistribution policy to mimic mainnet active/inactive set
- ICF delegation program
Gaia Maintenance and Interchain Security
- Support for Crypto Dungeon mainnet launch
- Comdex permissionless rehearsal
- Testing for ICS v6.4.0
- Sunset for theta-testnet-001
- Support for Comdex mainnet launch
- Support for nRide rehearsal
Q4 OPERATIONAL REPORT
- Upgrades:
- Governance: v21
- Emergency: v21.0.1
- Consumers:
- Crypto Dungeon launch
- Comdex sovereign-consumer transition
- Elys launch
- Neutron emergency upgrades v5.0.1
- Security events: None
Q4 funding report
In preparing our Q4 cash flow management report, we uncovered a typo in our very first cashflow management report at the end of Q1, linked here. I’ve highlighted row 38, where we accidentally pasted our March final invoice values into the section for transfers b/w Budget and AFC Wallet.
As a result, we’ve revised all the reports and produced a Q4 report with no typo impacting it. The version that retains the typo is also represented in the public spreadsheet, and you can see that the discrepancy is roughly 170 ATOM and 4k USDC.
Publicly accessible funding report spreadsheet: [Public] Hypha Q4 financial reports for Cosmos Hub
Hypha wallets
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Budget wallet (vesting):
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cosmos13gatuxfqxn7m3vtlydkyznfs9k8xv8283la5a5
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Available fee cap wallet:
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cosmos1ax7krw2ymq8upaxwce7df3xpalpp0jddm29fws
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Payroll wallet:
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cosmos1d4t7vv9500sma5sea7668pea93dyke8kpvdhyw
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Bonus wallet (vesting):
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cosmos1s39x73k7l0s88jkm399nkdk693ljmkjd2x83es
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Holding wallet (vesting):
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cosmos12hpvh4p54q7fvcnr3cvsz9trly92jurmdh74gx
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Burn rate
Remaining funds
You can see that there’s a tiny bit remaining in our budget wallet because we haven’t gotten around to transferring it now that it’s vested. We’ll return that $12 in the new year 
Plan for next quarter (Q1 2025: Jan 2025 - Mar 2025)
We have recently posted our funding proposal for 2025 so some of these plans are contingent upon that proposal being approved by governance. We intend to put it up for voting in January, so there will be a few weeks where we are without a mandate.
The plan presented here is for “optimistic work” that we will do regardless of our funding proposal.
Further work in the quarter will require more coordination with the Hub team at Interchain Inc. based on their needs if our mandate is renewed. However, we expect to be continuing our business as usual:
- Supporting consumer chain needs
- Training and supporting validators via the testnet program
- Coordinating mainnet upgrades and security response
- Working with ICF to include testnet performance in their delegations program
Optimistic work in January
- Coordinating the Testnet Incentive Program throughout January
- Upgrading the testnet to v22 (release is ready and was scheduled for 2025 so that the teams at Informal Systems, Interchain Inc., and Hypha could collaborate on one major release immediately)
- Upgrading mainnet to v22 with Hypha running communications (Discord, email). Communications work is in the scope of our 2025 proposal and we will optimistically take on that part of the process for the v22 upgrade.
- Onboarding of Interchain Inc. team to the upgrade process on the Hub.
- Continued work on our user stories testing process
- Continued work on improving our usage of interchaintest
Community input
Input received
- Concerns raised with our tiered approach to incentivizing testnet validators, both over whether it’s fair to reward validators differently based on their mainnet voting power and about the clarity of how we have communicated this policy.
Interpretation and incorporation of input
- The new TIP structure does not differentiate between validators based on their mainnet voting power, aside from requiring validators to be in the active set.