Look, I used to think the same. I believed the Hub should focus on its strengths, with Neutron handling smart contracts. I figured trying to make the Hub a generic L1 would lose out to Ethereum and Solana.
But it turns out, I was probably wrong. Neutron hasn’t gained much traction, but the Cosmos Hub likely would. As I mentioned, the incentives just don’t align for developers excited about ATOM to build on Neutron.
I fully agree that the Hub’s biggest strength is attracting devs and users who believe in the appchain thesis. But there’s a path dependency; we likely need to get a few things right at the L1 level before fully committing to ICS. If we “Solana-fy” the Hub and make it appealing, ATOM’s price likely doubles the next day, we’d attract fresh devs, and have a shot at reviving ATOM.
The thing is, Solana won. We ran the experiment in production, and users and investors made their preference clear. This argument of “we can’t do that because they already did” is like being in a struggling nation sticking with communism while watching America’s GDP soar and saying, “We can’t ‘Americanise’ because they’ve already done that.” The novelty doesn’t matter—what works, works. ATOM already has 100s of thousands of wallets, and new users will be drawn by the potential upside.
But I feel like I’m repeating myself. Let me ask you - what’s the next best option for ATOM? It’s clear to me, and many others who aren’t here daily, that the current path for Cosmos isn’t working.