Rethinking Money and Tokenomics for the Cosmos Hub

Conversation
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I’d like to open a discussion about the concept of money and its potential implications for the Cosmos Hub. This is simply an idea I’ve developed after reflecting on the role of money and how monetary systems function. It’s not a proposal, just a vision that I hope can spark thoughtful conversations within the community.

The Nature of Money: A Foundational Perspective

At its core, money is the debt of the entity that issues it. When new money is created, the issuer owes a service equal to the purchasing power of that money.

A simple analogy:
Imagine a baker stranded on an island with others. The baker gives a mason 100 coupons, each redeemable for one loaf of bread in the future, in exchange for building a bakery.

  • These coupons are money—they represent the baker’s debt.
  • The baker must accept them later in exchange for bread.
  • When a coupon returns to the baker, the debt is considered repaid.

From this, two key points emerge:

  1. The purpose of issuing money matters.
    If the baker issued coupons just to give them away, it would be a donation, not an investment. Issuing them in exchange for a bakery is a strategic investment to produce more bread.
  2. Money is destroyed when it returns to the issuer.
    Once the coupon is used, the debt is repaid. The baker can either destroy it or reissue it as new debt.

Applying This to the Cosmos Hub:

  • The Cosmos Hub issues new ATOMs to pay for network security (validators and delegators).
  • ATOM is also used to pay transaction fees, creating a system where the Hub “repays” its debt by providing blockchain services in exchange for ATOM.

However, there’s a fundamental problem:

  • Increasing ATOM’s supply through inflation weakens network security.
    • A lower ATOM price reduces the economic security of staked tokens.
    • More ATOM in circulation reduces the bonded ratio (the % of ATOM staked), which makes the network more vulnerable.
  • If inflation is kept low to maintain security, the Hub has fewer resources to fund public goods.

A New Model: ATOM as a Commodity, Not Money

To solve this, we propose separating ATOM’s role as a security asset from the role of money:

  1. ATOM = A Rare Commodity for Network Security
  • Stop ATOM inflation entirely. (or keep it stable and very low !? )
  • ATOM becomes a scarce, staked asset, securing the network like a commodity.
  • This maximizes economic security by maintaining a high bonded ratio.
  1. Introduce a Second Token for Economic Activity (e.g., $OSMO)
  • This new token would be:
    • Inflationary to pay staking rewards.
    • The fee token for transactions and services within the Cosmos Hub ecosystem.
  • All revenue collected in this token would be burned, creating a natural balance against inflation.
  • Its inflation would fund public goods, acting as a dynamic monetary supply.

Why This Model Works:

  • ATOM’s value and the network’s security aren’t directly impacted by poor monetary policies since inflation is moved to the second token.
  • The second token operates like a “public money,” funding services and validators, similar to how the Hub currently operates with the Community Pool.
  • Bad investments only affect the second token, not ATOM.
  • When revenue exceeds inflation, the second token becomes deflationary, increasing its value. If inflation exceeds revenue, the system self-corrects through economic incentives.

Final Thought:

This model treats ATOM like digital gold—rare, secure, and stable.
The second token becomes the dynamic currency, designed to fund growth, pay for security, and support public goods without jeopardizing the Hub’s economic foundation.

I’m sharing this idea to gather thoughts, feedback, and perspectives from the community. I look forward to hearing your opinions!

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This reflection highlights a crucial point regarding the economic security of the Hub, which is currently declining while we aim to stimulate the growth of our ecosystem. I find the idea very compelling, and it certainly deserves deeper exploration.

Several questions come to mind:

Should a new token be created? What would be the technical and financial implications?

Should an existing token be absorbed?
P1: Osmosis or P2: Neutron seem to be the most legitimate candidates due to the network effects they already offer.
However, this would require the Osmosis or Neutron communities to agree on a unification, evolving the system to become competitive together.
This seems particularly difficult with Osmosis, as they do not appear willing to share their added value with the broader Cosmos ecosystem.

I would like ICL to provide an initial assessment of this idea, as it seems like a legitimate approach to advancing Atom’s tokenomics @Noam

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Thank you for your thoughtful feedback!

You’ve raised some key points that deserve further exploration. Here’s how I see it:

1. Should a new token be created?

Creating a new token could offer flexibility in terms of design and governance. It would allow us to structure its monetary policy from scratch, with clear objectives: serving as a fee token, funding public goods, and decoupling from ATOM’s role in securing the network.

For me, this new token should be used to fund projects that are as profitable as possible for the Hub.
The key advantage is that its inflation wouldn’t directly impact the security of the Cosmos Hub by diluting ATOM. Since its inflation wouldn’t have an immediate or direct effect on ATOM’s value or bonded ratio, we could afford to take more risks when investing in growth-oriented initiatives.

Given the rapid growth of the ecosystem, I believe now is a crucial time to invest strategically to strengthen the Hub’s position. The Cosmos Hub still holds significant influence, but we can’t afford to take the same risks with ATOM that we could with this second token. This would allow for bold investments without compromising the Hub’s core security.

However, this approach comes with technical and social challenges—launching a new token requires bootstrapping liquidity, adoption, and governance alignment.

2. Should an existing token be absorbed?

Using an existing token like OSMO or NTRN could accelerate adoption due to their established ecosystems.

  • Osmosis (OSMO): While Osmosis has strong network effects, I agree that the willingness of its community to integrate more deeply with the Hub could be a challenge. Osmosis thrives as an independent economic zone, and sharing value with the Cosmos Hub might not align with their current incentives.
  • Neutron (NTRN): Neutron seems more aligned with the Hub’s vision, especially with its role in smart contract deployment. It might be more adaptable in terms of governance and collaboration. However, its current scale might not yet be sufficient to serve as the Cosmos-wide “interchain money.”

3. Governance and Incentive Alignment

Whether we create a new token or integrate an existing one, the key challenge will be aligning incentives between communities. This isn’t just a technical or economic issue—it’s also about social consensus and governance compatibility.

4. A Dual-Layer Model

Conceptually, this would position ATOM as the security layer and the new token as the economic layer for the Cosmos Hub’s ecosystem.
The economic layer will act as a consumer chain by paying security to security layer

  • ATOM would remain scarce, bonded, and focused on securing the Hub.
  • The new token would be inflationary (within reason), with mechanisms to burn fees and finance public goods—creating natural cycles of expansion and contraction based on ecosystem activity.

It seems that ICL is currently working on tokenomics. I’m not claiming this is the path to follow, but through this discussion, I’m exploring a direction that may not have been considered yet…

Looking forward to hearing more thoughts from the community!

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This is kind of close of what our founder was inspired and still trying to implement it on his new project with the photon token. Which make me wonder why it wasn’t pushed and implemented on the Hub when he was still active here, seems like he got all the time those past years but I couldn’t find any meaning full post or proposal in this way.

Pretty supportive of the idea but seems like a big thing that will require huge effort in deliberation, design and implementation.

At this stage and with the new leadership I feel we need some roadmap and insight on what’s the direction we are taking to even know if this proposal can gather enough support to be push into our long and slow governance process

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This is an idea that involves enormous fundamental changes, medium- to long-term work, and significant resources. What I do know is that we must collectively improve cross-chain collaboration within the Cosmos ecosystem, enhance economic alignment between chains, and ensure better value capture for our flagship token, ATOM.

All of this could lead to a much better UX/UI overall essentially an all-in-one app experience.

To achieve this, we need to coordinate efforts, build working teams, incentivize them, and mobilize the community to reach a socially adopted consensus.

We must collectively take risks and work harder and faster to restore our reputation and compete directly with the biggest ecosystems.

We have the capability, the talent, and the community now we need to unite to dominate more effectively.

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If I had to point out some drawbacks of a dual-token model — with ATOM for security and a second token for fees — I’d mainly highlight the added layer of complexity.
There’s also the fact that we haven’t seen a network successfully adopt a two-token model yet.

That said, the Cosmos Hub’s ICS already introduces this complexity by accepting any token as a form of payment.
This means it’s already somewhat accepted that staking ATOM can result in earning different types of tokens.

On Atone, the photon isn’t inflationary, whereas Atone is.
This differs from what I’m envisioning, but there’s also the intention to separate roles.

The photon is the mandatory fee token for all consumer chains, which I imagine should simplify ICS revenue since it will be exclusively in photon.

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I agree, it’s a radical change and probably difficult for the community to accept.
We could imagine a transition period during which ATOM’s inflation gradually decreases to make room for this new second token.

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The problem is… there is many discussions on the forum and on X lately from individuals like you two and I have never seen any response or interest from any validators/Dev/existing Team/Foundation. Without support and participation from those bigger entities I don’t see how something that big could be implemented. Without their support and participation we are just 5 small holders speaking for nothing in forums posts. There is nothing we can do with our 0,0001% power vote and 300 followers on X.

Entities in charge, with Dev already working on stuff I figured they don’t really care about community propositions. They will design something, work on it, push it to the community with their influence and they never look around or take ideas/leads on anything els.

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ATOM has a market cap of 2.2 billion and currently has a 10% inflation rate, i.e., a $220m security payment a year and earns presently ~$1m in revenue a year.

Any secondary inflation token would need a value proposition of some kind to be able to support this if unchanged. NTRN and OSMO are both mentioned here, but NTRN already gives 25% of its revenue to the hub (if I recall correctly) and Osmosis’ revenue is around 6.5m a year. Neither of these tokens could compete with the level of emissions ATOM offers sustainably, and a newly created token would face similar issues without a substantial new revenue source.

The payments for security are far too high on the Cosmos Hub, and rather than trying to offload these to an alternative token, the actual amount of inflation should be re-evaluated.
The last time this was discussed was incredibly contentious, with the inflation min being heavily rejected and the inflation max only passing narrowly and being blamed for a drop in ATOM value so I doubt this will ever happen.

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I understand what you’re saying, and it’s definitely an important point. However, what I’m discussing here is not the way to generate revenue with this new token. I’m simply saying that the inflation of a second token will be a tool to generate revenue, but it will be up to the community to decide how to use it. Additionally, the inflation of the second token will likely be a less sensitive issue because it won’t involve Atom inflation, but rather the “money” token.

But you’re right, the numbers you’re sharing are problematic.
The ICL seems to be working on Atom’s utility, and I believe this is a crucial point for reducing inflation. Right now, Atom will likely be much less desirable if inflation decreases.

If Atom becomes useful for other purposes, then inflation can be reduced without risking a massive unbonding.

In my opinion, we should probably push for the adoption of LSTs because they allow staked Atom to be used for purposes beyond just staking.

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Why not focus on what we have instead?

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Once again, we’ll take the time to clarify a common misconception: inflation on the Cosmos Hub is not equivalent to the cost of security. Framing it that way is misleading and ignores the mechanics of how staking, inflation, and validator economics actually work.

1. What is the real cost of security?

The net cost of security is not the inflation rate—it is the validator commission, i.e., the tax validators charge for their operational services. This fee is independently set by each validator. Notably, reputable operators tend to adopt the network’s minimum commission, currently set at 5%.

Let’s break this down with some basic math:

  • Supply: ~440,000,000 ATOM
  • Inflation rate: 10%
  • Community Pool tax: 2% (assuming the current proposal passes)
  • Validator commission: 5%

So:

440,000,000 * 10% * (1 - 0.02) * 5% = 2,150,000 ATOM/year

Note: This is a rough annualized estimate. In practice, inflation is applied per block and dynamically adjusted.

It’s also worth mentioning that:

  • Some validators charge above the 5% minimum, increasing the actual cost of security.
  • Stake distribution is highly uneven, which can lead to centralization and sustainability challenges for smaller validators—but that’s a topic for another thread.

2. What does inflation actually compensate?

Contrary to common belief, most of the inflation is not a security cost. Rather, it compensates stakers for making their tokens illiquid—locked for 21 days—unlike liquid ATOM, which remains usable throughout the ecosystem (for gas, DeFi, etc.).

We are effectively operating a dual-token model:

  • Staked ATOMs earn yield in exchange for security participation and immobility.
  • Liquid ATOMs do not receive inflation but retain their liquidity for other uses.

In this sense, the real cost for stakers is not the inflation paid to them, but the opportunity cost of immobility. And because inflation affects the total supply (and price) of ATOM, the net yield for stakers is:

Staking APR - Inflation Rate = ~5.5% (currently)

This is the true return for locking tokens—compensating for lost liquidity and taking on delegation risk (e.g., validator slashing).

3. Liquid Staking and Opportunity Cost

Enter liquid staking, which allows stakers to earn rewards and retain liquidity—minus:

  • ~10% service fee from the LST provider
  • Possible spread/slippage when selling LST tokens on the market.

4. What if we reach 75% staking ratio?

Currently, the network struggles to surpass a 67% bonded ratio, which is required to trigger the inflation reduction towards lower bound of the dynamic inflation model. Let’s project with 75% bonded ratio, triggering the 7% inflation floor:

440,000,000 * 7% * (1 - 0.02) * 5% = 1,509,200 ATOM/year

In this scenario:

  • Security cost decreases, as staking increases. This is counter-intuitive but factual.
  • APR for stakers drops to ~8.6%, making the net return (APR - inflation) about 1.6%.
  • For liquid stakers, after the 10% LST fee, the APR drops to ~7.8%, making the net return ~0.8%.

5. Bottom Line: Stakers Aren’t the Cost of Security

Calling stakers’ yield a “cost of security” is flawed reasoning. It would be more accurate to describe it as a compensation for locking up capital and assuming delegation risks. The true cost of security lies in the validator set, which incurs operational expenses, ensures consensus, and upholds chain integrity.

Stakers simply opt in to a risk-reward tradeoff—illiquidity and the (rare) risk of slashing—in exchange for yield. That’s a fundamental economic function, not a security expense. Let’s be precise in our framing—especially when shaping protocol-level policies and economic models. The cost of security is the small share of inflation that is directed to validators, not the inflation as a whole.

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An inflationary secondary coin makes no sense to me, ATOM already has a community pool tax that the community more or less decides how to use. Honestly I think you’re backwards and Atom One has it right with the fixed token being used to secure other networks and transact.

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Thank you @Victor118 for initiating this thread.

Following a “try-now-revert-later” approach, wrt the recent prop#998, why not start rethinking “money and tokenomics” by reverting proposal 848?

Respectfully speaking, was it not a politically driven agenda to fund, in phases, wasm based liquid staking and increase adoption? Further treating ATOM as “money,” when it was designed for staking and governance RE tokenomics.

~Two years following, seems like the goal has been complete, upon dAtom’s being returned, versus the committed 50,000 ATOM.

Would like to add here, that staked ATOM not only earn yield by helping secure the network to maintain/reach the ~67%, but within this framework, it also serves as Validator’s personal CP and a means to gain voting rights, alongside a means to reach quorum, via Hub staker delegations.

With that said, A dual token model is fully supported. Curious, would combining forces with our complimentary system, AtomOne, to somehow utilize their designated fee token on the Cosmos Hub, be something worth trying for?

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Thank you for the clarifications.

Personally, I tend to think that locking up ATOM through staking is an integral part of securing the network, and therefore the rewards given to delegators are indeed a cost of security.

What I meant to highlight is that the Cosmos Hub currently lacks a strong monetary instrument. It only has ATOM issuance and a community tax on that inflation. If we consider that there’s still a lot to build — meaning significant investment is needed — this capacity is quite limited. But increasing it (i.e., issuing more ATOM or raising the tax) would be risky for ATOM, as it could reduce its security value.

That being said, we’re now moving toward reducing the community tax, which clearly indicates that the Hub does not currently need additional investment capacity. That, in turn, puts into question the need for a dedicated “Hub currency” specifically designed for funding or investment.

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My point is that a currency should be able to be issued when necessary in order to create value through investment.
If we consider that the current tax is sufficient, then fine — the Hub can secure its network and invest using ATOM.

If we take the example of the United States, which issued massive amounts of dollars during many years to rebuild, secure, and assert its dominance over the world, to me the Cosmos Hub cannot do the same with ATOM, do we agree with that ?

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We’d need simulations to avoid deflationary spirals for any economical change imo.

About centralization risks with LS providers - its possible to explore caps on providers and tiered rewards for smaller validators. Formulas can and should be automatized.

The idea of a community-governed treasury funded by a portion of IBC fees above is cool imo.

What about quadratic voting for governance to avoid past mistakes?