Hi everyone,
I’m building Exohash, a sovereign Cosmos SDK chain purpose-built for provably fair on-chain gaming and prediction markets. The Cosmos stack is what makes the core innovation possible, so I wanted to introduce the project here.
What we’re building
A Layer 1 where randomness is generated inside consensus by the validator set — not by oracles, not by commit-reveal, not by block hashes. Every bet placed on-chain is provably fair and fully collateralized before it settles.
Why a new chain
On-chain gaming needs three things that no existing chain provides together:
- Unbiasable randomness without trusting a third party
- Instant finality — players can’t wait for confirmations
- Protocol-enforced solvency — the house must always be able to pay
I prototyped on Polygon and Sei. Commit-reveal needed two transactions per round and trusted the revealer. External oracles reintroduced a middleman.
The randomness had to live inside consensus itself — which meant building a sovereign chain.
How the randomness works
Validators run a Distributed Key Generation protocol at each epoch. Each validator gets a key share — no one holds the full secret. Every block, each validator signs the block height using their share via ABCI++ vote extensions. The proposer aggregates these into a single BLS threshold signature and injects it into the block. The canonical randomness is the SHA-256 hash of that signature — unknowable before the block is finalized, fully verifiable after.
We’re targeting 32 validators at genesis. BLS aggregation adds messaging overhead per validator, and we need to keep block times around 600ms for a good player experience, so the set size is constrained by that tradeoff.
Why Cosmos SDK
- ABCI++ vote extensions are the key enabler — validators contribute entropy during consensus, not in a separate step
- CometBFT finality — ~600 ms blocks (limited vals count), no reorgs, instant settlement
- IBC — players deposit USDC natively, no bridges
- Sovereignty — solvency rules are enforced at the state machine level, not in contract logic that can be bypassed or exploited
What’s on-chain
- Three game engine types built as protocol-level transaction types (not smart contracts).
- Different bankroll type (private for casino operators and public - for LP), solvency in-place
- Fully tested DKG cycle
Every bet’s maximum payout is reserved from bankroll escrow before it’s accepted. If the beacon goes down, open bets are automatically refunded. The protocol captures a share of the house edge on every bet, distributed to validators and token stakers in USDC.
Token model
USDC for settlement and deposits. EXOH for governance and fee rights — zero inflation, no emissions. Revenue-sharing, not monetary expansion.
Current status
Devnet is live with all engines running. Targeting mainnet launch in guarded mode (capped limits) after regulatory licensing — Isle of Man, Malta MGA, GLI-19 RNG certification.
About me
Solo founder, self-funded. PhD in Nuclear Physics (TU Delft), background in high-frequency trading and institutional risk management.
Would love feedback from the community. Happy to answer questions — especially from validators interested in running a node on a chain that does something new with consensus.