Staking Growth Incentive Program via Cosmobot

Hub Proposals Proposal Ideas
1

Staking Growth Incentive Program via Cosmobot

TL;DR

This proposal introduces a growth-based staking incentive program deployed via Cosmobot directly in the Telegram ATOM Community Chat, the main hub for Cosmos Hub users.

Every 14 days, Cosmobot distributes approximately 50 ATOM to participants who have increased their staked position by a defined threshold (e.g. +20%). Because this level of growth cannot be achieved through staking rewards alone, the mechanism explicitly incentivizes users to buy ATOM on the market and stake it.

The program is funded by a small allocation of the community tax, uses a multisig-controlled wallet for fund management, and is designed as a lightweight, transparent, and easily scalable experiment to drive staking growth and community engagement.

Overview and Objective

This proposal introduces a growth-based incentive mechanism designed to encourage active participation in staking on the Cosmos Hub. Rather than rewarding passive holders, the program focuses on users who actively increase their staked ATOM over time. The objective is to strengthen network security, reduce liquid supply pressure, and foster a more engaged and dynamic community.

A central principle of this design is to shift incentives away from passive behaviors such as simple holding or auto-compounding, and toward active capital deployment into staking.

Mechanism Design

The mechanism relies on a rolling evaluation of staking behavior over a 14-day sliding window. For each participant, a “growth factor” is calculated as the variation in the amount of ATOM staked between day J and day J-14.

Eligibility is conditional on meeting two parameters: a minimum staked amount and a minimum growth threshold (for example, +20% over the 14-day period).

This growth threshold is intentionally calibrated above what can be achieved through staking rewards alone, even with auto-compounding. Under typical network conditions, staking yield on the Cosmos Hub is insufficient to generate such a level of growth in such a short timeframe.

As a result, participants cannot qualify through passive strategies. To reach the required growth, they must actively increase their staked position by acquiring additional ATOM and delegating it. This introduces a structural requirement for net capital inflow.

In practical terms, the mechanism creates a direct incentive to buy ATOM on the market and stake it, rather than simply recycling rewards. The growth parameter therefore acts as the core economic lever of the program: it transforms a reward system into a demand-generating mechanism, encouraging participants to outperform baseline staking returns.

Reward Structure

The program operates in recurring 14-day rounds. For each round, a fixed reward pool—estimated at approximately 50 ATOM—is distributed equally among all eligible participants.

To maintain engagement and operational efficiency, rewards must be claimed within a 24-hour window.

Based on current estimates, this budget remains modest relative to the community pool while still providing meaningful incentives. For example, with 20 eligible participants, each would receive approximately 2.5 ATOM per round.

Funding Model

The program is funded through a limited allocation of the community tax on the Cosmos Hub. Specifically, 0.15% of the 2% community tax is allocated to this initiative, corresponding to roughly 50 ATOM every 14 days under current conditions.

This approach ensures that the program remains conservative in cost while being sustainable over time.

Technical Implementation

The implementation is designed to balance automation, transparency, and decentralized fund management.

A dedicated multisig wallet, controlled by trusted and recognized community members, acts as the custodian of the allocated funds. This ensures that control over funds is distributed and aligned with governance best practices, avoiding reliance on any single operator.

Funds are periodically transferred from the multisig wallet to a designated “service wallet” operated by Cosmobot. This service wallet is used exclusively for program execution.

Cosmobot operates directly within the Telegram ATOM Community Chat, which is the main and most active community channel for Cosmos Hub users. This ensures that the program remains highly visible, accessible, and engaging for a broad user base.

Within this environment, Cosmobot monitors staking balances, computes growth factors over the defined 14-day window, and verifies eligibility conditions. At regular intervals, it checks whether the service wallet holds sufficient funds (for example, a minimum of 50 ATOM). If the condition is met, a new reward round is automatically initiated in the chat and rewards are distributed among eligible participants. If not, no distribution occurs, ensuring robustness and avoiding partial executions.

An alternative architecture could involve a smart contract-based system where users register via a dedicated interface and rewards are distributed fully on-chain according to the same growth logic. However, the Cosmobot-based implementation provides a faster and more flexible path for initial deployment.

Test Phase

A pilot phase of 4 to 8 weeks is proposed to evaluate the effectiveness of the mechanism. This phase will allow for observation of staking behavior, participation levels, and overall impact on the network.

Key parameters such as growth thresholds, minimum stake, and reward size can be adjusted based on empirical results.

Expected Impact

By requiring users to exceed passive staking returns, the program is expected to generate net new staking inflows, contributing to an increase in the total amount of ATOM bonded.

This dynamic can help reduce liquid sell pressure by incentivizing users to acquire and lock additional tokens into staking. At the same time, it introduces a more active and engaging participation model, encouraging users to regularly manage and grow their positions.

Beyond economic effects, the mechanism fosters a stronger sense of involvement within the community by rewarding deliberate and proactive behavior rather than inactivity.

Conclusion

This proposal introduces a simple, measurable, and low-cost incentive mechanism aligned with the long-term objectives of the Cosmos Hub. Its design ensures responsible fund management through multisig governance, operational efficiency via automation, and strong economic alignment through a growth-based reward model.

By setting the growth threshold above passive yield, the program effectively incentivizes active accumulation and staking, creating a scalable framework that can be refined and expanded based on real-world performance.

2

Sounds like a Self-Service Store.

  1. any TG Chat is centralized.

  2. How many cosmonauts really use telegram?
    There are Language Barriers and more that make this proposal highly unfair against people from countries who can’t participate.

  3. is it worth to change Parameters for 3.5 atoms a day?

2 Likes
3

Personally, and this could change when atom is worth more, a fraction of an atom wouldn’t be able to incentivize me to do all that. But the value would have to go up significantly to convince me to move some of my atom to a hot wallet, connect it to a bot and then continually be buying a significant amount more and staking it. I love the idea, though, you could be on to something!

1 Like
4

@Guinch_Roze The core concept of incentivizing net buying pressure and locking liquid supply is a good idea in theory. However, mathematically and technically, this proposal falls completely short for anyone holding significant capital.

First, the 20% growth requirement scales terribly. For a small retail user, buying 10 more ATOM is easy. But for large holders, brands, or institutional players, a 20% increase requires a massive capital injection. Asking whales to risk thousands of dollars in fresh capital just to earn a fraction of a 50 ATOM prize pool is mathematically irrational—especially when the passive APR is already at 15% without taking any extra risks.

Second, the security friction is a total dealbreaker. As Cosmic_Pwranger mentioned, big players do not move their funds to hot wallets or connect them to Telegram bots. Period.

For this to move beyond mere assumptions and actually drive real TVL (Total Value Locked), it needs real, tangible mechanics. The rewards need to scale proportionally to the capital risked, and the execution must be completely trustless (on-chain smart contracts), not dependent on a centralized chat bot. If you want to attract big capital, you need real incentives, not just the assumption of retail price action.

5

Thank you for your feedback. I agree that your first point regarding the risks of centralization on Telegram is valid and important to highlight.

Regarding the 20% growth requirement: you’re right that this threshold would be impractical and mathematically unattractive for large holders, whales, or institutions. Asking them to inject significant fresh capital just to chase a relatively small reward from the pool makes little sense, especially when they can already earn a solid ~15% APR passively with no additional risk.

However, this initiative is not designed to attract institutional capital or whales. It is specifically targeted at retail users with smaller portfolios. For them, increasing their stake by 20% is often much more achievable, and the incentives can meaningfully encourage participation.

The main goal is to create a virtuous cycle within the Cosmos Hub community: drive more retail users to our primary discussion channel on Telegram (where most crypto conversations happen), incentivize them to stake and grow their positions, reward active participation, and encourage them to bring in new people. We already have Cosmobot in place, which makes it easy to distribute tips, run giveaways, and engage the community.

In short, this proposal is about allocating a very small portion of the community pool tax toward grassroots marketing and bringing fresh retail energy back to the Hub.

That said, this is only one idea among many. If the community feels this proposal is dangerous, useless, or simply not worth pursuing, we can drop it immediately. In the meantime, I’m counting on your feedback and input so that together we can find something interesting and valuable to implement. And if this doesn’t work out, we can always brainstorm and debate new ideas :slight_smile:

Thank you again for taking the time to share your detailed thoughts.

2 Likes
6

@Guinch_Roze I highly appreciate your receptiveness and honest reply. It speaks volumes about your commitment to the Hub.

If we frame this purely as a grassroots marketing initiative targeted at retail, the perspective certainly shifts. However, even for retail, the security standard cannot be lowered. In fact, it might be even more critical.

If we promote a Telegram system that isn’t 100% reliable or secure, we stand to lose much more than we gain. Small investors and newcomers are often either highly distrustful, or so inexperienced that they easily fall prey to hackers. If retail users—even those holding just 1 ATOM—get drained because of a hot wallet vulnerability, the negative word-of-mouth will severely damage the Hub’s reputation. We must protect retail capital just as fiercely as institutional capital.

That being said, I consider this a great idea at its core, and I thank you for bringing it up. Let’s definitely give it another spin and see how we can execute it safely. Capturing these small investors encourages them to keep compounding. Through word-of-mouth, a foundation of 10,000 investors holding 10 ATOM each is ultimately much stronger than 1 investor holding 100,000 ATOM. If that single whale decides to leave, it’s a brutal blow to the network; but 10,000 retail investors leaving all at once is highly unlikely.

Furthermore, 10,000 users generate infinitely more positive noise. And while whales certainly have institutional networks, you never know when a retail user might also be connected to larger capital.

Ultimately, if we can build a mechanism that keeps both the small investor and the big whale happy and perfectly secure, that is the absolute best-case scenario. Great discussion!

2 Likes
7

@Guinch_Roze Just to add to what we’ve just discussed: I really like the idea. You are absolutely right—there are no useless ideas, only useless people who destroy them or don’t know how to take advantage of them.

The core concept is fantastic and I love it. We just need to focus on executing it with the highest possible level of security. Let’s give it another spin; you can definitely count on my support to help figure this out!

2 Likes