A little bit of chit-chat
Cosmos Hub's latest upgrade, SDK v0.47, enabled the use of an ICA controller. As explained by Sam Hart, the ICA controller allows the Cosmos Hub to maintain liquidity provider positions independently without the need for a multi-signature proxy. Additionally, the Hub can stake tokens from a distance and engage in the governance of other protocols through expedited proposals.
Celestia announced its first global online hackathon, Infinite Space Bazaar. It will be live from April 2nd to May 17th and offers over $100K in prizes across four tracks: application development, core protocol infrastructure, user experience improvements, and community engagement. Participants will join houses for support and collaboration, with workshops and AMAs available.
Mandrake postmortem
Last week, Strangelove released a report on a significant bug reported by Composable Finance on February 15, 2024 affecting the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol through the HackerOne bug bounty program. The issue, now known as the Mandrake vulnerability, stemmed from the packet-forward-middleware, impacting every version of this middleware utilized within IBC. This flaw could disrupt the normal functioning of escrow accounts linked to IBC ports and channels, leading to a situation where the balance of an IBC denom token on a counterparty chain could be inaccurately reflected. This discrepancy might prevent users from reversing the transaction path of their tokens to the originating chain, posing a risk to the seamless operation and trust in the cross-chain transaction process.
The technical essence of the issue was rooted in the internal bookkeeping of the escrow accounts during the multi-hop transaction processes. Specifically, when tokens were transferred back through intermediary chains to their source, packet-forward-middleware failed to accurately update the escrow account balances due to improper handling of timeouts and acknowledgment errors. This oversight meant that, under certain conditions, the escrow accounts did not accurately represent the total supply of the assets on the counterparty chain.
This bug was classified as medium severity, highlighting that it neither posed a risk of fund loss nor threatened to halt blockchain operations. The resolution pathway involved an immediate and thorough investigation by the Strangelove team, culminating in developing and testing a corrective patch by February 20, 2024. Furthermore, Strangelove introduced a tool designed to verify escrow account balances against the asset supplies on counterparty chains, enhancing the ecosystem's resilience against similar discrepancies.
Some cosmic numbers
Binance Research has released a report analyzing the Cosmos ecosystem, including its current technology stack and latest metrics. The report reveals some exciting statistics:
There are over 94 L1 blockchains within the Cosmos ecosystem, with a combined market cap of US$108 billion, of which US$32 billion is interconnected by the IBC protocol.
IBC protocol exhibited a 30-day volume of US$5.3 billion.
Top five projects in terms of 30-day IBC volume:
Osmosis: US$1506 million, 84 peers, 291K monthly active users.
Noble: US$898 million, 36 peers, 10K monthly active users.
dYdX: US$585 million, 14 peers, 17K monthly active users.
Cosmos Hub: US$422 million, 66 peers, 537K monthly active users.
Celestia: US$392 million, 14 peers, 352K monthly active users.
Osmosis DEX achieved a total trading volume of over US$6 billion in the past year, significantly higher than Astroport (US$1.3 billion) and Helix (US$1.7 billion)
.
dYdX, as a perpetual DEX, has processed over US$50 billion in trading volume since its launch as a Cosmos SDK chain late last year, with daily volumes frequently averaging around US$1 billion.
The staking ratio of $ATOM is among major L1s by market cap, standing at approximately 64%, with only 2% of the staked $ATOM being liquid staked.
Stride, pSTAKE, and Quicksilver lead Cosmos's liquid staking market. Stride has a TVL of US$168 million and supports the highest number of tokens (12).
The report also mentioned the main developments to watch the progression of the Interchain Stack, the growth of the modular blockchain thesis, the competition among Shard Security solutions, and ATOM’s utility.
Wrap Up
If you like our newsletter, share it with your friends, so they can also be on top of the latest and the greatest (and sometimes not so great) of the Cosmos ecosystem.
In the meantime, feel free to follow us on Twitter @zkv_xyz and visit our website to stake with us.