Cosmos News /// by ZKV #111

Bidding for Liquidity

A little bit of chit-chat

Brian Fabian Crain announced his departure from the Interchain Foundation (ICF) Council and presidency following an annual council meeting. During the meeting, the agenda included the election of Sunny Aggarwal to the council and the reelection of current members. Crain supported Aggarwal’s election, but it was rejected with a vote of 3-1-1. Subsequently, Crain's reelection was also rejected by a 3-2 vote, leading to his immediate exit from the council.

The Picasso Network has enabled the Inter Blockchain Communication protocol on Solana, making it the third network to implement IBC this way, following Polkadot and Ethereum.

Interchain Shielded Assets

There’s a new narrative waiting to take over the Interchain Ecosystem. 

Shielded Assets. 

With the upcoming launches of Namada and Penumbra, there are many use cases to be unleashed. 

We are hosting a Privacy in Cosmos: Shielded Assets session this Thursday with Christopher Goes, co-founder of Namada and Anoma, and Henry de Valence, co-founder of Penumbra. 

Join here

Bidding for Liquidity

The concept for Hydro, a bidding and governance platform, has been published on the Cosmos community forum. This platform addresses token liquidity across the Interchain. Hydro allows projects to bid for ATOM and other token liquidity deployments as part of the ATOM wars strategy. The platform's auction and governance mechanisms are detailed in the Hydro litepaper, which outlines features such as token locking, voting rights, bidding and voting rules, and fund allocation.

The platform aims to streamline liquidity access for both Interchain and non-interchain projects. Hydro is designed to allow community pools, starting with the Cosmos Hub, to contribute liquidity. Hydro manages auctions for liquidity injections and distributes special voting rights through hATOMs receipts. Additionally, the platform includes a covenant system called Timewave, which ensures chains retain direct ownership of their liquidity, enhancing security and reducing complexity.

Hydro has already introduced some improvements based on community feedback. These include multiple liquidity buckets, voting mechanisms, weighted distribution allocations, and governance layers. 

Hydro's implementation will be divided into several releases, with the initial MVP accepting stATOMs from the Stride protocol. Future versions will incorporate additional features such as performance incentives and expanded governance layers. Hydro smart contracts are currently undergoing a third-party audit, after which a governance proposal will be submitted to the Cosmos Hub to seed Hydro from the community pool and elect a monitoring committee.

ICS 2.0 is…Ready 

The recent Interchain Security Lightning Experiment (ISLE) testnet for the Cosmos Hub concluded with notable results. A total of 45 validators participated, representing 25% of the Hub's active set. These validators engaged in 30 different tasks across five chains. 

The five chains launched during the testnet were Easter (Top N = 80%), Faroe (Top N = 67%), Galapagos (opt-in), Ibiza (opt-in using the Elys binary), and Java (opt-in testing sandbox). This diversity allowed validators to experience both Top N and opt-in chains, providing valuable insights into their operations. 

Additionally, the testnet included a significant experiment on double-signing on consumer chains. Sergey from Quokka Stake led this test using the test-java-1 chain, with support from several other validators. This experiment successfully demonstrated the process of collecting and submitting double-signing evidence, further enhancing the security mechanisms for ICS. 

The results from this testnet highlight the readiness of validators for the mainnet launch of ICS 2.0, scheduled for June 5.

Remember to join Privacy in Cosmos: Shielded Assets

Wrap Up

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