A little bit of chit-chat
After cancelling the update a couple of weeks ago due to technical issues, Evmos is now ready to push its next mainnet upgrade. If governance proposal 33 receives approval, the upgrade will go live, which aims to solve the congestion of the EVM by raising the MinGasFee parameter, allowing Metamask transactions with min gas price, and improving the claiming of airdrop tokens.
Axelar has delayed its planned token distribution to supporters again. The new date will be on or around September 14th, 2022. Due to the delay, investors will receive five months' worth of AXL native tokens instead of an ERC-20 version, so staking and on-chain usage will be available from the distribution date.
Bitcoin is moving a step closer to the Cosmos ecosystem. Nomic will be upgrading its mainnet for users to be able to deposit Bitcoin on their app and to generate a synthetic asset, NBTC. Once the upgrade is live, NOM stakers will start gaining Bitcoin rewards. Also, Nomic will charge a 20% fee to disincentivize large sums of deposits due to the app being "highly experimental".
Our stance on Cosmos Prop 72 🗳️
In the last week, there have been discussions within the Cosmos ecosystem around Proposal 72. We voted YES and want to explain the key points behind our decision.
But first, let's give some context around Prop 72. This proposal asks the Cosmos Hub for 150,000 ATOM (~1,123,500 USD) to fund the launch of a CosmWasm enabled consumer chain (Neutron), and an ecosystem of applications such as liquid staking, and other DeFi applications. A third of the fund will go to P2P Validator to launch the consumer chain, Neutron, with the remaining 100k ATOM as yet unallocated. What's novel about Neutron is that it will be secured by the Hub through Interchain Security, generating extra income for ATOM stakeholders.
Moreover, Neutron will include the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC), Interchain Accounts (ICA), as well as Interchain Queries (ICQ). This will allow any protocol deploying on Neutron to communicate with the rest of IBC effortlessly and enables complex operations such as interchain liquid staking or cross-chain collateralization.
Here are our reasons to vote YES:
Earlier this year, we voted No to Prop 69 to introduce CosmWasm directly on the Cosmos Hub. We believe the Hub should stay minimal and export security to consumer chains via Interchain Security.
Prop 72 is a big step towards realizing this vision, funding the creation of a new consumer chain, Neutron, which can allow permission-less smart-contract development and funding an ecosystem on top of it.
We believe that this is one of the most important proposals so far in Cosmos' history, and voting YES means voting for a future where ATOM remains relevant and accrues value from the ecosystem's success and technology.
Prop 72 is passing with 73% of Ayes as of writing, but a quorum hasn't been reached.
An Ever-Expanding Cosmos 👍
The Cosmos is continually expanding, and the Interchain Foundation has resolved to take the IBC protocol to other ecosystems beyond Cosmos. To fulfil that goal, the ICF is working alongside Composable Finance, a Polkadot parachain, to bring IBC first to Kusama and Near.
Composable Finance's XCVM (cross-chain virtual machine) allows developers to build applications that span multiple ecosystems by deploying a single contract, thanks to the CosmWasm framework and IBC.
Besides Dotsama and Near, Composable Finance and the ICF will be working together to bring IBC to all light client-enabled blockchains.
The Unlocking 🔓
Agoric unlocked for the first time a part of its token supply. On July 1st, the protocol set free 15,000,000 BLD tokens, accounting for 1.5% of the total supply, which the protocol sent to the investors who participated in their token sale via Coinlist last December.
At the time of launch, BLD holders will be able to stake their tokens to secure the network and earn rewards, and, after a coming vote, they will be able to send their tokens to other IBC chains freely.
Also, the community is currently discussing how to create an efficient community pool, which will be initially seeded by the Agoric OpCo and, probably, later on by some parts of the fees generated by the protocol.
Airdrops List
No interesting airdrops insight this week.
Wrap Up
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