Cosmos News /// by ZKV #82

A promising 2024

A little bit of chit-chat

Keplr introduced a new feature called “Cancel Unstaking.” This new feature can be used by token holders who are currently in the unbonding period allowing them to cancel their unbonding request before the 21 days and automatically stake back the tokens.

dYdX released the code of their Cosmos SDK chain, putting the project one step closer to launching their appchain. Still, the team has confirmed that mainnet will be live this year. 

Cosmos Hub Roadmap 2024

The Cosmos Hub's roadmap for 2024 presents a comprehensive strategy to solidify further its position as a pioneer in the interchain ecosystem. At its core, the roadmap is built upon three pivotal themes, each addressing crucial aspects of blockchain technology:

1. Develop Atomic IBC: The 2024 plan centers around Atomic IBC, an innovative concept that aims to improve the scalability and composability of the Cosmos Hub. This plan involves two phases. During Phase 1, the "Megablocks" architecture will be introduced, enabling the launch of the first replicated consumer chain using this architecture. This is a crucial step towards allowing multiple consumer chains to operate on a single chain, reducing operational expenses significantly. Phase 2 will focus on the Atomic IBC protocol, which will facilitate seamless message transfer between consumer chains as part of atomic bundles. This phase will also involve calculating gas costs for these bundles, improving efficiency and transaction costs.

2. Perfect and Maintain Interchain Security: The roadmap lays out the steps for maintaining and making the system compatible with various IBC and Cosmos-SDK versions. It also delves into improving the updating of consumer chain validator sets, reducing traffic frequency, and simplifying the ICS protocol for use with IBC queries. Furthermore, the roadmap highlights efforts to enhance Mesh Security, guaranteeing the Hub's compliance with emerging security standards.

3. Maintain the Cosmos Hub: Maintaining the stability and functionality of the Cosmos Hub is a major focus of the roadmap. Ongoing maintenance is a crucial aspect of achieving this goal. This involves fostering collaboration across the ecosystem, supporting features developed by other teams, and adhering to a regular release schedule. As a top priority, we prioritize validator support to ensure seamless Hub upgrades with minimal downtime.

4. Testing: CometMock, a tool that reduces test runtime and improves determinism in the roadmap. The team is developing a framework that simulates Cosmos Hub state for testing purposes, which will enable them to conduct rigorous testing of upcoming mainnet upgrades. The three-phased testnet release process ensures thorough testing across various phases, from development to community testing. They have launched "Testnet Wednesdays" initiatives to encourage validator engagement, and we will introduce chaos testing patterns to explore operational limits and enhance resilience.

5. IBC Routing: One of the original missions of the Cosmos Hub is to route IBC packets between other Cosmos chains, reducing the costs associated with relaying and light client updates. The roadmap highlights the recent proposal of a workable IBC routing scheme by the Polymer team. This routing system allows IBC packets to be routed over the Hub without writing data to the Hub, reducing the burden on the network. The Informal Systems Hub Team is leading the effort to deploy this feature, making it available to consumer and non-consumer chains within the Cosmos ecosystem.

Summary: The Cosmos Hub's 2024 roadmap is a multifaceted plan that addresses critical challenges in the interchain ecosystem. It leverages Atomic IBC to enhance composability, perfects Interchain Security, and maintains the Cosmos Hub's core software. Robust testing practices and introducing IBC routing underscore the Hub's commitment to reliability and efficiency.

Liquidity as a Service

In response to Binary Builders' proposal for the ATOM Alignment Treasury (AAT), Timewave published an alternative focusing on Liquidity-as-a-Service (LaaS). The proposal highlights the significance of LaaS as a potential long-term strategy for the Cosmos Hub. LaaS involves lending ATOM liquidity rather than ATOM itself, with mechanisms determining lending amounts, recipients, and interest rates. It aims to solve the challenge of optimizing ATOM's liquidity and making it the preferred reserve asset for the interchain.

Timewave distinguishes between lending ATOM and ATOM liquidity, emphasising the importance of mitigating impermanent loss (IL) and smart contract risks. They propose that LaaS, focusing on smart contract guarantees and lending terms, can provide a safer approach to liquidity lending than traditional methods. Furthermore, they argue that LaaS would differentiate the Cosmos Hub by combining security with liquidity, ultimately making it more competitive.

In contrast to the AAT, which aims to address liquidity challenges differently, Timewave's LaaS approach seeks to leverage the Hub's core strengths, including deep liquidity and Replicated Security, to offer liquidity lending as a primary business. By doing so, they envision the Hub as a senior debt provider, effectively enhancing its value proposition in the blockchain ecosystem. 

Wrap Up

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A little bit of ZK content (Watch zkSummit 10)