It’s time for the usual update from the Informal Systems’ Cosmos Hub team. Here are some of the highlights:
Had our quarterly meeting with the oversight committee.
Coordinated the Cosmos Hub v17.3 emergency upgrade.
Coordinated the Cosmos Hub v18 upgrade.
Completed the integration phase and started the testnet phase for Gaia v19.
Working on the signaling and implementation phases for Permissionless ICS.
Completed the implementation phase for ICS with Inactive Hub Validators.
Started the discussion and signaling phases for ICS with Fault Resolutions.
Working on the signaling and implementation phases for Permissionless ICS Frontend.
Made significant progress towards the Hydro launch.
Note that we use CHIPs to track the progress of our work. Hence, throughout this update, we refer to different phases of the CHIPs framework.
On July 18th, the Hub teams at Informal and Hypha met with the oversight committee. The purpose of the meeting was to review the work done in Q2 and discuss our Q3 plans. We published a summary of the meeting on the Hub forum. We would like to thank the members of the oversight committee for their time and for engaging in discussions. Their feedback is invaluable as it enables us to grow and continue improving.
In the first week of July, the Cosmos Hub underwent an emergency upgrade to fix a bug in the ICS provider module. The bug consisted of a missing check for the minimum height of double-voting evidence from Consumer Chains. As a result, there was a risk of validators getting slashed for old infractions (e.g., committed one year ago). To mitigate this risk, the binaries with the fix were distributed privately to 1/3+ of the network. Once 1/3+ upgraded and the bug could no longer be triggered, we cut a public release (i.e., Gaia v17.3.0) and coordinated with the rest of the network to avoid liveness issues (i.e., we made sure 2/3+ of the network use v17.3.0). We thank the validator community for a successful upgrade.
On July 17th, the Cosmos Hub upgraded to Gaia v18.1.0. This is a major upgrade that added the following features to the Cosmos Hub:
Permissioned CosmWasm (as per prop 895) enables the governance-gated deployment of CosmWasm contracts. See this forum discussion for more details on what contracts should be deployed on the Hub.
Skip's feemarket module (as per prop 842) enables the dynamic adjustment of the base transaction fee based on the block gas utilization. This module replaced the
Expedited proposals (as per prop 926) enable governance proposals with a shorter voting period (i.e., one week instead of two), but with a higher tally threshold (i.e., 66.7% of Yes votes for the proposal to pass) and a higher minimum deposit (i.e., 500 ATOMs instead of the 250 for regular proposals). For now, only MsgSoftwareUpgradeand MsgCancelUpgradecan be expedited.
ICS v4.3.0 adds a series of improvements to ICS including adding the ConsumerModificationgov proposal that enables Consumer Chains to update the power shaping parameters after launch.
We thank the Cosmos Hub community for voting on the software upgrade proposal and the validator community for a smooth upgrade with around 13 minutes of downtime.
We completed the integration phase for Gaia v19, which will upgrade the Cosmos Hub to the latest versions of the Interchain Stack:
Cosmos SDK v0.50 — the Cosmos Hub will use v0.50.9-lsm, a special Cosmos SDK branch with support for LSM
IBC v8.4.0
CometBFT v0.38.9
Interchain Security v5.1.1
Packet Forward Middleware v8.0.2
IBC Rate Limiting v8.0.0
Fee Market v1.0.4
CosmWasm/wasmd to v0.51.0
This is part of a larger initiative to make the Cosmos Hub the reference chain for the Interchain Stack and is a collaboration with Binary Builders. The goal of this initiative is to improve the upgrade process to newer versions of the Interchain Stack, which will consequently improve the adoption within the Cosmos ecosystem. Additionally, the Cosmos Hub community will gain access to the new Interchain Stack features sooner, resulting in faster product development. Finally, by being on par with the latest releases of the Interchain Stack, the Cosmos Hub community can more actively contribute to the development of the Interchain Stack by asking for new features to be added in the next releases.
We also started the testnet phase. Throughout this month, we cut a series of release candidates for Gaia v19 (v19.0.0-rc3 is the latest) that were used to upgrade the public testnets. This work entailed fixing several integration bugs found during testing.
We posted the software upgrade proposal on the Cosmos Hub forum, so please join the discussion there. Next, we will submit it on-chain as an expedited proposal (i.e., the voting period will be one week instead of two), and if it passes governance, we will upgrade the mainnet.
Permissionless ICS is the main feature targeted for Gaia v20, and it will enable anyone to permissionlessly launch an opt-in Consumer Chain on the Cosmos Hub. Given that validators are free to choose whether they want to run a given opt-in Consumer Chain, it is only natural to also enable projects to launch as opt-in Consumer Chains by simply submitting transactions to the Cosmos Hub and, thus, avoiding the need to go through the process of governance. Note that Top N Consumer Chains will still need to go through governance.
We completed the ADR detailing the main design decisions and published a signaling proposal on the Cosmos Hub forum. Next, we will submit the signaling proposal on-chain.
We have also started working on the implementation, and we are looking into a third-party audit.
ICS with Inactive Hub Validators is another feature targeted for Gaia v20, and it will enable validators from outside the Hub’s active set to validate on Consumer Chains. This feature brings the following benefits to ICS:
It reduces the entry barrier for projects to launch as Consumer Chains since more validators will be allowed to opt in.
It enables validators outside the Hub’s active set to compete by providing their services to interesting projects.
It reduces the risk of all the validators of a Consumer Chain opting out, which would require the chain to leave ICS.
We completed the implementation and are working with Simply Staking to source a third-party audit. If you have feedback or questions about the audit, you can join the discussion on the forum.
We published a forum post outlining the concept of Fault Resolutions, also known as Intersubjective Faults (as defined by the EIGEN paper), as a solution for punishing validators misbehaving on Consumer Chains for offenses other than double signing. The approach consists of three steps:
first, define precisely what constitutes various types of intersubjective faults;
second, have a social contract in place that validators committing these faults should be punished by a hard fork that takes away their stake in the worst-case scenario;
third, build a governance proposal that slashes and tombstones them without needing a hard fork unless governance is compromised.
If you have feedback or questions, please join the discussion on the forum.
We also started working on an ADR detailing the main design decisions. Next, we plan to publish a signaling proposal on the Cosmos Hub forum and then submit it on-chain.
We released ICS v4.4.0, a new version that deprecates the Soft Opt-out feature, which allows the bottom x% of the provider validators to opt out of validating Consumer Chains. With the introduction of Partial Set Security (PSS), validating on opt-in Consumer Chains is discretional, while validators outside of the top N% of the voting power are not required to validate on TopN Consumer Chains. Consequently, the Soft Opt-out feature is no longer required. Note that the deprecation of the Soft Opt-out feature is also part of ICS 5.1.
On July 7th, at the Cosmos Hub @ EthCC event during the "Launching on Interchain Security" workshop, we successfully demoed Permissionless ICS Frontend v0, an early Alpha build. Permissionless ICS Frontend is a comprehensive front-end platform designed to streamline the deployment of new projects as Consumer Chains. This initiative aims to dramatically simplify launching and managing Consumer Chains within the Cosmos ecosystem.
We also published a forum post describing the issues Permissionless ICS Frontend will address, and the user experiences it will provide — for delegators, validators, and chain developers. Currently, we are focusing on the delegator experience for the launch. This will enable the following functionalities:
Chain listing — users will be able to filter chains by project phase, with additional filtering and search functionality planned for future updates.
Spam filtering — only Consumer Chains with at least one active Hub validator opted in will be listed.
Validators — ATOM delegators will be to see a list of validators opted in to each chain and delegate to them directly.
Badges — ATOM delegators will be able to engage with other applications, such as Hydro, a Cosmos Hub ATOM liquidity platform.
Hydro is a bidding and governance platform for efficient deployment of liquidity across the Interchain and an important part of the ATOM Wars strategy. Throughout the last month, we made significant progress towards the Hydro launch.
We fixed the issues in the Hydro contract found during the third-party audit by Oak Security. For details, see the audit report.
We continue developing a front-end platform for Hydro to enable projects to bid for liquidity and users to lock their staked ATOMs to vote on these bids.
We are coordinating with the DAODAO team to deploy DAODAO on the Cosmos Hub. This will allow the Hydro committee to use DAODAO on the Hub and, consequently, simplify the deployment of liquidity. You can join the discussion on the forum or vote on the governance proposal.
We published a funding proposal on the Cosmos Hub forum to request approval to transfer 1 million ATOMs from the Cosmos Hub community pool to the Hydro committee. The proposal describes how the ATOMs will be used — to seed an ATOM liquidity bucket and a stATOM liquidity bucket — the members of the Hydro committee and their roles. We want to thank everyone who participated in the discussion and provided feedback. We already started adapting the proposal to include the received feedback.
We started adapting the Hydro contract to allow users to lock LSM tokenized shares
(i.e., semi-fungible derivatives of staked ATOMs) instead of stATOMs. This will make Hydro more robust as it will not depend on any liquid staking platform.
This month's developments further solidify the Cosmos Hub's position as the best place to launch a chain, with:
Enhanced Security and Stability: Swift responses to potential vulnerabilities through emergency upgrades demonstrate the community’s commitment to maintaining a secure and reliable network.
The latest of the Interchain Stack: By upgrading to the latest versions of the Interchain Stack, we're positioning the Cosmos Hub as a reference chain, enabling faster feature adoption across the ecosystem.
Expanded Participation: The implementation of ICS with Inactive Validators broadens the validator base, enhancing decentralization and security.
Streamlined Chain Deployment: Permissionless ICS Frontend and Permissionless ICS significantly lower the barriers to entry for new projects, fostering innovation around the Cosmos Hub.
Optimized Liquidity: With Hydro's imminent launch and the proposed funding, we're creating a powerful mechanism for efficient liquidity deployment. This is a major pain point for projects in Cosmos.
These advancements collectively reinforce the Cosmos Hub's role as the premier platform for launching and managing blockchain projects. We're excited about the new capabilities these features bring and look forward to continued growth and innovation in the coming months.