Hi Cosmonauts! ⚛️
Thank you for tuning in! My name is Estelle and I hope you are all doing great today, welcome to the Cosmos ecosystem news roundup. Here are the top stories in the Cosmos ecosystem for the 1st half of June:
The Neutron launch event completed and the governance enabled, what was the final valuation of Neutron? Which are the first live proposals in Neutron governance? What are the next steps for Neutron? Everything you need to know is in this episode. The release of ibc-go v.7.1.0, what new features are included? Which new use cases and improvements are now enabled? The Keplr 2.0 upgrade, what does the Cosmos community think about this upgrade? The batch 3 of the ATOM Accelerator DAO grants, potential conflicts of interest? Cryptocito applying for a $45k channel sponsorship? Cosmoverse awarded $110k for sponsorship and a lot more. Successful fundraising by Informal Systems and Anoma. The ICF is expanding the ICF Foundation Council. Privacy as a service by Secret Network, what is it and what new use cases are now possible?
All this and a lot more in today’s episode, remember to click the like and subscribe buttons and also the notifications icon. We have also included three new focused sections about Secret Network, Injective and Stride. We are in discussions as well with a top Swiss crypto compliance and regulatory company to launch soon a focused section covering crypto compliance and regulations updates. Without further intro, here is the news!
Tech
The total NTRN supply included in the genesis file of Neutron is 1 billion NTRN and the inflation was set to zero. Following the price discovery during the launch event, the price of 1 NTRN was valued at $0.1905, therefore Neutron was valued at around $190.5 million. Following the launch event, Astroport became live on Neutron and $15 million of liquidity was moved to the USDC/NTRN and the ATOM/NTRN pools. In addition, the airdrop vesting has started and the rewards from the Lockdrop became claimable. If you are new to Neutron remember that you are able to use either ATOM or USDC as gas fees for your first transaction.
Governance was also launched on Neutron. To obtain voting power this is enabled by Vaults, and currently the Neutron vault is the only one open. For every NTRN deposited in a vault, one point of voting power is received and the deposits are not locked. Moreover, if you have Lockdrop or Liquid Auction LP positions, this voting power is included in your total voting power together with NTRN tokens deposited in the vault. We included here the link to check the current Neutron governance proposals.
There is a proposal to set up the Neutron Foundation, with the goal to act as the Neutron DAO legal representative and support the growth and development of Neutron. The proposal also requests 100 million NTRN from the Neutron treasury to the Neutron Foundation multisig in order to cover the Foundation’s expenses.
Another proposal is requesting the approval from the Neutron DAO for the Neutron Foundation to enter an agreement with LonghashX and the ATOM Accelerator DAO in order to launch the ATOM Economic Zone (AEZ) Accelerator Program, expected to start in mid-August and the deadline to apply will be the 31st July. In summary, both the Neutron Foundation and the ATOM Accelerator DAO, or actually the Cosmos Hub or community since these are funds from the Cosmos Hub community pool, would each fund with $250k this new accelerator. Then, this accelerator would then be managed by LonghashX. In terms of funding, the top 5 teams will receive each $100k in funding and also support. Moreover, up to 25 projects will be selected for the AEZ Builder’s Fellowship Program. While these projects would receive no funding, they would receive mentorship and the option for a fast-tracked grant with the ATOM Accelerator DAO or the upcoming Neutron Grants DAO.
The release of ibc-go v7.1.0 was announced. A major highlight is the localhost client which is a great UX improvement since with a single interface users are able to interact with several smart contracts or modules on the same chain. In other words, using the IBC interface, apps on the same chain are able to communicate, and this helps to simplify development and testing. This enables several new use cases and some projects are already using this innovation such as Agoric or Osmosis, and Stride and others are also planning to leverage this new feature.
Moreover, for the Osmosis IBC rate limit another feature was included to efficiently query the total amount of assets flowing out of Osmosis, thus facilitating rate limiting and mechanisms for asset control. This is possible thanks to a new IBC state entry called totalEscrowForDenom/{denom} that has been added. If you are interested in the full technical details you can find the link to the full article here.
Zondax, which has received funding from the ICF, has played a major role for the Cosmos ecosystem for several years since they have been leading the Cosmos app integration and updates in the Ledger hardware wallet devices. Most recently, they upgraded the Cosmos app to support the new Ledger Stax device. However, Zondax has also been supporting in other areas. For example, Zondax worked on the Sign Mode Textual, a new sign mode enabling hardware devices to sign transactions more securely and efficiently, thus solving limitations of the previous sign mode. Furthermore, Zondax has integrated Rosetta into the Cosmos SDK, which is a standardized API that facilitates the integration of blockchains with financial systems like exchanges or wallets. Zondax is based in Zug at the heart of the Crypto Valley in Switzerland.
DeFi/Staking
Keplr 2.0 was released, which is the largest upgrade since the Keplr launch. Some community members found the new version complex and said that they prefer the previous version. However, this is probably also due to users being familiar already with the previous version. It takes some time to learn about all the new features available in Keplr 2.0 but once all these new features are learnt there are major improvements related to customising chain visibility, searching for assets and chains, claiming all rewards in one click and more.
Nolus, a Cosmos project focused on DeFi lending, was selected for the CoinTelegraph Accelerator. This is great news since the goal of this accelerator program is to boost the media presence, community growth and brand awareness of the selected projects.
Project launches & network upgrades
Amulet is not a new project but they recently introduced themselves in detail to the community. Amulet was founded in 2020 by Jessy Irwin, who was previously the Director of security at both Agoric and Tendermint. Amulet’s first project in 2020 was the Game of Zones, the second key incentivized testnet of the Cosmos Hub following the Game of Stakes.
Another project, TOKI, came out of stealth mode. It is interesting that TOKI has partnered with leading financial institutions and companies in Japan to bring Japanese stablecoins to public blockchains. Given that the Japanese yen is the third most traded fiat currency just below the Euro and the Dollar, this is relevant. Also interesting is the news that from June 1st in Japan the revised Payment Services Act has been enforced, thus facilitating both the issuance and circulation of stablecoins that comply with this Japanese law. Complying with this law, a major financial institution partner of TOKI is planning to issue Japanese stablecoins on several blockchains in Q2 2024 and TOKI will launch their cross-chain bridge earlier by the end of 2023. Furthermore, TOKI mentioned as well about a potential airdrop.
Governance
Let’s start Cosmonauts with the Atom Accelerator DAO or AADAO since we have a lot to discuss again. The third batch of grants was announced and here is the overview and highlights. We already covered in the tech section the $250k funding from the AADAO to the AEZ Accelerator in Neutron. Fairblock network received $130k for a privacy solution for Cosmos. Another grant of $195k was given to Amulet Finance, a lending protocol built on Neutron. Then, not surprisingly, a sponsorship grant of $110k was accepted and given to the Cosmoverse team. For Cosmoverse 2022 a community pool spend proposal #68 was made by the Cosmoverse team in the Cosmos Hub requesting 2,600 ATOM tokens for sponsorship. This was accepted but at the prices around that time for ATOM this was in dollar value around half of the amount that they have received from the AADAO of $110k. Then, the fifth grant with a value of $100k of this 3rd batch is for Messari, this is great but what about conflict of interest since the leader of the AADAO, Youssef, previously worked at Messari? Moreover, Luke Saunders, the co-founder and CTO of Delphi Digital who was part of the reviewer committee of the AADAO stepped down due to conflicts of interests. This is positive since these potential conflicts of interest were discussed in the Cosmos Hub forum previously. His responsibilities will be taken up by different people, wallet management by Imperator and Chorus One, grant reviewing by Bendy and technical oversight by a member of Binary Builders, which is a bit surprising since Binary Builders has already received two grants from the AADAO.
Furthermore, in the AADAO dashboard it is indicated that Cryptocito applied for a channel sponsorship grant of $45K and the review is in progress. We hope that he receives the grant, but Cryptocito also mentioned recently on twitter that we urgently need more content creators in Cosmos. We agree, but there are already some great content creators in the Cosmos ecosystem. New ones would be great too but why not start by supporting the emerging or relatively new content creators? Wouldn’t it be better that the AADAO funds instead the Interchain Media DAO to support all the content creators in the Cosmos ecosystem and not only the biggest one Cryptocito? The Cryptocito youtube channel has sponsors already, Stakecito is one of the largest validators now in the Cosmos ecosystem and apart from the $110k grant from the AADAO, Cosmoverse receives sponsorship from many other projects. Don’t get us wrong Cryptocito, we love the work you do but please think about supporting other smaller players if you really think that we urgently need more content creators in Cosmos, thanks.
Proposal #797 in the Cosmos Hub passed to increase the number of validators in the active set from 175 to 180. While previous increases were of 25 validators in general, in this case only 5 was suggested since in the Cosmos Hub forum some didn’t like the idea of increasing the active set at this time.
The ICF announced the plan to expand the ICF Foundation Council, if you are interested in applying you can send an email to [email protected]. The current members of the ICF Foundation Council are Ethan Buchman, Brian Crain and Fernando Pedone.
There was also some great news about funding for both Informal Systems and Anoma. Regarding Anoma, the 3rd fundraise was announced with a total of $25 million received. For Informal Systems it is the first funding round, and they raised a total of $5.3 million. However, Informal Systems has received ongoing support with significant grants from the ICF.
Airdrops
OmniFlix provided an update about the preparation for the imminent FlixDrop. The Interact to Claim module has been integrated into the devnet user interface. This module enables the claim of fungible tokens for swapping, holding, burning of an NFT. In the demonstration, the NFT is burnt to claim FLIX tokens instantly, however the actual process involves the delivery of tokens over a period of time since it is done as a stream and not instantly as shown in the demonstration. For all the details about the preparation for the Flixdrop you can read the full articles following the links here and here.
Events/conferences
The Awesomwasm event will happen during July 12–13 in Berlin and the first 30 speakers were revealed. You can check the full list on their website. More speakers will also be announced soon. Some of the speakers already announced are Josh Lee from Keplr, Dimi, Sunny or Ethan Frey amongst others.
Osmosis news
The Gitopia OSMO/LORE stream on StreamSwap was a success. OmniFlix built StreamSwap and FLIX was the first token to launch via the community price discovery on StreamSwap. There are now many projects who signed up to launch their tokens via StreamSwap. Gitopia is a decentralized alternative to code collaboration platforms such as GitHub.
Pyth Network low latency oracle will now be powering Osmosis. This will enable apps on Osmosis to expand their asset offering. For example, Mars Protocol relies on Osmosis TWAP for price data of listed assets and now thanks to the Pyth Network low latency oracle the Mars Protocol governance could expand the offering of listed assets.
Osmosis users are now able to interact with Osmosis via Urbit, which is an app that allows to self-host the Osmosis front end. In other words, from their Urbit app, Osmosis users will be able to interact with Osmosis via a decentralized front end.
Juno news
Core-1 announced the establishment of a Juno working group composed of members from both the community and Juno ecosystem projects. The goals of this working group are to optimize talent, clarify strategy, refine core team roles, manage resources and more. Some members of this group are Reece or Rarma, in total the initial working group is comprised of eleven members, including both projects and community members.
The Juno Foundation delegations were announced and the next application round will open in 6 months. From a total of 150 Juno validators in the active, a total of 63 validators received 7 million JUNO in delegations. However, it seems that many validators, some even very involved in Juno, missed the application form and hence didn’t apply for delegation. This means that some validators who previously had large delegations from the Juno Foundation now lost all their delegations. We didn’t miss the application form for delegations and of course the smart Cosmonauts and Juno validators watching our videos also didn’t miss it, with us you get the best alpha and you stay well informed about the key developments within the Cosmos ecosystem including Juno. So, validators who missed the application form and lost all their Juno Foundation delegations, click that subscribe button!
Persistence news
There has been an important increase recently in the TVL in Persistence, in particular the total amount of ATOM liquid staked via pStake showed a significant increase with over 500k ATOM liquid staked via pStake.
Ledger announced support for XPRT with native support in the Ledger Live app to manage and stake XPRT tokens.
XPRT incentives are live in the XPRT/OSMO pool on Osmosis. The incentives are 128,700 XPRT for 90 days. Also, XPRT incentives in the ATOM/XPRT pool on Dexter are also live. There are 333,333 XPRT tokens for 90 days.
Quicksilver announced that the pStake Finance team disclosed to them an issue with the transaction verification logic on Quicksilver. It took 25.5 hours to fix the issue and required a chain halt and upgrade. Quicksilver thanked the pStake team for reporting the bug which could be successfully fixed, well done pStake team!
AssetMantle news
The ‘Intro to the AssetMantle Ecosystem’ Educational Course was announced. There are 95 lessons, 45 videos, 24 quizzes, the final assessment and certificate and more. To register in this course you can follow the link included here. This course is offered for free.
The “Charlatans of Osaka” NFT collection was announced, the creator of this collection is well known within the Cosmos NFT ecosystem.
AssetMantle released another detailed walkthrough tutorial, this time about How to Make a Whitelist for Private NFT Sales. We included
Secret Network news
Recently, the TVL on Secret Network has been increasing significantly, with an important percentage of this TVL locked into Shade Protocol. This is likely a result of the Secret Surge, which is an incentive program for 6 months from April until October 2023 with $4 million in rewards.
‘Privacy as a Service’ was announced by Secret Network, and this refers to the ability of Secret Network to provide to other blockchains private computation, meaning that data can be sent into and out of Secret Network and not just tokens. Thanks to this many use cases are enabled and they are described in the full article, the link is included here. Some use cases mentioned are Sealed-bid Auctions, which in the NFT art market could be desirable in particular for pieces from famous artists, other use cases mentioned are private voting, helping to remove the need to trust a centralized entity when using threshold wallets, facilitating walletless applications and more.
Injective news
The Injective Avalon mainnet upgrade was completed and it brings several improvements such as scalability optimizations or the fastest block times on mainnet. Other exciting recent Injectives news are the integration of Polygon and Polygon assets as well as the integration of open source trading software. Moreover the first Injective hackathon was completed.
The Injective Open Liquidity Program launched. From the 13th June, 60,000 INJ tokens can be earned by eligible participants during each epoch which is a 28 day period. In order to provide liquidity, users can easily use Injective APIs or DEXs built on Injective.
Stride news
As can be seen in this graph, the majority of Stride’s TVL is from liquid staked ATOM. At the moment there are around 2.7 million ATOM liquid staked via Stride and 524,000 ATOM liquid staked via pStake compared to 166k in Quicksilver. To check the amount of liquid staked ATOM in Stride and pStake as well as the validators currently selected for both protocols the links are included here and here respectively.
Aidan, a co-founder of Stride, announced that a live Stride testnet successfully migrated validator sets as part of an ICS rehearsal in preparation for the Stride onboarding as a Cosmos Hub consumer chain leveraging replicated security like Neutron. However, Stride would be the first live blockchain migrating to Replicated security since Neutron was a new chain launching directly with Replicated security.
General crypto news
ATOM custody and staking is offered by Swiss banks such as Sygnum and others fully compliant and regulated by FINMA. While some countries such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein choose to keep regulations up to date with the fast tech developments especially in the blockchain industry, other countries choose to do the opposite. Talent and companies will migrate to jurisdictions that are embracing innovation with advanced and modern blockchain regulatory frameworks. The EU is now also catching up and learning from Switzerland and Liechtenstein, since on June 9, the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) legislation was finally published in the Official Journal of the European Union. This means that the countdown has started for the law to come into effect from December 30, 2024.
Conclusion
There are two very impressive Cosmonauts who answered correctly all the questions in all the previous five quizzes on the Cosmos ecosystem Zealy for each of the last 5 episodes that we released. We decided to reward these two top students of the Cosmos College, congratulations! Other Cosmonauts also answered correctly all the questions in several of the quizzes so we look forward to rewarding you as well very soon after the next 5 episodes!
And that’s all for today’s Cosmos ecosystem bi-weekly review Cosmonauts. If you enjoyed it click the like button, the subscribe button and also the bell notifications icon. Thank you so much for readingCosmonauts and I’ll see you all very soon in the next episode!
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