A lot of people have reached out to me over the last couple of weeks asking WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE COSMOS!? They have seen a lot of action on twitter with words like Stargate, IBC, and Luna Mission. This document is meant as an explainer with links to relevant blog posts and explainers. It is also meant as a timeline of the next few weeks to help Cosmonauts understand when and why things are happening.
2020 was an incrediably productive year for the Cosmos ecosystem and the core teams in particular. We have been focused on shipping a version of the Cosmos Hub that includes a production version of Interblockchain Communication (IBC) as well as some material improvements around client integrations and performance (~100x-1000x). The feature set for that upgrade was finalized in Jan-Feb 2020 and the team has been working on it since. We had been close to a release before the holidays, but some bugs kept us from a release.
There are a lot of great explainer blog posts from various community members on this topic:
- Gavin from Figment on why Stargate
- Zaki on Decentralized Coordination to ship Stargate
- Chris Goes on IBC 1.0 Final
- Tess on Tendermint 0.34
NOTE: Theres a lot I'm glossing over that also happened (like Game of Zones)
During the holidays, as is becoming customary every few years, the Bitcoin price began to skyrocket and with it the prices of many assets in the wider crypto ecosystem. The Cosmos community, not to be ignored, decided to put together a decentralized effort to market $ATOM and the broader Cosmos ecosystem. This includes a governance proposal to spend ~$750k on marketing $ATOM.
Here are some relevant links:
- Cosmos -> $11.2B in total value
- Live ecosystem marketcap from Messari
- Proposal 34 - Luna Mission | Fund $ATOM
- Social engagement up 155% in one week
NOTE: Validators, get out there and vote YES on proposal #34!
In addition, the Cosmos SDK released v0.40.0 FINAL (a late Christmas present), the last blocking item before upgrading the Hub. This release triggers a series of events over the coming month.
As I write this, the v0.40.0 SDK release is being incorporated into Gaia. Most of the work is done and I expect a Gaia v3.0.0 release later this afternoon PST or sometime over the weekend. This is the release that the Cosmos Hub will update to.
A unique identifier of that release will be included in a governance proposal (tentatively #35) which is expected later this weekend or early next week (Monday 11 Jan). The text of the proposal for those interested. This is an amazing testament to where we are right now as a project.
ALSO happening next week, an organization by the name of UniFiDAO is conducting a Demo Day for around 20 projects building on top of Cosmos to share their latest features. This event will showcase many of the most exciting developments that will shape the Cosmos over the next year.
Once the governance proposal passes (sometime the week of 25 Jan) it will set a date for the network upgrade. Previous upgrade propsals have set the upgrade date around a week after propsal passage. This would mean IBC live on the Hub right around 1 Feb. At that point chains will be able to connect to the hub and the era of interconnected blockchains will begin 
The delivery of IBC completes delivery of the roadmap outlined in the Cosmos whitepaper. The community has rallied around the #ATOM2021 plan from @zmanain as the next step in bringing value to $ATOM. You can see that here. In addition, the ICF has funded a dedicated team to maintain the Cosmos Hub lead by Shahan Khatchadourian and an IBC go to market team lead by Jelena Djuric from the Informal Systems team.
If you are interested in what the future holds for $ATOM I encourage you to come see the UniFiDAO demo day. 2021 promises to be the best year for the Cosmos community yet as, together, we grow the value of the ecosystem from ~10B to over 100B.
Jack Zampolin VP Product @ Peggy JV