Dear Cosmos Community,
As co-creators of the Cosmos Hub and key contributors to Cosmos core infrastructure—such as the Tendermint consensus engine, Cosmos SDK, and the IBC protocol alongside our long standing support for numerous Cosmos projects through our incubation program—we, All in Bits, believe it is highly important to address the recent proposal on the Cosmos Hub - proposal #952 that is calling for a vote of no confidence in the ICF leadership.
While we recognize and share the concerns raised in the current on-chain proposal regarding the need for better governance, transparency, and improved accountability within the Interchain Foundation (ICF), and hope that this current public call-to-action will lead to positive changes, we believe that an equal or even a more pressing issue is the lack of a clear long term strategy and direction for ATOM and the Cosmos Hub.
What we have observed is that the absence of strategic planning is causing confusion within the community about ATOM’s trajectory and its future growth plan and it is our belief that ICF, as the entity mandated to fund, steward and responsibly advance the Cosmos ecosystem, should develop and communicate a clear and coherent growth strategy for the Cosmos Hub. Ideally, this planning should be aligned with product’s development goals and responsiveness to current industry needs, fostering a coherent vision that supports the sustainable development of Cosmos Hub and the Cosmos ecosystem.
Considering the above mentioned, we would like to share our perspective on what could shape a compelling vision for the Cosmos Hub. We hope that the community will consider this proposal and start a productive discussion that guides the ICF in building a cohesive plan for the long term sustainability and development of Cosmos Hub.
Our proposed vision includes:
- Appoint technical visionaries: Bring technical visionaries with proven track records of innovating blockchain protocols on the Foundation council. (For example builders like Sunny Aggarwal or Dev Ojha that have made significant contributions to the ecosystem).
- Establish a coherent vision for ATOM: Define clear tokenomics, purpose, and community education initiatives to ensure alignment and reduce confusion around ATOM’s role and value.
- Support forks: Officially support different forks of the Cosmos Hub, such as AtomOne, where experiments can happen, with successful improvements being upstreamed to the Hub.
- Leverage blockchain for governance: Develop a canonical, comprehensive, and coherent on-chain representation of the current state of funding and development across all categories, potentially automated through a DAO/dApp. (We believe ICF should solve its management challenges through blockchain innovation, demonstrating a commitment to using its own technology).
- Improve ICS: Create Simple Replicated ICS, and prove its efficacy on new lighter hubs (connected to the Cosmos Hub via IBC) with fewer validators. We believe that the go-to market strategy for ICS adoption should be based on good smart contract platforms, which will need automated scaling via parallel shards created on demand, with consistent security characteristics to solve the big scaling problem rather than the current PSS solution that exists today.
- Improve smart contract dApp adoption: Develop a smart contract dApp adoption strategy that shows measurable success, while maintaining a focus on consumer driven development towards massive adoption. This approach could shift the focus from Cosmos SDK lower level development to supporting innovative smart contract platforms that lower the barrier to building successful products capable of hosting real consumer applications.
- Improve governance: Enhance governance, particularly incorporating concepts already implemented or planned in AtomOne.
Building Confidence in ATOM and AtomOne
While we agree on the necessity for transparency, we also believe it is important to strengthen our confidence in ATOM—both in its current proposed new vision and through the introduction of AtomOne. As ATOM continues to evolve and define its long term strategy, AtomOne is envisioned to serve as an alternative modeling solution within the Cosmos ecosystem, offering a different yet synergistic role alongside ATOM.
These current discussions in which there exists incomplete access to information that should be more transparent and easily available is the main reason why we are aiming to build out AtomOne as a new hub to model solutions for refined governance.
How AtomOne Aims To Model Solutions
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Constitution and Laws: AtomOne’s development prioritizes governance, by establishing a defined Constitution and associated operating laws to regulate its activities effectively. This strategic method is designed to tackle governance issues within the ecosystem and create a stronger and more responsible operational framework.
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BuidlDAO and Community Involvement: The BuidlDAO model integrated into AtomOne’s governance system aims to empower the community by encouraging increased engagement and accountability in steering the project’s course of action. This move represents a step towards larger decentralization by ensuring that decisions are not only transparent but also collectively determined by those who are most committed to the success of the ecosystem.
In light of the existing proposal, we encourage the Cosmos community to prioritize productive discussions while remaining focused on actionable outcomes. We believe that by working with a shared vision and an informed approach, we can address the pressing direction and strategy challenges that Cosmos Hub has and continue to drive the Cosmos ecosystem towards greater success and adoption.
We support the community in advocating for increased transparency from the ICF and we are dedicated to contributing to Cosmos Hub vision towards a promising future, for Cosmos, ATOM and AtomOne. For this and the above reasons, AIB is voting YES on proposal #952.