Is Cosmos ($ATOM) Dead or Making a Comeback?

Transcript

Welcome to Epicenter. I'm Sebastian Cuchio and I'm here today with Michael aka Krypto and Magnus aka Magmar. One of the things that I really want to make sure happens is that Adam feels connected to the road map that we have. It's challenging, right? And I think what we have done is emotionally process [music] to some degree the difficult position that we were put in and [music] make sure that we were building the bedrock of a new kind of innovative cosmos that could expand beyond what we had been holding on to for the past 5 years.

>> All the people that have been in Cosmos for years that have been building on Cosmos and maybe don't feel included in this new vision like why should they care? The industry is evolving. Cosmos needs to evolve which is happening along the way. Maybe some people will leave, some new people will join, but I think finally [music] we have leadership that is also adaptive to where the market is going. Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization and the global blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastuchio and I'm here today with Michael aka Krypto and Magnus aka Magmar. I guess >> I always call you Magmar and people find it funny that I call you Magmar like not

in text form. So yeah, I'll keep calling you Magmar. But before you start the show, here's a little bit about our responses this week. >> This episode is brought to you by Nosis, building the open internet one block at a time. Nosis was founded in 2015 and it's grown from one of Ethereum's earliest projects into a powerful ecosystem for open userowned finance. Nosis is also the team behind products that had become core to my business and that of so many others like Safe and Cow Swap. At the center is Nosis Chain. It's a low fee layer 1 with zero downtime in 7 years and secured by over 300,000 validators. It's the foundation for real world financial applications like Nosis Pay and Circles. All this is governed by

Nosis DAO, a communityrun organization where anyone with a GNO token can vote on updates, fund new projects, and even run a validator from home. So if you're building in web 3 or you're just curious about what financial freedom can look like, start exploring at Nosis.io. All right, guys. So we're here at Cosmoverse, Cosmoverse 5 in Split, Croatia. Um, how's it been for you guys last two days? I mean, I feel off the goods for me, it's always months of stress and anxiety and getting into it, but seeing all of you guys here, seeing the crowd, the turnout, you know, it's always nice. So, now I'm actually chill.

I'm enjoying it and yeah, >> it's like pressure's come down. The like first day pressure just like >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I feel you, man. >> I feel good. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good now. >> You have a right to feel good. I think like you really put on great events here as always. So, >> it's a little hard to get to, I will say. No, but it's been really nice. Um, I think it's definitely a different in vibe than previous Cosmo verses that I've been to. It's a little bit more, I would say, put together, corporate, institutional, which I really like. Um, and I think is also reflecting sort of where Cosmos is going, where the ecosystem is going.

>> Yeah, I think that's one of the things that's perhaps the most striking at this year's Cosmoverse is just how different it is from every other Cosmos that I've been to, which isn't all of them. uh and um and just how many like how much of the focus has been on institutions on bringing institutions and sort of corporates on chain and there's um there's a real kind of it feels like a vibe shift in Cosmos and it's being reflected here it's reflected also in uh Cosmos Labs's strategy for Cosmos and the hub moving forward which we can talk about but um I think like one of the things I was thinking about is like Cosmoverse to me feels always like a way to come and check in on the ecosystem. It's like an annual like take the pulse and um I wonder like for you

guys what's this what's the main takeaway at this year's Cosmoverse like if you kind plot the five Cosmos verses in your mind and you know what what each of those events kind of represented as a moment in time what is this moment in time >> yeah I I just want to shout out you know you've done an incredible job putting this on year after year um so very grateful also that this conference exists and that it's a great way for the entire ecosystem to come together and you know get a sense of what's going on. I think so my first Cosmoverse was Medigene um and then we went to Dubai. I actually wasn't in Dubai uh and then our team some of our team went to Turkey too but comparing this to Medigene I think Cosmos has changed right and I think

whenever there's big change there are good parts to that and there are tough parts to that right and I think one of the things that I really try to keep in mind is is the change that we're going through the right change right and the change that we need and I think what I really believe and I think this is reflected to some degree by Cosmoverse and the ecosystem is that we have to grow up right as an ecosystem. We need to become a lot more forward- facing. We need to become a lot more dressed up to attract people who actually have businesses, right, and have economies and bring those into Cosmos because the original, you know, ecosystem that was built up sort of organically around

individual projects that, you know, were it was kind of a very self-reerential ecosystem. I see that evolving as into something that looks a lot more integrated into society, into finance, into government, etc. And I feel that a lot here. >> Yeah. I think that's also been how we thought about this, right? If you I mean, you have you're five on five, you've been to Lisbon, you know how >> I almost I almost didn't make it, but I'm very cold. >> Okay. I know how how it started off as a very grassroots, you know, developer conference, developer ecosystem event.

After the co time, I just got into Cosmos. I learned about it from Jack Sample, big shout out, who onboarded me and, you know, taught me everything and connected me with people. And then I got really hooked about it. And I think back then it was definitely a different ecosystem. >> It was definitely a different vibe at the conference. Now four years later, you see Revolute is here, the European National Bank is here or Central Bank is here. I mean, it's it's a whole new paradigm I think for us as well. And while I still want to maintain this community focus, right? And I've said this repeatedly, like I want customers to always be the home for Cosmonauts, whether you're a validator, whether you're holding $10 worth of atom, but

you just want to meet Mac. You want to meet Seb, you want to meet Ethan, or you want to meet Sunny, who unfortunately are not here this time, but hopefully next year they will be there. You just want to meet your Cosmos heroes. I want Cos to be a place for them because I'm one of them, right? I'm also an independent community member who just saw this opportunity and took it in 2021. And I think here we are um at the same time we also see that crypto is maturing. We have had a lot of panel discussions and topics on stage where what you just said also is is true right and we are also a crypto business with customers. We also need to evolve adapt and and see where is the market going right what does the market care about.

Um so yeah I think we're we're trying to evolve as well as an organization as a brand as a company but also as a platform to yeah to to to be relevant for both the institutional side and and banking sector which you saw also on the lineup this year but at the same time also for for the cosmonauts worldwide. Yeah, I think what what you said Mag really struck me is that Cosmos is going through a change and um what that change represents. I think you know I I have been sort of you know internally and also in conversations saying this for years that like hey the IC the ICF should have a more uh

structured business development arm. There should be uh more work going out there talking with consulting firms to try to get them to put Cosmos into you know different kind of enterprise settings. Um, Cosmos is the Linux of blockchains, which means that, you know, you know, the anecdote here is that none of the people who were building Slack were Linux in the 90s got rich because we all have Linux in our pockets now, you know, and now that it's actually like the rubber is hitting the road. >> Like, it's a little bit it's a bit scary, right, that that change is happening, but I think that ultimately it's like a right direction. um the you know what what I think the uh the reluctance or the fear is that Cosmos

loses some of its essence as this very grassroots kind of like movement ecosystem. One of the things I thought you I wrote down here is like I think two or three years ago there was this meme that Cosmos was respected by all the other ecosystems that like people in Ethereum really kind of respected Cosmos builders and the the appchain thesis and um that a lot of the innovation in Cosmos made its way into Ethereum and it kind of like built its respect you know around that and you know I don't think we've lost that but you know it's it's important to me I think that Cosmos kind of keeps that that space in the ecosystem as a place of innovation um as a place where uh people can try new

things build new ideas and yeah I wonder if that makes sense to you that's something that you feel is important to maintain >> yeah I mean it it it totally does I think you know we were I I grew up in that cosmos right graduating college I started a company skip almost directly afterwards which was you know very shortly like our first crypto conference ever was Cosmoders yeah right and I think and that was at Medigin And we had a really strong sense at the time of what Cosmos was. And throughout the next three years, we were its biggest advocates, right? Or or some of its biggest advocates. Uh and we were loyal to the ecosystem. I think what really has happened though is it's become very clear to us that the former version of

Cosmos was not headed in a good direction. Right? there was not a really strong through line in terms of how we got from, you know, basically where we were into something that looked a lot more unified and a lot more cohesive where people could feel like they had a place. Um, and I think, you know, there were there were there were pros and cons to the fact that Cosmos was really decentralized, right? At least on the community side and on the um on the contributor side. And so I think what we felt coming into the acquisition was there was a mandate for change, right?

That someone that that the community needed some kind of shift that the ecosystem needed some kind of shift. And so our uh our vision for that and you know there was a reason I think we were acquired especially since we had like a strong background in B2B sales and and things like that is to find a new market for Cosmos that could bring in the liquidity, the users, the capital, the direction and the impact that I always thought Cosmos could have. Right? And I think over the last uh n months we've we've thought about different places where that could happen. But one thing that always felt really true was we could go directly to institutions and

get Cosmos to become something that they used. >> Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I just came from Money 2020 before this, which if anyone here hasn't uh or anyone watching hasn't been to, it's a it's a completely minding conference about what we could be like, right? Just in terms of it as an ecosystem, right? There's all the Fortune 500 companies there. There's, you know, parades, there's massive booths, there's ball pits, there's it's it's like the best crypto conference times 20. And of course it's super high budget but the difference between that and Cosmos is just the fact that we haven't really found a real business use case >> right and so from my perspective if we can you know if we can change to

actually go in that direction it may hurt for one to two years but after that the rewards will be a lot greater. anything that >> yeah I mean I think if you look at other crypto ecosystems I think a lot of them are actually in a very similar boat right like everyone is trying to also compete for for institutional um clients to to get to get them on boarded to to build on their on their network so I think we as cosmonauts we're fundamentally committed and convinced that you know the app chain thesis sovereignty interoperability those values that cosmos pioneered dating back over a decade ago at this point I think we're all fundamentally aligned that those values are going to be the standard for the web 3 economy from from here on over the decades to come. So I

think with that in mind, what we try to do with Cosmover, what I try to do with with media content, everything that I'm doing is to just build a rails and platforms for those conversations to happen, right? Same like you mentioned earlier, you came to Medí, which for me was the the goat customers conference. It would be hard to talk in the future, but uh I think there was an amazing event that got a lot of people um you know into the spotlight for the first time. Also, same network had that coming out at Cosmers Saga Babylon, right? I remember we didn't they didn't have a logo at that time like we we had to cook something up on the spot to put in their booth because they hadn't didn't even have a proper logo.

>> That's where we had our coming out too. >> Yeah. And I think that's you know that is very true. It is also I want to state that very very capital intensive to to run events to do events physical events to feed a couple hundred peoples for three four days in a row that costs a lot of money. So yeah, and I think overall >> the sentiment right now after a lot of the things that Cosmos went through, that crypto went through as an industry, right, which probably started somewhere in like May 2022 with a with a terror collapse, I think we're still that is still in our bones, you know, and now with this major shift that we're in from building this vibrant onchain ecosystem

to say, hey, we we are are targeting institutional clients and there's actually appetite because we all agree like for them it makes the most sense to build on Cosmos, right? Why would they depend on another network? Why would they depend on uh another uh ecosystem instead of building their own rails? So yeah, I think we're all fundamentally aligned. But yeah, it's uh it's been a a change a transformative year or transition year for Cosmos that I don't know how long it will still still take to to kind of complete or or where we see the fruits of but yeah it's uh it's been interesting for the past six months particularly um and yeah we'll see where

we stand a year from now. M something that stood out to me in both of your answers is that you said that you know there would be some time until we start seeing the rewards and the fruits of our labor and and and that brings me to Adam because I think that's a very important part of the story here and um like I don't want to put words in your mouth but I'm I'm going to paraphrase here what I I recall you saying to me when when we first talked after the acquisition and was that one of your kind of main focuses aside from getting Cosmos and sort of like the SDK in institutions would be for Adam to benefit from all of this value that was created. And um you I talked to some people here over the last two days and you I talked to a lot of people in

Cosmos kind of generally and I think one of the main things that I'm hearing is that there's there's like Cosmos Labs's work that they're doing and kind of the things that Cosmos Labs is putting out there in terms of the institutions that they're bringing on board etc. And then it feels like some black box, right, of like something's going to happen and then atom price will go up. And people feel like my my sense and myself as well is like what is in this black box? Like what's what's meant to happen for those two to kind of correlate and for Adam to benefit from the work that you're doing?

And um yeah, so I wonder you if you can share some thoughts there like at least direct directionally because I know that there's still some things that need to be figured out but how you're thinking about that. No, no. I think it's a really good question and I think it's important also for everyone especially at Cosmoverse to ask these questions and to help us stay accountable and think through the solutions because the end of the day I'm not a token guru right I I if I knew exactly what would make Adam go up you know I life might be a little bit different um I think from my perspective this is how I think about it right Adam is one of thousands and thousands and thousands of crypto currencies and the bar for something to be valuable is a

lot higher than it used to be when Adam was first launched when it was you know genuinely the only way to invest in a multi-chain thesis right which is a very exciting thesis the internet of blockchains a lot of people who are here today came from that time when they heard Jay or they heard Ethan speak about okay this is what the world's going to look like and they believe that the truth is that is no longer only our vision right that is the vision of Ethereum with their L2 thesis that is the vision of you know optimism that is the vision of arbitrum that's the vision of avalanche with their L1 thesis that's the vision of corda hyperledger right that that has become not just a way that cosmos has become basically a bet on

that future but it's no longer alone in there and so I think the question that we have to ask oursel is where do we fit right What are we a bet on and how do we be as innovative as we were 6 years ago today right? >> Because we need to be that innovative. We need to be that ambitious. Otherwise, >> you know, there's plenty of players out there that are, you know, innovative and ambitious on different things and we need to have our own track. And so, the way that I viewed it is there's a lot of debt to pay off in Cosmos. When we came in, there was a lot of debt. That's how it felt. There was a lot of community debt. There were people who were hurt by specific things in the

past. There was a lot of like, you know, uh missing goodwill there. And you need to have that foundation to move forward, right? You need to have the foundation of people who are committed for the long term, of good projects, of good community members, of a cohesive community, of good conferences, of developers. That is your bedrock that you can build a new vision on top of. And part of that is also letting what is not good go away, right? Or accelerating the process of removing the dead weight on the ecosystem. And dead weight is a real thing, right? Dead weight is a real overhang that can prevent you from innovating. And so it's challenging, right? And I think what what we have

done is emotionally process to some degree the difficult position that we were put in and make sure that we were building the bedrock of a new kind of innovative cosmos that could expand beyond what we had been holding on to for the past 5 years, right? As an ecosystem, which was this initial vision of what this could be. And a lot of that a lot of that comes down to questioning assumptions, right? So the assumption was that the cosmos hub would be the center of cosmos, right? And that it would have this sort of uh >> it's in the name.

>> What's that? >> It's in the name. Exactly. It was a very uh it was it was a very commonly held assumption and the truth is that assumption never came to pass. >> Yeah. >> Right. And so when we we do care about Adam and that is the token that we want to drive value to. The way that we think about it is okay maybe that actually wasn't the right vision for Adam, right? Maybe the right vision for Atom is actually for it to be the currency that underpins the world coming on chain in a much more tangible way, right? In a in a way where people are actually paying in Atom or using Atom to get services for their companies and they're using it as the connecting currency to pay in web 3, right? Dollar is the currency of web 2.

What could we do to make Adam the currency of web 3, right? And have those interact together. And so that's the exploration process that Nico chatted through during his talk. >> I'd also like to add like historically over the years, you know, thinking back from also where we first met and 2021 those times, I think Cosmos has always been a very open ecosystem that was very welcoming to anybody, right? If you're a developer, if you're just any any any type of person, right? You you you could find your your people, right? >> Yeah. I think over the years and I'm not sure what what the reasons are for that but I at least started to notice also that there was no like you were saying no cohesive you know road map there was

no I felt like a lot of people were not swimming in the same direction but they were rather like swing you know against each other and and that caused a lot of drama a lot of things a lot of missed opportunities as well a lot of timelines that were you know that other ecosystems picked up and and put into their road maps and ecosystem But yeah, I think there's many ways on how there's a future in which ATOM could become what you're describing. I think a lot of it is also around just driving that awareness cha like chasing that dialogue with relevant players and institutions which we're doing which you're doing which I think we're we're aligned on that um because yeah I mean if you if you look at the ripples and XRPs of the

world right they don't really have an vibrant onchain uh ecosystem in that sense but it's a $200 billion token and they do something wrong and what do you what do you think of if you hear XRP you I think is the the banking coin of of the US, right? >> Yeah. >> So, a lot of it also has to do with branding perception storyline really bringing this front and center over and over again. And I think for atom, like you're saying, there's probably a lot of lot of depth there. But um now also what we've been talking over the years there is finally a proactive vision from the leadership from the foundation Cosmos Labs that is now taking more

accountability as you were describing right and things were a bit shaky with certain things but that's you know that's what it was I think now it sounds like and feels like there's at least some game plan and like a lot of very smart people that are actually thinking about the long-term vision here, right? So, credit to you, to Barry, to the Skip team, um, now Cosmos Labs team to really put brain juice into this and to really evaluate and think and assess what could make sense, right? And I guess we'll see. I mean, crypto is also the thing Roger just said it on stage like uh if you're there for for a couple of years, it's basically hundreds of years in in

normal time. So yeah, it's uh very fast moving and but I think finally we have leadership that is also adaptive to where the market is going. >> Yeah, I think that's true. That feels to me like I mean at least directionally um I think that Cosmos Lab is is taking Cosmos in the right direction. And I think there's like still lots of headwinds that yeah that will be faced and um that you know assumptions that need to be validated and I think you know um the appchain thesis while it has been validated in uh in many of the kind of like Cosmos circles and you know maybe

you can talk a little bit about some of the partners that are launching Cosmos app chains you know in the broader crypto ecos. system, chase like Salana, like Ethereum. Um there there's still some there's definite sort of like evidence that there's also other ways to build blockchain applications. Um like you know, if you look at base or any of the other kind of successful L2s. So yeah, I want to give you also an opportunity to talk about um some of the announcements you guys made here. Some of the chains that are Yeah. What's the alpha?

>> Alpha. >> This is always the annual alpha podcast. Yeah. So give us a name. I will try to do and by the way I'm also expecting some alpha from you because this will definitely come out after any announcement you made here. [laughter] of so I I think I mean to your point there are many ways to build a successful blockchain ecosystem and the truth is actually at least in my opinion there was really only one way that basically everyone bought into and Cosmos tried was the first to try something else right and the one way was basically you build an L1 you get a bunch of developers to build on the L1 everyone gets access to the same token with the same gas fees and all the

incentives are aligned because everyone wants that token to go up, right? This is the Ethereum model. This is the uh Salana model, right? Everyone says, "Okay, I'm on Salana, right? I'm on Ethereum." So, we're all building to make Ethereum better. They go out and they show Ethereum to their other developer friends, right? And to investors. And then you get investors who have a thesis on Ethereum, right? Or on Salana. And Cosmos took a huge risk in saying, "Well, what if we didn't do any of that?" >> Yeah. You still say Cosmos is different. >> Cosmos is different, right? Cosmo Cosmos is >> and we all find ourselves sort of explaining this to people all the time.

>> Yeah, exactly. And and it's it's but but still a lot of people don't understand that, right? A lot of people don't understand that Cosmos was built to be a different kind of experiment where it wasn't about, you know, everyone being on the same L1 all pushing towards the same thing. It wasn't even like the Avalanche model where they have separate L1's but they're all connected to the same core blockchain. you have to pay an AVAC to to actually be there. And I think the big question that we had to ask oursel this year and honestly, you know, this was a really hard decision is do we still try to make that model work, right? The model of where we have different chains and we have complete sovereignty and independence and

interoperability or do we try to revert to a Ethereum or Salana type model, >> right? And so when we were thinking about launching the EVM on the hub, that was us thinking, okay, maybe actually we have to go to the other kind of model, right? We have to go to the unified everyone builds a one thing, it's all about atom and you know, screw the rest of the ecosystem or or not screw them, but just you know, it's not as important, it's not aligned, that kind of thing. I think what we realize is actually the bigger fish that we can go after is making the original model work, right? and making making taking what I think traditionally is viewed as a weakness of Cosmos and trying to turn it into a strength. It's >> leaning into the app chain.

>> Exactly. Leaning into sovereignty. >> Leaning in even harder. Yeah. Right. And so I do have a lot of pro points that we can point to. Um one of which we tried to announce on stage. I hope hopefully it came across. But we have won the official um contracts to build the CBDC's for two major governments both in Latin America right now. Another one is right under is is underway and is at the ending stages in Spain. Those two countries combined have a $600 million budget for building their CBDC's with us. That's also partnership with Pierist. I should point out separately.

We have also closed two major Fortune 500 companies on building Cosmos chains. I can't speak to their specific names. They will come out I think hopefully in the next two to three months. We'll we'll see exactly sort of where their marketing teams are uh at that time. But in my opinion, those two chains combined represent a larger market opportunity for Cosmos and everyone inside of it. The validators, the infrastructure providers, the block explorers, the wallets, the community members, the developers, bigger opportunities than anything else we've seen so far, right?

But it is on Cosmos. >> And you didn't pay any of these people. >> No. In fact, I hope they pay us. >> I know. It's it's a crazy it's a crazy shift, right? And I do think it is on the people in cosmos to be open to that, >> right? To say, okay, what do I need to do to appeal to institutions, right? Because we can only do so much. We're trying our best for oursel, but we can't change everyone else, right? And so, for example, for validators getting their sock to compliance, basic things you have to do to work with uh enterprise, right? If you're a block explorer, making sure you have, you know, private uh private dashboards that you can

offer, white labelled dashboards, right? If you're if you're in media, making sure that you have the right relationships and you know, you know, how to present properly to look professional, right? I'm not saying this is you guys. Uh uh hey, we got a like proper backdrop here. No, what I'm saying is you you guys were doing really good at this, right? >> Bloomberg, Adrian, Bloomberg's back here. Exactly. Um, but I think these are the kinds of things that people really need to consider if they want to come for this ride. >> Yeah. >> Now my, you know, I did my intro in my videos. Winners, winners. Now it makes sense. Latin American central banks.

We're coming full circle. I like that. >> Excellent. Um, >> maybe back to Median next year. >> Maybe. I mean, there there will definitely be be a part two of uh a chapter 2 of Cosmos Median. Guaranteed at some point. Have to do it. Um but yeah, I think to your point also I think I'm personally like very aligned with that with that focus on you know starting to also think how can how can you you make money as an organization. I think for many many years Cosmos has especially ATOM right has always given has paid a lot and given a lot but um I think yeah this is definitely the right direction and and something of sub of of

substance right not just like hey this is what we want to do but actually something that is that is happening um I think also to your question on alpha from our side we are also looking at you know always interesting regions for where we can do customers you mentioned earlier was a bit hard to get to split I agree for you know people from outside Europe but actually for you know people from Vienna from Germany like it's super super easy to get to so this year was really the theme around Mika around policy there was also the theme of this year's conference policy meets protocol regulators from the Serbian uh securities commission Bosnia right for them it's just a quick hop or a quick

drive um that said for next year. Very proud to announce, hope this is coming out only after the announcement. Very proud to announce that customers 2026 is coming to Hong Kong. That will be the first time we're properly in Asia, I should say. I mean, we've been to Dubai, but um yeah, we're very excited for that. I just spent a week there um scouting venues, scouting places, meeting people, very vibrant ecosystem, especially also in the fintech space, which I think fits very well also into what you're doing and also where the entire crypto space is headed, right? We also have very very interesting talks with the likes of Hashki and Tedar, right? And other organizations that are,

you know, long-term kind of, you know, uh enthusiasts and and organizations that are actually cosmonauts underneath many of them, right? they have either investments in the ecosystem geminatum or run infrastructure or those kind of things. So very excited for that >> and I mean like yeah there's a like a huge cosmos community in Korea that's just you know a few hours away. I think this is great. >> Very exciting. I think it's great taking >> it's also a direct flight from New York which is >> but it will be hard for people from splits to come to Hong Kong. >> Okay. So they had their chance, you know, they had a chance and I'm best to I want to bring it back to the the community a little bit because like you it I think it's it's great for Cosmos the stack and

it's great for Cosmos the thesis that institutions that major Fortune 500 companies that governments are using the Cosmos stack but the all the people that have been in Cosmos for years that have been building on Cosmos and that um maybe don't feel included in this new vision like why should they care like atom holders why should they care uh people who have been uh bullish on cosmos the ecosystem for years why should they care and and I think the bigger question is what can they do to participate in this new uh direction like what's the what's the action point the call kind of call to action for for people

>> yeah as a line I think this immediately gets back to the question of who is the community right so for example >> you know uh I don't want to name specific names but if a chain adopted the open source Cosmos stack and then attracted a bunch of retail investors who bought the token are they the community that we feel accountable to right so so it it under that model every you know member of the 200ish chains or or more chains that is launched would be a member of the community that we would feel responsible for right and I think From our perspective, it is really hard to do something that will appease all of those individuals,

right? Because a lot of these chains are fully sovereign, right? It would be like if we were the UN and we tried to appeal to the citizens of every single country, >> right? Well, the truth is they're all totally different. They all want totally different things. And so the UN often times get caught up doing nothing, right? Because they can't agree on anything. And so I think what our job is to do is to present a future to go after that future to help that future succeed and then bring along whoever wants to come with right and so I think the the core thing that I'm looking at right now is okay who are the people who are positively engaging with this vision right if they're you know if they're sort of caught up in the past or they want they they were super excited about

you know uh some other version of cosmos that they got excited about previously ly there's not much I can do for them, right? Or there's not much that the the Cosmos can do for them. I think it's a it's really important to me right now to know sort of who is interested in this and who's not, right? I there's there's a number of ways to get involved. The first thing is there are going to be new chains coming, right? And so when we talk about people are bullish on the Cosmos ecosystem, I would invite them to have a slightly more expanded viewpoint of what that means, right? It doesn't have to mean exactly what you thought it meant 2 years ago.

It could mean enterprises coming on chain, >> right? It could mean major gaming companies or IP companies coming and launching, you know, their anime anime uh their anime IP onchain, engaging with that, right? There's going to be many options for individual community members to get involved, whether it's on the fintech side and they're interested in making money, whether it's on the uh, you know, entertainment side. and we're going to make that very uh open and available to these people. But I think it is on them to sort of say, "Hey, I'm willing to expand my viewpoint of the new things that are coming and I want to be engaged in those versus, okay, I remember these 10 chains from 3 years

ago. They're not doing so well, so I'm upset." >> Yeah, I think there's definitely no black and whites on that answer on that. I I think you know the institutions that are coming in are are probably as much uh valuable as you know the the regular ATM holder that has $100 of ATM but it's just very passionate about it is coming to all the events is active on telegram is active on Twitter and socials and I think a lot of the times and I'm noticing that as well and getting some of that feedback is you know those retail community people feel that now that the institutions are coming they're a a little bit scared that like okay that means we're cut off from everything

right >> um and that is this is >> I mean they feel I I believe that the feeling is that you know they're [clears throat] not as valuable or not as respected or >> important and I think there's maybe something to that as well um but generally speaking I personally at least feel that's why I said in the beginning to make it very clear I want customers to always be a home for every customer not whereas a a solo validator that is you know running an ATM node since couple years or whether it's you know I don't know revolute or or some larger institution that is just interested in in joining and and being here so yeah for me that's why I said like it's it's not a black and white I think the industry is

evolving cosmos needs to evolve which is happening and yeah I think along the way maybe some people will leave some new people will will join but um yeah I think in the end of the day it's it's really important to also still make sure that those that have been around, which still is the case, right? There's many automoters that probably bought the top at $40, but they truly believe in in the vision. They like the the the sense of belonging to this community that they also feel that there is space for them in the future. And I think that is very important and also challenging for you, I guess, to figure out how can we how can we solve that? How can we make that clear? And I I guess maybe that's also where we can

come in as customers, right? Because the way I always see it and I said this to you a couple months or around a year ago I think when we had a call I said like the way I see how Cosmos is structured organizationally is like like a network of L1s right so you have Cosmoverse which is an independent sovereign organization you have Cosmos Labs and there's other organizations some of them are more active uh or less than they were a couple years ago but I feel like there's definitely a lot of like independent contributors that are still there that are still passionate and they are trying to also adapt to these new environments.

um in the same way how you adopting to the broader environment, right? And I think that's going to be interesting to see how that will play out. Um yeah. >> Yeah. I I mean on your point about uh making sure that the people who have been in Cosmos stay involved. I do think that's important. I think one of the ways that I've tried to do this, you know, and I think Cosmos has tried to do this is is just be very active, right? So, I'm a Harry participant in the in the uh let's call it the atom trenches.

Um you know, in a in a sort of uh ridiculous way. I mean, I've done things sort of as crazy as give out $40,000 during the most recent flash crash to like individuals who were suffering. Um I think one of the things that I really want to make sure happens is that Adam feels connected to the road map that we have, right? Because when it's disconnected or atom is is something that's just like a side project or that's how it's viewed, it's very hard for all those people including myself as someone who's a huge Atom holder that you know I purchased at much higher than today's prices to feel connected to our enterprise side. And I don't think that has to be the case, right? And so a lot

of what Nico chatted about on stage was um you know three things that we're doing. The first one is a massively expanded delegation program. you know, it's a 2xing in size to $40 million where we're going to be giving out a lot more delegations to individual validators that do things like media, do things like outreach, do things like uh, you know, building dashboards, building communities, all those different things. The second thing that we're doing is we're commissioning a huge tokconomics revamp. So, basically what that looks like is participating in a research process where we have a bunch of experts talking to professors at Colombia, etc.

start to think about how does atom tokconomics best fit our updated roadmap because the truth is all of this doesn't matter if Adam goes down just consistently right and so we feel like there's a lot of pressure right now to make Adam look like something that's investable and I think right now it's we struggle to sell it as an investable asset to institutions but that can change right that can change and that's what we're hoping to change >> right and and Adam I Adam has a lot of foundations that uh I I think work in its favor. The fact that it's broadly distributed that there's like a broad distribution set of holders that it's integrated on the centralized exchanges.

It has like wallets, it has >> you know like a good RPC infrastructure and all those things. So like >> that we need we need to kind of capitalize I think on on that as we um make it more investable. Um, >> I think also, sorry to interrupt, but like that's actually the biggest strength of ATM is that it's been around for 5 years on the market like and it's listed everywhere >> and you know, every year there's a new ATM killer like we're going to be the new we're the new cosmos now. I mean most of these tokens are either not live yet or they're just you know they just launched and they all go through their little honeymoon phase and then they come down to earth and then you'll see you know after 3 6 9 months is the leadership still aligned after they did

their TGE many of them usually like cash out and just say bye-bye that's it so that's the biggest strength in cosmos or atom specifically that it already went through that multiple times >> multiple leadership changes >> survivors multiple >> insane events that went down in in in Cosmos history and it's still there and it's still in the top 100. I wish it was in the top 20 of course but it's still there even though it had crazy inflation even though you know terra went down all these things and liquidity drained entirely in in cosmos two two and a half two years ago so in spite all of that it's still there and I think that alone is a big achievement I think surviving in crypto is the single most underrated achievement as an organization as an

investor as a token right so >> and it's not just the token like when we go to companies >> and we tell them we started in 2019 they're like wait a second you've been around for 6 years you know most of our competitors have not you know they were they were in in in diapers sort of as a project when when we started and I think that has made it a lot easier for us to execute this new road map too right because we have the battle sparks we have the trust we've had major chains launch on our platform and that gives us the the opportunity to sort of expand on that >> can you talk about the technical and um what's what what should people be excited about in terms of Cosmos SDK evolving from here?

>> Yeah. So, I think when you talk about the technical road map, there's the parts that are perhaps exciting to devs and the parts that are exciting to like more retail audience. For developers, I think they can look forward to a lot when it comes to us trying to productionalize the Cosmos SDK and comet BFT and IBC for institutions. So, on the one hand, we are building out a lot more tooling to make it easier to launch Cosmos chains. We're making it easier to manage validator sets. We're making it easier to connect your chain to other blockchains over IVC Eureka. Uh and then we're also making it way faster. And what I mean by that is it's easier to set up a chain, but then also the chain itself is going to be a lot more performant. So we've done a lot of research recently into expanding the TPS

of Cosmos chains at a base level. And the way that we've done that is, you know, definitely watch Barry's talk if you want more detail on this, but we've been implementing some new innovations that have come out of consensus research like block STM and um what's block STDM? >> Block STM is essentially a parallelization framework where uh it makes it a lot easier for Cosmos chains to parallelize um uh actions that were normally uh serial. So in particular, block production versus voting on a block. these things can now happen at the same time versus having to be step one then step two then step three. So they can do a lot more at once basically. And what we're hoping to get to are TPS numbers that take advantage of the fact that you can just get a lot more out of a specific app chain than

you can a massive shared L1. Right? So we're hoping to overtake the TPS of Solana within like a 12-month time frame. Um so that means getting above, you know, basically 50,000 TPS uh at least at least in terms of our measurements. Uh and then also being able to implement a lot of the new modules and features that a lot of these institutions are asking for that make it easier for them to adopt Cosmos into their existing stack. >> I was talking to Barry this morning about privacy and that's been one of the >> privacy is big main things that you know institutional clients want. Um what's your vision for bringing privacy into with Cosmos Stack?

>> Uh I'd say there's a couple things we're exploring. So the the so right now one of the biggest blockchain success stories is can which maybe you're familiar with maybe you're not >> but it's a private institutionally focused blockchain that a bunch of institutions are investing in and deploying on right and the only thing that I think makes it special is that it has some degree of privacy or confidentiality from our perspective there are you know obviously there's always multiple approaches to go about privacy that the most traditional approach is actually very simple which is just have a private chain, right?

Don't expose your chain to anyone who you don't want to see, right? So, you just have sort of inside the company, no one else can see it. You know, it runs in the background. That's the most common way. And that actually works a lot for specific use cases. The second question is, well, what if you want some kind of public presence, but also to keep some of that privacy? So, what we call this is more like differential privacy or basically maybe you have a private chain for some transactions and a public chain for others and maybe they connect over IBC. I think that the place where it gets really tricky is if you want full privacy like like full ZK or threshold encrypted environments or or sorry trusted encryption environments or threshold encryption all of those are much bigger technical lifts that

honestly even the most privacy forward chains haven't fully figured out. >> Is there anything you can take away from uh some of the open source things like Penumbra for instance or uh any of the kind of like attempts in Cosmos to to build private chains? Um is are there any kind of interesting technical takeaways that we can utilize from these >> yes stacks? I mean Pumbra is incredible technology truly groundbreaking in terms of how they how they brought out such a degree of anonymization around sort of their wallet creation process and other things. I think all of that tech is very interesting. It's just very heavy, right? It's very heavy tech, meaning it's expensive, it's slow, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of specific

kind of knowledge to operate and so institutions are generally a little bit afraid of signing up for that kind of commitment from our experience. I also want to add like I think if you look at any vertical within crypto tokenization, privacy, DeFi, whatever, you always end up seeing one of the top contenders being actually built on on Cosmos technology. So I think a lot of the innovation has already happened within Cosmos customized for those fields right which is also why we established this track system while underneath we are a Cosmos conference but we are also tailoring it to those verticals right to appeal also to those other uh institutions and and participants in those areas and if you

take asset tokenization alone or or tokenization I think there's a lot of innovation that happened I think if the cosmos hub or cosmos labs and the general stack road map. I have to really listen to to Barry's talks. I was just like running along back and forth about >> conference organizer lesson on >> wild but um I'll take the the week a week to to go through all the talks but I think if if there's a very cohesive going back to the point earlier cohesive attempt to um unify a lot of these innovations that happened which I'm sure in a lot of these projects secret like if you take privacy alone secret network penumbra and amada right or cosmos build there's so much innovation for many many years that cosmos people, Cosmos developers have pioneered

and I think now is the time to to unify that and to turn it into a product offering and and sell it to institutions and I think that's the plan, right? >> Yeah. I mean that's what we did with uh EVM, right? We purchased the underlying technology from uh we took that you know it wasn't fully formed and we spent 6 months completely rebuilding it but building on top of the core ideas >> and now we have it as a full feature as part of the stack and it's the most widely requested feature of the stack that we've seen over the past you know three to four years. >> So I think there's definitely opportunity for us to do that again.

>> Great. Yeah. And one thing I was thinking about um while talking about privacy is uh recently there's been increased awareness of the the oncoming threat of quantum. Um, we recently did a podcast with uh John Lillick uh of Ethereum fame and a quantum physicist who is building a quantum resistant blockchain. And um I I think the episode probably came out before this one, but um you know, John's thesis is that like we're very close to most blockchains just being completely vulnerable to quantum uh quantum computers and um not many blockchains at

least you know of the major say like top 20 are taking this very seriously in his opinion. I tend to agree as I've done more research on this. Is this something you guys have thought about? And like are enterprise clients worried about this at all? >> I don't think I've ever heard an enterprise client ask me about quantum computing right? >> Um I mean the truth is when people say that blockchains are at risk of sort of a quantum um innovation that could make them unsafe, what they're saying is that you know basically uh RSA is going to be hacked, right? you can essentially like reverse engineer the prime number creation that happens during this you know RSA uh uh encryption process and the truth is if that happens the whole

world is right everything is encrypted uh via you know those different methods and only recently have people started to move things to like elliptical curve um encryption that you know is much more quantum resistant and so I think the question it's like what is society going to look like after quantum computing look uh comes out >> yeah I I do think though that most of the things that uh rely on encryption from that are more let's say institution are centralized to update encryption schemes in say you know banking bank database encryptions is a lot easier than doing a hard like doing a hard fork on bitcoin and having everyone have to sign a transaction that moves their

tokens into a new address that's quantum resistant and so I think I think blockchains is it's like a particular problem that's not the same as you know military technology or banking technology or financial markets technology. There's a particular challenge with blockchain is that coordination is hard and then you need to have in most cases at least as I understand it you need to have uh individual users perform an action to be uh shielded from any attack. I mean I I think like you know even I use like bit warden for my password protection right they can't take my hopefully they can't actually see what's in there right because it is encrypted by my my password I will have to take action I think when it comes to cosmos you know

this is one of the greatest things about cosmos is that individual chains can collapse and the overall is not affected this is not true for ethereum right if the if the chain collapses everything under Ethereum just completely implodes and so I think the risk factor that we have around this is a lot lower because we can individually update these chains, right? And because there is a history uh and a practice of validators updating these chains frequently, right? That's not true on Bitcoin, right? That thing never updates pretty much. And like Ethereum only really updates every so often and there's a big there's like a huge marketing campaign around it every time it does. Yeah. And so for us, I think it's going to be a lot easier for us to build whatever kind of security

solution is necessary to keep these blockchains safe, >> right? Yeah. I think another thing too here is like that having quantum resistant um blockchains will greatly affect their performance and that's something that I think a lot of chains will have to deal with and find solutions to. But also maybe the quantum computers are running the chains in the first. >> I don't know. Can a quantum computer run a blockchain? I don't know. >> Okay. >> Um, cool. Well, uh, I want to take an opportunity just to kind of plug our our event in Argentina. So, we're we've partnered to organize a new event series called Sovereign Sovereign Day. We did Sovereign EVM Day in uh in Khan a couple weeks ago or a couple months ago and now

we're doing um sovereign day in Argentina. Um so yeah the vision here is that like everything we talked about right here like we want to bring um this vision of sovereignty this this kind of op appchain vision to the next frontier and sovereign day is kind of the place where we do that. So uh really excited to be doing this and yeah maybe uh talk a little bit about like what you expect what people can expect there. Yeah, sure. I mean, also extremely excited. I think first of all, you know, the reason we wanted to do uh sovereign day and sort of the sovereign series is because sovereignty as a concept is something that really nicely connects what cosmos is and always has been with what the world wants, right? And what

institutions want and what governments want, which is sovereignty, right? They want their independence. They want the freedom to grow. They don't want to be interfered with by others, right? And I think this is going to be especially a good one because uh well it is also only the second one and the last one was great. So so hopefully another good one where basically we can invite a number of the uh CBDC and central banks and you know uh governmental leaders of the area of Latin America to come there and talk about sovereignty, right? Talk about their country sovereignty and talk about how that is so close to what we can offer at Cosmos in terms of technological sovereignty and where those things collide. super excited about that and yeah hopefully uh yeah the second one will be as good or better

than the first one. Guys, thanks so much for taking the time. Congratulations on yet another incredible Cosmoverse and thanks Mag for taking part. >> Thank you sir. >> Thank you.