Phase II Initiated—Cosmos ATOM Transfers Enabled by Governance
For nearly six weeks, the main network of the Cosmos Hub has run smoothly, demonstrating strong stability—having had no network halts—with exceptionally high availability. As such, the community of Cosmonauts (ATOM holders) voted to pass the proposal which would signal their intent to allow the transfer of ATOMs. Today marks the highly anticipated day that much of the blockchain community has been waiting for: Phase II of the Cosmos mainnet has just been initiated.
There are 99 validators active on mainnet to date. Cosmos governance has seen impressively high voting participation rates in the proposals leading up to activating Phase II, with participation exceeding the minimum 40% quorum needed to pass each proposal. Together, the community was able to collaborate on an unprecedented scale in this decentralized network, bringing all of us closer to realizing the dream of an Internet of Blockchains.
Summary of the Governance Process which passed ATOM Transfer Enablement
The Cosmos Hub has a built-in on-chain governance system in which delegators and validators can vote on proposals to signal future changes to the Hub. Once specific changes are approved by governance, Cosmos Hub validators can upgrade their software accordingly in order to enable new features.
For activating the transfer of ATOMs, there was a dual-proposal process which was implemented.
- The first proposal, which was passed with a unilateral YES vote of 92.61%, defined an expedited upgrade process.
- The second was the Expedited Cosmos Hub Upgrade proposal, which mirrored the first proposal, but expedited acceptance to shorten the 14-day voting period.
As of 17:00 UTC April 22, the two proposals that passed allowed ATOM transfers to be enabled.
What are ATOMs?
ATOMs denominate a single unit of the staking token which secures the Cosmos Hub. The smallest unit of ATOM is the uATOM, or the micro ATOM, where 1 atom = 1,000,000 uATOM. The ATOM token is required to participate in staking and governance on the Cosmos Hub. The value of the ATOM is otherwise not guaranteed and all value may be lost.
Now that transfers are enabled, people may be looking to acquire ATOM tokens to participate in the Cosmos Hub. Please exercise extreme caution and only acquire tokens from a source you trust. Do your research to ensure you are acquiring the correct token, especially since several similarly-named tokens exist. Even tokens called ATOM may not be correct. Don’t let this common naming trick happen to you!
It is your responsibility, as participating community members, to be scrutinous about everything. For more information, see past blog posts here.
How to interact with the Cosmos Hub as a user
The recommended way to interact with the Cosmos Hub is to use the gaiacli Command-Line Interface tool, as it is the most mature. You can find the full guide here.
Less mature options include the Lunie.io web-wallet, which recently launched and spun off from Tendermint Inc. as an independent entity, and various mobile wallets in various states of development and review that have been built and launched by the community. Please be mindful of the maturity of the software you choose to use and the related risks.
Disclaimer: Please note that this is highly experimental software. In these early days, we can expect to have issues, updates, and bugs. The existing tools require advanced technical skills and involve risks which are outside of the control of the Interchain Foundation and/or the Tendermint team (see also the risk section in the Interchain Cosmos Contribution Terms). Any use of this open source Apache 2.0 licensed software is done at your own risk and on a “AS IS” basis, without warranties or conditions of any kind, and any and all liability of the Interchain Foundation and/or the Tendermint team for damages arising in connection to the software is excluded. Use of the software may result in loss of some or all funds. Please exercise extreme caution!
Congratulations, Cosmonauts. To the Cosmos! 🚀
