Monthly Roundup (Jan 20)

Feb 03, 2020

Welcome to the first update in 2020, a year in which we expect a major shift towards Proof-of-Stake networks.

We kicked off the Liquid Staking Working Group and research project. This an Interchain Foundation funded effort to investigate alternative staking models that would bring liquidity to staked assets. Learn more about our goals and the approach we are taking here.

We will host calls every two weeks for the coming 3 months and discuss topics associated to liquid staking. The first call served as an introduction and the second one focused on the report’s structure and we had Sunny Aggarwal (Tendermint/Sikka) present a potential implementation for the Cosmos SDK.
Multiple promising Proof-of-Stake networks launched their incentivized testnet competition and we are participating:
1. Celo: The “Great Stake Off” is in progress. Soon validators will be able to participate in a remote audit of their infrastructure to receive bonus points. The network has been remarkably stable aside from some minor issues such as the validator election contract running out of gas at one point.
2. Oasis: “The Quest” kicked off and a first upgrade was successful. Stake.fish’s leaderboard can be found here.
3. Solana: Tour de Sol has been announced and will start Feb 4. In the meantime, various test runs took place showcasing promising capabilities and uncovering some issues. Staking Facilities built a great dashboard to follow along.

Network Data

The first proposal for funding from the community pool passed. 5,250 ATOM (at the time of writing $22,838) were distributed to Figment Networks to form and manage the Cosmos Governance Working Group and to create documentation to make it easier for Cosmos community members to apply for funding or to initate other governance proposals, e.g. changes to Cosmos Hub parameters.

Find the details for this proposal here. We also recorded a podcast to discuss governance with Gavin Birch, who will coordinate the working group to discuss what kind of initatives he is planning and why he thinks they are important. Check out the episode here.
IBC is moving to the center of attention in the wider cryptospace. CoinDesk published a piece about interoperability and the Persistence team released a post explaining the value proposition of IBC for enterprise use cases.
Some restructuring at the Tendermint team is happening with Jae Kwon transitioning from the CEO role to focus on the Virgo project.

The Kava team announced their grant program. $1.16m will be dedicated to fund tools, research and community incentives that help the Kava platform to grow.

We had CTO Do Kwon on our podcast to discuss Terra growth and plans for the future. Check out the episode here.