Cosmos, Crypto, & Culture
The Cosmos Hub is on a trajectory in which it will be navigating through a foggy nebula.
The value proposition of crypto is that it will be an instrument that promotes decentralized economies. Economies capable of breaking free from the corrupt legacy financial system, and even surpassing its efficiency while providing the much needed transparency that is lacking. The legacy system has been abused by those who control it, while the citizens pay the price via overbearing taxes, inflation, and war. So, this value proposition of crypto is much needed.
Instead, this value proposition is being pushed aside. Largely unbeknownst to much of the Cosmos community, there is a greater focus on re-creating the current overbearing system on the blockchain. This has been discussed extensively in our previous articles.
Why is this? Well, Lets not pretend.
Lets not pretend that today, Cosmos (and most of crypto) doesn't attract a very niche crowd. That niche crowd tends to be the techies of the world. These techies tend to be in techie hub areas like Silicon Valley. With that, comes a certain culture. One that is often despised by the citizens outside of the Silicon Valley echo chamber.
This niche tends to make up a very large portion of the well known entities who are pushing for blockchain development and adoption. This niche tends to hold a certain cultural attitude and set of political beliefs. This cultural attitude tends to place a high value on authority, or as we’ve heard in the past several years, the “experts”.
Sure, these crypto natives do place some value on decentralization. But politics, and in this case, crypto systems, are a downstream of culture. The culture that is being projected into our beloved crypto ecosystems, and especially Cosmos, is one of authority and trusting the “experts” to make decisions for the community. Just as is the case with the legacy financial and political systems of the world, there is always something to be gained by these groups at the expense of the citizens.
The majority of the freedom and liberty oriented crypto individuals seem to be hyper-focused on Bitcoin. However, there are a growing number of us crypto natives who understand that the world will not magically become a better place, simply by HODLing your Bitcoin.
So where does that leave the freedom and liberty oriented Cosmonauts; The ones who are here to take part in an ecosystem that evolves into a truly distributed system?
For now, it leaves us as a voice of reason that is drowned out by the overbearing culture aforementioned. We are forced to go along with some of the seemingly dystopian developments in the Cosmos network. We do so because we have a fundamental belief in the potential of the network and its emphasis on sovereignty.
Unfortunately, it appears the Cosmos Hub is being bled dry by the cartel of Cosmos validators and influencers. They are assisting community leeches, who serve as little more than pirates looting the community pool. There has been much talk of reforming the governance mechanisms on the Cosmos Hub, but without a cultural overhaul, any reform will be of little impact.
In an impressive display of grifting, Ethan Buchman attempted to gaslight the community at Cosmoverse last year, by saying the Cosmos Hub had sacrificed itself and gotten nothing in return. His solution was ATOM 2.0, which would’ve effectively forced the Cosmos Hub to “sacrifice” itself even harder, with 100% of its inflation going into a community pool to be used as a web 3 version of a slush fund.
When the ATOM 2.0 proposal was rejected by the community, the next move was to increase the staking tax by FIVE TIMES from 2% to 10% via prop 88. Even the parties opposed to ATOM 2.0 agreed this was the right move. In reality, exponentially expanding the community pool funds has led to a phenomenon in which the community is no longer being selective about what they choose to fund. A basis for funding Prop 95 (ATOM Accelerator DAO), for many, was “it’s only X amount of the community pool”. That is, “Only” X amount after a 400% increase of the ATOM staking tax.
Other props have also passed, such as funding a media arm of Cosmos with Prop 89, as well as charity work with Prop 101. Neither of these two funding proposals will bring any value back to the ATOM token.
This is part of the cultural impact I am referring to. Most of the big-hitters in Cosmos (and crypto in general) come from progressive parts of the world that are content living in jurisdictions that tax them heavily to fund ridiculous things. This effectively creates a massive welfare state. These areas just so happen to hold the big tech hubs of the world.
We are certainly not advocating for these folks to go away. Crypto should be a place for everyone. However, we should be aware of the fact that crypto, and largely Cosmos, is mostly represented by a very niche group of citizens, and therefore does not project raw reality on-chain.
While not inevitable, Cosmonauts should understand the risks of the Cosmos Hub slowly having its life-force completely drained by all of the parties seeking to gain control of its economic engine.
It is quite unfortunate that the Cosmos Hub did not have a constitution in place prior to launch. It would be nice to see things such as:
1. A cap on community pool staking tax. Will there be another push for an increase in taxes if the community pool funds get drained at an increasing rate?
2. Disincentive validators from not voting or voting “abstain”. Imagine electing government officials to represent you, and then they refrain from voting so that they don’t upset someone. While delegating your ATOMs to a validator is not exactly the same as electing a politician, parallels could certainly be drawn there. If validators don’t vote or vote “abstain”, Mechanisms should be in place to reduce a validators percentage of voting power held by their delegated ATOMs, and/or burning a certain percentage of their commission rate for a period of time. This could be done in a way where this slap-on-the-wrist would last for a certain number of days, and the reduction in voting power and/or take-home commission cut, could be stacked. Currently, Cosmos Hub validators are more incentivized to vote in a way that gets them brownie points with the ICF for delegations, as opposed to having the community in mind.
It’s a slap in the face understanding that Prop 89 and Prop 101, passed with “yes” votes of 26.73% and 23.87% respectively. On top of that, both of these props had a less than 60% voter turnout. However, the “voter turnout” could be considered less than 60%. Cosmos governance works in a way that voting machines vote for you, if you don’t vote yourself.
Since the passing of Prop 87, which was put up by the Oni validator, proposals have not come from the community. They instead have come from validators or entities. And often, we’ve seen a failure from these proposal authors to address all the concerns of the community in a timely manner.
But even with a few tweaks to governance mechanics, this may not be enough to outweigh the power of the present culture. This is not to say everyone in Cosmos has their head in the clouds, but those in the space with the biggest reach tend to be the least able to see the big picture.
As we mentioned earlier, Cosmos in its current existence appears to be a new arrangement of an already-existing financial system. One that already exists amongst central banks, nation-state politicians, multi-national corporations, and corporate media.
The central bank creates the thing that everyone wants i.e. the money (Cosmos Hub).
The politicians pitch their intent to do what’s best for the community, while accepting bribes and favors behind closed doors (the validators and/or dev teams).
The multinational corporations buy out the politicians to promote governance that has the corporation’s interests valued over the citizen’s interest (ICF, AiB).
And the corporate sponsored media reports on events, but tells you how to feel about it, in order to gaslight citizens into advocating for corporate interests (Cryptocito & a few other influencers).
It’s important to note that the Cosmos Hub was not intended to be a central bank. It’s not even really meant to be money. Its monetary policy is a code that everyone can opt into. Central banks on the other hand, change monetary policy whenever it is convenient for them.
It is secondly important to note that not all validators and dev teams are willing to move against the community’s interests if it’ll fill their pockets. But as one anon developer explains:
Also, it is important to note that not all entities are focused on bribing validators.
Finally, it is important to note that not all Cosmos influencers are grifting.
However, it’s important to understand that these occurrences are happening in our ecosystem.
So what should we do?
It is first important to note that the idea of a “hub” has a centralized component to it:
We cannot be under the impression that by making the Cosmos Hub the true center of ecosystem development, we will end up with the most decentralized version of the Cosmos Network. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, is up the community to decide.
It may be that a truly “decentralized” ecosystem is one that is distributed. Perhaps, what is really needed, are strong stand-alone layer 1 app-chain products that focus solely on optimizing their product or service.
Recently, an analyses of how currently-profitable Cosmos Hub ICS might be, was performed. The results are below:
Instead of the Cosmos Hub trying to overextend itself with funding unproven projects, perhaps it would be better to sit back and let the constellation around the Cosmos Hub organically grow. Once several projects have amazing stand-alone applications that have transactions FAR EXCEEDING that of Osmosis, Juno, Evmos, and/or Secret, maybe THEN is when we should focus on how and where the Cosmos Hub will assist the ecosystem in scaling its security. If the Cosmos Hub chases down endless leads, and over-builds, while forcing the validators to do more tasks, for mere pennies, the Cosmos Hub will have to spend time and resources unplugging itself from other chains. Plus, getting micro-dust amounts of shitcoins is a sure way to bum out the community and kill energy in the network. If the community pool is to fund development of any kind, it should first and foremost be a stand-alone consumer app-chain. Work on ONE chain at a time, while simultaneously keeping an eye out for stand alone app-chains that are aiming to bring hundreds of millions, or even billions of people into Cosmos. How much revenue could a chain that becomes the web3 go-to Uber app bring in revenue if it was being secured entirely, or even just partly by the Cosmos Hub? We should be more tactiful in this bear market. Throwing things against the wall and just waiting for something to stick is an irresponsible use of staker’s taxes. Lets hope we can be more precise with treasury pool funds, while eliminating the ethos of “Make Finance Centralized Again”.
We often feel that this mentality of “we have to do stuff NOW!” for the Cosmos Hub can only be traced back to coomer logic. Again, I am referring back to the culture projected on-chain.
So while sound technical and fiscal decisions need to be made, we also need to promote this brand of culture. There needs to be more culture jamming in Cosmos.
While we certainly give Ethan Buchman an A+ for effort, we do believe the community is capable of creating cultural expressions that are more impactful for Cosmos’ culture, beyond Ethan’s rap song.
Earlier we asked “So where does that leave the freedom and liberty oriented Cosmonauts; The ones who are here to take part in an ecosystem that evolves into a truly distributed system?
The 2nd part of our answer to this is: connecting and organizing. The minds that are seeing through the illusionary sales pitch of “decentralization” in Cosmos, need to connect. Whether that is to come up with ways to get the Cosmos Hub back on track, or to build game-breaking stand-alone Cosmos chains, we should be collaborating. Cosmos is, after all, about collaborative finance. Collaborative finance requires actual collaboration.
Even if the Cosmos Hub implodes, the Cosmos Network will still exist. So what do we have to lose?
To connect, email us at BeyondTheCosmos@skiff.com
