ATOM Value Capture Dilemma
Recently throughout crypto twitter I have seen several community members throw out this absurd idea that all connected L1’s should agree to pay fees in ATOM when sending from one L1 to another. It completely goes against the ethos of the ‘Cosmos’ brand where sovereignty and freedom is philosophical pillars. Why rent from a landlord when you can own your own property? When a neighborhood is being developed does the blueprint engineer receive lifetime royalties for simply designing the neighborhood? No.
TL;DR on relayers
A relayer is essentially like a decentralized postal service where packets of data(resources) are sent from one blockchain to another permissionlessly and funds are 100% safe(typically occurs around 5 seconds). Well who runs the relayers? People do AND it isn’t necessarily cheap. The minimum requirement is a rig that has at least 8 core(4 physical core),32GM RAM and 1 TB+ nVME drives.
(The visualization of an IBC packet traveling between blockchains will give you a better idea of how it works.)
At times, I feel like the Hub, community and everyone else is throwing poo-poo on the wall and hoping it sticks. I have seen and heard countless people suggesting there should be IBC transfers fees paid in ATOM that go to the ATOM delegators(me) but that simply can’t and won’t happen! To be honest, it doesn’t even make logical sense. Why would all the blockchains bow down to the HUB because they created a masterpiece blueprint? The Cosmos SDK is open source anyone can spin up a chain, not to mention, other chains can vote on governance to accept transfers from any chain of their choice. I like to think of this as sovereign nation states. Any nation state/ country is free to have a treaty(NATO) with one another without a dictator determining their outcome.
Furthermore, I want to preface these comments with: I truly believe if crypto achieves what all of us believe it can reach, IBC will certainty be a major layer of the ‘new internet’. Having said that, the Cosmos Hub is an L1 just like any other L1 within IBC. Therefore, the HUB Business Development needs to roll up the sleeves and find ways for teams to deploy on it. Likewise, how about finding more teams to utilize Interchain Security(ICS).
Nonetheless, all is not doom and gloom for the Hub like some believe. One potential way ATOM can gain value is perhaps selling 5 second ad space on the confirmation level of IBC transfers. Then, take those small ad revenues and buy and burn tokens. I could see this potentially working from a traditional business prospective while leveraging smart contracts. To me, this seems more realistic than forcing 70+ blockchains to completely bow down and kiss the toes of ATOM which will not happen. Take about drama!
In closing, the journey of Cosmos AKA the IBC Network will continue to grow and develop however will the ATOM token follow suit? I am optimistic but I guess only time will tell…
