The last two years in Cosmos were, to a large extent, defined by rapid CosmWasm adoption.
More than 60 chains are known to have integrated wasmd module, and benefit from using CosmWasm contracts in their own way.
Leaders of the ecosystem, such as Injective, Neutron, Osmosis, and Terra, pursue strategies that are heavily reliant on CosmWasm contracts.
However, being a core part of the ecosystem, CosmWasm also shared its flaws.
CosmWasm h̶a̶s̶ had a distribution problem
As was widely discussed last fall, Cosmos has a distribution problem (although we all hope we can deal with it in 2024). Inherently, CosmWasm had a distribution problem as well.
At Confio, we gradually realized that the ecosystem had overgrown the way CosmWasm was historically supported purely as public goods.
As much as we wanted to, within this approach, we could not really create a professional support structure, fit urgent features in the roadmap, or focus on DevX improvements — until today!
Enter CosmWasm Subscription
In January 2024, Confio launches its new offering for Cosmos blockchains: CosmWasm Subscription.
The subscribers will establish a club of passionate builders that is going to shape the future of CosmWasm so that everybody wins:
- Subscribers’ teams will benefit from dedicated support, the ability to influence roadmap decisions, and DevX improvements.
- All the CosmWasm developers on the subscriber chains will also get access to the newest CosmWasm tooling built by Confio, saving a ton of time on testing and debugging.
- This will establish an efficient feedback loop to help CosmWasm maintainers focus on the things the ecosystem needs the most.
- As a result, all the CosmWasm chains, paid subscribers or not, will receive a better product at the end of the day.
We are starting with a couple of big names in the ecosystem that you’re going to hear about in the coming weeks, and we are working on making Subscription membership accessible to many more teams in 2024. Together, we are dedicated to making Cosmos and CosmWasm the most appealing stack to build successful applications.
Membership privileges
The current scope of the service includes:
- Dedicated support from CosmWasm experts
- Access to the latest dev tooling created by Confio
- Roadmap influence
- Co-marketing
However, it’s not limited to these. We treat subscribers as honoured club members and will get out of our way to help them achieve what they are striving for.
The Subscription comes in tiers, each includes a certain level of access to these services. We anticipate new things getting introduced to them very soon, as we are working on them with our early partners.
What happens to public goods development?
It’s more active than ever!
The foundation of the CosmWasm roadmap is going to come as public goods sponsored by ICF, as it was discussed in the CosmWasm blog before. This is going to be long-term focused and does not currently include DevX improvements, tooling development, devrel, and education.
Subscription service will bring a more agile part of the roadmap, driven by what CosmWasm blockchains need to streamline their go-to-market and succeed in the next year and quarter.
Subscription roadmap sneak peek
Here are our New Year resolutions for 2024:
- In very early 2024, we will get subscriber dev teams access to CosmWasm Tracing — this is a debugging service that will help developers navigate complex errors quickly
- Later in the year, we are going to invest into simplifying the testing tools landscape that is now very difficult to navigate
- We will make ZK proofs verifiable on-chain
- We may or may not host more community events; it’s a secret for now!
What to do
We believe wholeheartedly that Subscriptions will be a big win for the ecosystem. Subscriber or not, you will benefit from it as CosmWasm becomes more powerful and easier to use. Find yourself in the diagram below and join the ride!
