Strategic partnership between Confio and Neutron brings CosmWasm to the next level.

For four years now, Confio created and maintained the CosmWasm smart contracting engine. A lot has been achieved in the meantime from safe and secure contracting framework over rich cryptography APIs and tight chain integration to a community of dozens of chains powered by CosmWasm. The technology became an integral part of Cosmos, and this has recently been acknowledged by the ICF, including CosmWasm into the Interchain Stack. Confio also built custom software around CosmWasm, such as the Proof of Engagement consensus system for the Tgrade blockchain, a lending protocol on top of Osmosis (which was not launched), the first version of the decentralized exchange WYND, and most recently, the shared security solution Mesh Security for Osmosis. However, with the commitments of the Cosmos Hub proposal 103, the ICF, and contributions of various supportive chains in 2023, we could focus on the core components of CosmWasm. The feature releases 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 2.0, Cosmos SDK 0.47 and 0.50 support, various security patches, and improved tooling were made possible that way.

During all the market highs and lows since 2020, Confio was founded and managed by its 3 co-founders. We went through a lot of pain trying to open bank accounts, employ our team members in an international remote-only setup, looking for funding opportunities, and never stop shipping. Today, Simon Warta (Co-Founder and CosmWasm maintainer) is running the company.

Building infrastructure for such a long period of time is great, especially when the technology is appreciated and used by a broad community. But it also brings challenges when it comes to figuring out what is important, what is nice to have, and what is not needed. CosmWasm does what we envisioned it to do in 2020, but what’s next? How do we bring it to more chains and make existing integrations more powerful? At some point during this year, we started looking for some more direction and for both Confio and CosmWasm to try to find answers to those questions.

This brought us in contact with the team behind Neutron, a blockchain heavily relying on CosmWasm. In the conversations, we found a shared vision for CosmWasm: building Interchain smart contracts. We knew CosmWasm is the best tool for building IBC apps and it can only succeed if it is available on as many chains as possible. This creates the network effects in terms of connectivity but also education and tooling. It became clear that CosmWasm needs to remain free software. Together with Neutron, we are discussing the core roadmap and are exploring complementary offerings around services and tooling.

To strengthen the collaboration between Confio and Neutron, we worked out an acquisition of 25% of Confio’s shares. This enriches the conversation amongst shareholders by providing the perspective of a CosmWasm user and gives Neutron a significant voice in Confio’s direction. The management and team in Confio remain unaffected.

With this partnership, Confio preserves its independence and continues to serve all the chains that currently rely on it and hundreds more to come. We continue to work with our close partners, such as the ICF, Osmosis, Terra, Stargaze, Nym, DoraHacks, and we always welcome more. Together, we build a better CosmWasm for everyone.