Tendermint to Release ATOM and IRIS to Shareholders

In the interests of full transparency to the Cosmos community, Tendermint will be unbonding a significant number of vested ATOM and IRIS tokens and allocating them among our common shareholders. The unbonding will take place in the coming days, involving 5 million ATOM tokens and 30 million IRIS tokens.

This reallocation of resources will help decentralize the Cosmos Hub further, reward the talented contributors that built Tendermint Inc., and grow the Cosmos ecosystem by empowering shareholders to build more Cosmos chains.

The token release also fulfills a promise that Tendermint made upon the successful launch of the Cosmos Hub in March 2019 when Tendermint was granted two years of vested ATOM tokens. The leadership has always planned to release a portion of these ATOM tokens among shareholders.

Part of our founding philosophy is to reward and empower long-term contributors to the Cosmos ecosystem. After all, this is the visionary team that has been critical in building the essential software and services that secure over $110 billion of digital assets today.

Expanding the Cosmos Ecosystem

A lot has changed since the Cosmos Hub launched in March 2019. The Cosmos ecosystem has continued to expand and flourish, with more than 250 blockchain apps and services in our network today. Many important ecosystem projects and team members in Cosmos started as Tendermint and have gone on to cultivate their own innovative and exciting endeavors.

These blockchain projects are built by some of the brightest talents in Cosmos, and we expect them to contribute incredible amounts of value to the ecosystem as they grow, gain traction, and amass user bases. We also expect many of these projects to benefit from additional capital that will accelerate their growth and benefit the entire Cosmos community.

Reducing Centralization Risk

The Cosmos Hub only becomes more resilient to centralization risk as more ATOM is released to a larger number of individuals. We can’t think of a better group of people to share in the ownership of the Cosmos Hub than the people who built Tendermint Inc. They have contributed so much skill and knowledge to the expansion of Cosmos, helping us build the Internet of Blockchains.

Finally, at Tendermint, we value long-term relationships with the Cosmos community. We appreciate the efforts of many ex-Tendermint teams who decided to give out stakedrops to ATOM holders. We look forward to seeing more of this, and this token release is another step towards creating long-term alignment with the Cosmos Hub.