Cosmos | Monthly report — January 2023

January was particularly jam-packed, filled with developments from many Cosmos ecosystem chains. Of course, we all know Interchain Security is coming for the Cosmos Hub pretty soon — but apart from the significant developments in the Cosmos network, what other developments should we be aware of?

Furthermore, how has the market cap of Cosmos fared during this mini-bull market compared to the rest of the blockchains?

We look at all of that and more in this monthly report.

P.S. If you have not joined Flagship’s Discord yet, you’re missing out on the latest and greatest insights you need to get an edge in Cosmos. Join our Discord and connect with us here, we would love to have you!

Keeping up with the Cosmos ecosystem

Articles that you might have missed out on

First, let’s look at some high-quality and best-read articles written on Flagship that you might have missed out on, each of which covers a different vertical in the Cosmos ecosystem.

The Interchain Modules are going to drastically change the Cosmos ecosystem

With the Interchain Security module soon coming to the Cosmos Hub, we did a thorough analysis to cover the other Interchain modules, such as Interchain Accounts and Interchain Queries, and how they will affect projects built on the Cosmos ecosystem.

Read more: How Interchain Modules will change the Internet of Blockchains

Mars Protocol Hub Launches

The long-awaited launch of Mars Protocol Hub launched today. In this article, we covered what Mars Protocol is, their history, the inner workings of the Red Hub, and most importantly, what we think of it… and, of course, airdrops, and the timeline of the Mars Protocol.

Read more: Mars Protocol Hub launches; here’s what you need to know

Cardano's partnerships extend to the Cosmos ecosystem

One of the most confusing things that happened this month was when Charles Hoskinson tweeted, saying that “Sidechains are coming along, including Cosmos” — which, of course, got us digging for more information. Eventually, we found out that one specific Cardano project has been working with IOG to create a Cardano sidechain, that is built with the Cosmos SDK. Interesting!

Read more: Cardano project creates a sidechain using Cosmos SDK

Biggest news of the week

Next, let’s look at the BIGGEST news of the week, which replaces this week’s weekly check-ins.

• Cosmoverse is coming to Istanbul. The largest Cosmos conference has announced plans that this year’s Cosmoverse will be held in Istanbul, Turkey. Details are scarce, so we will write a brief article/Twitter thread once we know the other accompanying details.
• Is Injective the DeFi project to watch out for in 2023? For those not familiar with Injective, they are an application chain on the Cosmos ecosystem that is specifically designed for DeFi. This week, they got a $150 million ecosystem initiative, which is backed by a consortium of leading firms in web3 like Kraken Ventures, Jump Crypto, Delphi Digital, and more.
• Akash’s AKT 2.0 will come soon. Akash Network has been busy working on their new economics, and the 2.0 proposal is now out for discussion. What would that mean specifically? Well, if you’re reading this before our article, we will cover it in a few hours.
• Sushiswap is launching perpetual futures on Sei Network. At Quantum Miami, “Head Chef” of Sushiswap, Jared Grey revealed they had signed a contract with Sei to make perpetual futures, in collaboration, and on Sei Network.
• Squid Router announces their… router. Similar to THORChain, Squid Router announced their cross-chain swap and liquidity routing protocol that is on Axelar, which allows for the transfer of any native token between chains by using existing DEXes for swapping and sending.

Performance of the Cosmos ecosystem

In this section, we go through some key analytics to see what’s been happening in the broader Cosmos ecosystem for the month of January.

Vanity Metrics

First, we look at the current vanity metrics of Cosmos (It’s called vanity metrics solely because it does not really represent the amount of building that is going on in Cosmos)

TVL of Cosmos Ecosystems

The total TVL of Cosmos Ecosystems as of 31st January is 1.2B, and it represents 2% of the total TVL across all blockchains — which, although is pretty decent, we feel should be higher.

Here, we see Cronos taking the lead, comprising 33.03% of the total TVL in Cosmos, followed by Kava and Osmosis.

IBC Metrics

Next, let’s look at Cosmos' IBC metrics to see if there are any ongoing trends within the Cosmos ecosystem.

Top 10 chains (By Transaction Count)

Based on the transaction count, Kujira is now above Osmosis in the top 10 chains by transaction count, alongside newer chains such as Agoric ($BLD). We can only assume this is because of the stablecoin developments on both chains. However, one thing to note here is that these high transaction counts do not equate to economic contributions, which we can see more clearly in the following chart.

Top 10 chains (By IBC Volume)

When we look at the IBC volume of all the chains, we see that Osmosis is at the top, and one new zone that is topping the charts is Stride, most likely for liquid staking of ATOMs and such, which is exciting to see as Stride is now one of the top 10 chains based on IBC volume alone.

Wrapping it all up

That will be it for the updates for Cosmos this month! We’re particularly excited for Interchain Security to come out soon, and next month’s updates will be much more jam-packed.

So, stay tuned for next week’s check-in, and as usual, kindly let us know what you think about this month’s report! Until then, see you in our next Cosmos update.

About Flagship

Curious about what we do? Be a part of the Flagship community that's revolutionizing the economy with the wisdom of our captains!