Cosmos Governance Enters a New Voting Period as Proposal 77 Goes Live

Cosmos (ATOM) recently entered a new voting period where the community members who hold its governance tokens are invited to vote on a new proposal. The proposal in question, known as Proposal 77, is live, and it focuses on incentives for Game of Chains, the Interchain Security testnet, which is expected to go live next month, in November 2022.

1/
⚛️ Cosmos Gov ⚛️
🟢 VOTING PERIOD 🟢#Cosmonauts the voting period for #Prop77 is live! This proposal focuses on incentives for Game of Chains, the Interchain Security testnet, expected in November 2022. pic.twitter.com/jTskHnSuGP

— Cosmos Hub ⚛️ (@cosmoshub) October 5, 2022

According to the project’s Twitter announcement, proposers are asking for 20k ATOM from the Hub community pool, and they stated that they would return any funds that end up being unused once the goal is completed.

What is Proposal 77?

According to the proposal itself, Interchain Security (ICS), is a Cosmos SDK capability that has captured the mindshare of the entire ecosystem, which has been the case for more than a year now. The proposer notes that this has been reflected best in the core entities’ engineering efforts, including Interchain GmbH, Informal Systems, and initial users Quicksilver and Neutron.

The reason for this is that ICS allows for a provider chain, like Cosmos Hub, to share security and have validators create blocks for a consumer chain. Overall, it is complex technology which requires rigorous testing, and in order to ensure a successful rollout, the team is launching an incentivized public testnet. On the testnet, validators will be able to build confidence around the new technology, and this is where Game of Chains will build on the project’s legacy of running successful adversarial testnet programs.

The best examples of this include Game of Stakes and Game of Zones. Now, the proposer believes that the community will come to see ICS as a valuable addition to Cosmos’ ecosystem for three reasons. First, it allows for hub minimalism. Second, Interchain security lowers the barrier for ATOM-aligned app chains to launch on Cosmos. And, finally, ICS accrues value to ATOM, and it enhances its utility.

This is why the team believes that 20k ATOM is not too big a price to pay in order to have it properly set up, especially since any excess funds will be returned.

The status of the vote

As Cosmos Hub itself had put it, the public testnet program will enable testing ICS in mainnet-like conditions while providing the validators to increase confidence around running the protocol. The project invited community members to vote via Kepir Wallet or Cosmostation Wallet, as well as to join the discussion about the proposal on the project’s forum.

At the time of writing, the current turnout is 12.48%, where 25.8 M out of 206.68M have voted. The project needs at least 40% of users to vote in order for the vote to be valid. So far, 99.66% of users who voted have said Yes, while 0.34% have said No. The vote started yesterday, October 5th, and it will end on October 19th.

To learn more about Cosmos, visit our Investing in Cosmos guide.