Osmosis Proposal Aims to Align Cosmos Around ATOM as Core Coordination Asset

• Osmosis has proposed merging its chain into the Cosmos Hub to make its DEX native infrastructure for the Hub.
• The merger would swap OSMO tokens for ATOM at a rate of 0.0355:1.998, based on price patterns in the past 30 days.

Osmosis, the largest decentralized application in the Cosmos ecosystem, has introduced a proposal to merge its DEX into the Cosmos Hub and make ATOM the main crypto asset capturing the value of all its trading activity.

The new proposal would need to be approved by the governance teams of both chains. Osmosis says, if approved, it would unify liquidity, governance and security, all under a single chain.

Sunny Aggarwal, the Osmosis founder who published the proposal, said it’s critical that the entire Cosmos ecosystem works in unity to strengthen ATOM’s direct economic foundations, especially now when the ecosystem has been contracting. As CNF reported in January, one of the key architects of the Cosmos interoperability protocol (IBC) declared that the ecosystem “is pretty much dead,” pointing to the many projects that have folded.

This makes the new proposal vital to the network’s survival and “reflects a natural evolution for Cosmos: sovereign experimentation followed by consolidation once infrastructure has matured,” Osmosis says.

Osmosis launched in 2021 and has since grown to become the largest liquidity venue for Cosmos tokens. In Cosmos, protocols build independent blockchains separate from the main Cosmos Hub, but interconnected to the rest of the ecosystem through the Inter‑Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. Osmosis has its own validators, governance system and token, called OSMO. 

If the new proposal is accepted, it would cease to be an independent blockchain and redeploy all its DEX modules directly on the Cosmos Hub.

Osmosis Seeks to Save Struggling Cosmos Network

The proposal represents a change in direction for the Cosmos network. For years, it has pushed projects to launch independent blockchains, and many successful projects came from this model, including Injective, Celestial and dYdX. The drawback is that the success of these projects does not reflect on ATOM as they have their own tokens, like Injective’s $296 million INJ and Celestia’s $291 million TIA.

Another challenge has been liquidity fragmentation. While all these blockchains remain interconnected through IBC, they have varying incentives and validators.

Osmosis wants to solve both challenges with its proposal. It says:

The benefit for Cosmos and ATOM will be immediate. Osmosis says it generated $5.5 million in revenue last year, and its operating costs only hit $550,000. It pledges to use this profit as a revenue stream for ATOM holders to reinvest in other Cosmos Hub initiatives.

If the migration goes through, OSMO tokens would be converted to ATOM at a rate of 0.0355 ATOM per 1.998 OSMO, based on the 30-day price patterns.

ATOM trades at $1.81, shedding 3.5% in the past week and 24% since mid-February.