It’s official, the Cosmos Hub’s Interchain Security has launched its first Consumer chain, Neutron! (Anatomy of the Interchain Security process)

A new milestone for the Cosmos Hub was achieved today, with the launch of the first Interchain Secured blockchain in the Cosmos Ecosystem, Neutron.

First let’s start with:

What is Interchain Security?

Interchain Security allows for new or existing blockchains, to skip the line of finding validators and let’s them hook into the existing ATOM validator set. This means that projects can retain sovereignty, have fees on chain paid in their native currency AND lease the Cosmos Hubs economic security. What does it take from the protocol being added? The chain has to be approved via ATOM Governance.

In this approval process they need to show as much info as possible to ensure this addition to the validator set will be worth the extra work a validator will have to do. But while this provides more work, it could show even more profit for ATOM validators and stakers.

These chains that lease ATOMs validator set, will be paying the ATOM validators and stakers in their native currency. Or they can also be paying in any fee token, that the consumer chain utilizes (so this could mean ATOM or another IBC native currency, could be used rather than the consumer chain having its own token). This additional yield will be on top of the staking rewards from ATOM (20% at time of writing).

What is Neutron

Neutron is a Cosmwasm enabled Smart contracting platform, that will be leveraging the Cosmos Hubs economic security, through Interchain (Replicated) Security. Neutron will be home to Lido liquid staking services for the Cosmos Ecosystem. Neutron has also announced that the Astroport Dex will also be coming to its suite of dApps. Neutron has officially proposed, via Cosmos Hub on-chain governance, that the Hub onboard Neutron as a partner chain for Replicated Security.

How did the process go for Neutron to become Interchain secured?

Neutron in particular, has a slightly different true beginning stage. Neutron was announced around June 26, 2022. Their was a proposal, for the Cosmos Hub to help fund a new chain that would bring Lido, liquid staking to the Cosmos ecosystem. This proposal has requested 150,000 ATOM to help build the chain out. The reason this mattered enough for the Hub to give money from he treasury, is because they announced that this new chain would be Interchain secured.

With that starting off point, let’s take a look at the anatomy of the Interchain security process:

1. Any chain that will be requesting to use ICS, will start a pre-proposal process via the Cosmos Hub Forum.

2. They will discuss with the community and take community feedback, then adjust their pre-proposal to its final draft.

3. The final draft will be proposed on-chain, and there will be a 2 week voting period for the community to decide whether they believe this chain should be Interchain secured.

4. After the two weeks are up, if the proposal was approved, then there will be about a month lag until final preparations are done. In this final few weeks to a month, the validators will need to get their equipment, to run the new chain, as well as participate in any testnets to ensure the on-boarding to Interchain security goes smoothly.

5. After these preparations are made, the date will be decided for launch. On the day of launch, the validators will connect their equipment to the chain in preparation for validating the genesis block. Once 66% of the validators have connected to the chain, the genesis block will be proposed and the chain will have effectively become an blockchain secured by the Cosmos Hubs validator set!

There could be some variations of the process, depending on the chain. However, this is largely the anatomy of becoming an Interchain secured blockchain!

I hope this is helpful in you’re understanding of how the Cosmos Hub’s Interchain Security works!