Cosmos ATOM Finally Accrues Value from IBC! Cosmos Crypto News, Babylon Bitcoin Staking & More

Who would have thought that the most cooked coin in crypto is able to be the top gainer in a day? And that is Cosmos Atom, up around 9% today, still at very, very low levels. But it is just nice to see that Atom is able to lead the market and be the top gainer and outperformer, especially on a day where the rest of the market is down bad and a double digits after Trump's tariff policy was announced. And it's just refreshing to see that Atom is showing relative strength. Atom is still there and there are many reasons for it. We're actually going to get into it right now. But also keep in mind that the Atom staking APR is still at a decent double figure, 15.5% for staking or liquid staking your Atom, which you can then also reuse to also additionally earn other yield. You can also deploy it as a quality on osmosis or many other things that you can do with your idle Atoms. Now, paired with the fact that Atom is the longest chain in Cosmos, has been on mainnet for over five years, went through so many iterations, through so many dark times and moments. But guess what? It's still standing. It's still in the top 50. And it now, more than ever, has an active leadership that actually cares about making the Cosmos Hub a true hub, interchange service provider and a decentralized router that is now going to be also packed to the success of IBC V2 that is about to launch. IBC V2 really is the name of the game with IBC Reca being a product built on top of IBC V2 that is tailored to the Cosmos Hub and turns the Cosmos Hub into a true decentralized router. So the Cosmos Hub is on track to become a router for IBC V2 and also capture value for the first time ever, capture value from the success of IBC. That is a big, big shift for the product direction that Atom is going and also for the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem. And the main innovation for IBC Eureka is not only that it accrues value for Atom, but also that it enables IBC compatibility with Ethereum and other EVM-based chains. Think Barachain, Say Network, Injective, Mona that is coming up, Eigenlayer. There are tons of EVM-based networks that have a lot of economic activity that might make sense for the Cosmos Hub to onboard, connect to and be their router for the rest of all the IBC-enabled networks out there. And also for substrate-based chains, which to be asked, I guess it's not going to have as much as an impact. It probably is more interesting for EVM chains, specifically Ethereum to start with, which is probably also going to be the first chain to connect to IBC officially when Eureka rolls out. And we're literally just weeks away, like less than two weeks, I would assume. In fact, I also have another major chain and I got some big alpha from the founder of that chain, which I'm also going to show in this video. So stay around. Big shout out to a site from Range Security who wrote down this article, breaking down IBC itself, IBC Eureka and how it all synergizes and plugs into the Cosmos Hub, what it all means and does. The simple fact that a connection between Ethereum and DYDX that would route through the Cosmos Hub, being the IBC Eureka Hub in between, would accrue massive value for Atom. And I think that alone could be a game changer if the Cosmos Hub really established to become an IBC router. So Ethereum and EVM chains are first in line within one or two weeks. And then we'll have Solana and Ethereum L2s that are coming in the near future shortly thereafter. Solana, I think, would also be a big value unlock and economic partner for the Cosmos Hub that could also accrue a lot of value for Atom. Well, we also got a lot of alpha from the man himself, Mac, who just joined us at C2 Plus for an exclusive AMA. So we got the chance to speak to Mac for nearly an hour. It took a lot of time. And C2 Plus members got to ask questions. Also, join on stage to speak directly to Mac. That really is some of the core value for being a C2 Plus members. Besides the fact that we lend exclusive whitelist slots for NFT collections like Omis, we got exclusive whitelist slots there. We got for the Wellsharks NFTs. So that is the true value for being a C2 Plus members because we're lending these partnerships and we're redirecting all of that value directly to C2 Plus members. There was actually also a coin that did a snapshot for C2 Plus members only. So C2 Plus members got an exclusive airdrop part of the token supply just for being active cosmonauts. That really is the value of C2 Plus. But now I want you to listen very, very carefully to how Mac speaks about IBC Eureka, the value propositioning of it, and what it means for the Cosmos Hub. And I think you can truly sense his excitement, his positivity, and the bullishness of the product and also vertical integration into everything that they have been building on Skip Protocol for the past year. So I'll hand it over to Mac. Here we go. Adam is at a $2 billion market cap, right? So long as that, I don't know, the last check was like 80, 85. And so we need to connect the pieces to create that flywheel. Because right now when the ecosystem grows, Adam does nothing, right? Because there's no link. And when Adam grows, it doesn't do anything for the ecosystem because there's no link. And so the first thing to do is connect the links in both places, right? And so Eureka is the first of many products that does that. What Eureka is, is basically a re-envisioning of IBC that uses the hub as a central router and basically allows for IBC to connect anywhere and is fully vertically integrated with all the rest of Skip's products, meaning the SkipGo, EPI, IBC.fun, the front end, the relayers, and the provers, all the way down to the actual base layer protocol. And it uses the hub as the router for all of it. What that means is, you know, it doesn't look like IBC just going around between different chains. For all of the Eureka flow, it flows through the hub, right? It takes a stop on the hub. There's a lot of reasons why this is actually really good for IBC. You know, I can talk about sort of the N-squared proliferation problem that IBC is facing, which makes it really hard to maintain. But it also means that we can manage all the relaying. We can manage it with high uptime. We can give users a better experience. And we can make it cheaper because with IBC Eureka, you have to do ZK proving. And so you can bash the proofs. You can bring down the cost by 80%, right? So for example, we just did an IBC transaction from Cosmos Hub to Ethereum. You can see the transaction. I posted it. It cost 45 cents in gas. That's how cheap it was, 45 cents. It's going to become even cheaper than that, like down to 10 cents potentially. Like that's crazy. It's cost $60 to transfer an XLR. Like it's bananas cheap, right? And it's just as fast. It's going to actually be under 15 seconds once we actually get it integrated into SkipGo, right? And all of that flow goes through the hub, right? So fees, gas, all of that stuff accrues to Adam. And so that's the first product where as IBC grows, it drives the value to Adam, right? Very directly. Like number goes up IBC, number goes up in terms of value accrual to Adam. Now, if you have made it that far in Cosmos and are still around and still standing, surviving all the fat, all the drama, all the infighting, all the failed directions and strategic decisions. If you're still around today and you listen to Mac, you are following and observing what ICL is doing, how the Cosmos wipes are being restored, then there's absolute zero chance to not be bullish on Adam. And the best part about this is that this is the calm before the storm. As Mark also shared in the AMA, there are 50 plus launch partners lined up to integrate with IBC Eureka. And many of them probably already have ongoing economic activity, which means instant value accrual for Adam. Not something that might be working sometime in the future, but instantaneously, they are flicking on the revenue generator for Adam with the launch of IBC Eureka. And we're just two weeks away. But I wouldn't be CryptoCito if I did not bring more exclusive alpha to you in today's episode. In fact, I just interviewed David, the founder of Babylon, that just announced their baby airdrop, which we are covering in today's episode towards the end. But David also shared some light, his thoughts on IBC Eureka and how Babylon is positioned and whether or not they're going to integrate IBC Eureka. Listen to what David is saying. In fact, Babylon Genesis, I believe, is the first customer, first user of Eureka, IBC Eureka. It's happening in the next little while. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely IBC. So I would say two particularly big innovations in the Cosmos ecosystem from a technology point of view is one, IBC, interoperability, definitely number one. Number two, which is very important for us as well, is the idea of slashing, the idea of crypto, true crypto economic security. I believe Cosmos is the first POS system which has true slashing. And that is really the connection to Bitcoin staking because Bitcoin staking is a remote asset. And without the slashing, there's really nothing to stick. So without naming names, there are some so-called Bitcoin staking protocol out there, which the idea is you lock your Bitcoin and then you say, oh, I'm securing this chain. Okay. So what's the connection? In what sense are you securing this chain, you're just locking a Bitcoin on the Bitcoin chain. There's no slashing. And so therefore, you cannot think of this as in any means providing security to the proof of stake chain. And slashing is the mechanism that will make the connection between the asset sitting on the Bitcoin chain and the proof of stake chain. And in this case, the Babylon Genesis is a Cosmos chain. And strategically, I really think it makes a lot of sense to coordinate this with the Babylon launch, which is probably going to make a big splash in our entire industry, one of the most highly anticipated launches. And I think for the Cosmos hub to line up with that launch for the launch of IBC Eureka makes a lot of sense also PR and marketing wise. But also when it comes to showcasing IBC Eureka in action. And when it comes to the product development side of things, remember that ICL also just got FMOS to basically open source the EVM OS code base and renamed it into Cosmos EVM. And we know that permissionless smart contracts are also on a roadmap for the Cosmos hub. So if you just connect the dots, I guess it's obviously on the table that eventually the Cosmos hub might also integrate the Cosmos EVM and become a permissionless EVM smart contract platform on top of IBC Eureka being this interoperability router, on top of also having hydro liquidity as a service, and also just having a strong standing in Cosmos. And I think that mixture is not only going to restore faith from the retail community and cosmonauts that have been around for so long and really deserve this, but also makes it appealing for investors, governments, and liquid funds. And we also got some major alpha from Mac himself on the C2 Plus AMA. Listen to this very, very important stuff. My background is in pretty heavy engineering. That's really what I for a long time thought I would do for most of my life. But life had different plans. So now I do mostly marketing, growth, beauty, sales is my specialty. So institutional sales, selling to, you know, large other companies, selling to governments, selling to liquid funds. It's a big one for me right now. Getting them to buy Atom and take the investment in Atom, which is going very well. And then Barry's focused more on the internal side. So execution, we joke, we're both co-CEOs. He's chief execution officer and I'm chief external officer. Vibes are restoring faith, trust, and positivity is back on the Cosmos hub. Zach is saying the compounding rewards to Atom will be insane. After Spade, the founder of Neutron, said, crazy how useful the ICF has been since Skip took over. Bullish to finally see hands-on leadership in the ecosystem. That's what we've been talking about here for the past four to five months. It is finally all coming together. The puzzle pieces, organizational restructuring of Cosmos, true leadership, young, ambitious, well-respected guys running the showing Cosmos, the strategic, but also the product development roadmap, and also making Atom a true interoperability hub, a decentralized router. But let's take a little bit of a breather because that was a lot. And there's so much more that is cooking across the board in all of Cosmos. New chains that are launching. We learn about Babylon. We're going to see Milky Way launching soon. Initia launching very soon. Hyperlane that announced the ad drop. Arceo that just went live after years in development. And many more. Plus also established chains like Noble, like Celestia, like Mantra, continuing to win on all ends. And if you want to stay updated on the entirety of the ecosystem, then I strongly encourage you to follow the C2Zone Twitter account, managed by Sepp Moussantang from my team at CryptoC2, C2 Labs. And they're publishing now on a weekly basis, Cosmos Insights, which is a data-driven overview of the Cosmos ecosystem and gives you a 360 of the most active IVC chains, Noble stablecoin issuance, VALS yield opportunities, osmosis volumes, revenue accrual, Celestia data availability usage, and so on and so forth. And of course, also NFT volumes and Stargate. So this gives you really an indication and tracks on a weekly basis how Cosmos is doing, right? Measured by on-chain numbers. So as you can tell, this is a very complete report that gives you a full overview of the on-chain activity in the Cosmos ecosystem. If you want more of that, if you are a hardcore cosmonaut, and if you want to know absolutely everything and be informed in real time to never ever miss out on an airdrop again, to have somebody that you can ask questions prior to connecting your wallet, or you have a request about interviewing a founder, or just general questions about anything in Cosmos, then consider subscribing to C2 Plus, where we're also sharing exclusive content, such as C2 Plus Market Insights, which is more of a macro overview, the state of crypto and the overall sentiment. But also we're sharing and sending out dedicated emails when airdrop checkers go live, when airdrop snapshots are being made, when there's some action that needs to be taken for you to not miss out on an airdrop, when AMA sessions are happening, right? And C2 Plus members already have the full AMA session of Mac to their availability, so they can re-listen to that. I think that alone makes it worthwhile to consider subscribing to C2 Plus. Well, today I have a big airdrop segment as well. There's three new airdrops that you can claim or check your eligibility right now. So stick around to the end of the video. But when it comes to news and releases, we have an updated, polished UI and UX for a DYDX mobile application. And I really want you to test that out. I personally think one of the biggest unused weapons for Cosmos is focusing on the mobile UX and UI. That's something that's been forgotten. And DYDX is really taking the lead, obviously as a trading platform, that makes a lot of sense to target mobile traders as well. And they just polished and refined their UI. So check that out, play around with it, download the app. Let me know in the comments if you have any feedback, refinements, improvements. If you are a professional trader, you can also use the top link in the video description. You can trade on DYDX with that link, which gives you a 50% discount on fees and also supports this channel, which is much, much appreciated. I think we're still in the top 10 on the leaderboard as an affiliate on DYDX. Also major news with regards to the search program that we've been covering here, which is a massive program to accelerate the adoption for DYDX and increase volumes, which in a competitive landscape with the hyperliquids of the world, getting a lot of market shares very, very quickly. I think that makes a lot of sense. And considering that DYDX has been around since 2017, they've been around for a very long time, which is also a big advantage of OG chains, like for example, the Cosmos Hub, right? What they have compared to newcomers in that sense is time in production, time in the market, a battle-tested community, a battle-tested product, a battle-tested team, and the internals, which I think a lot of people severely underestimate how important it is to maintain internal clarity, strategic alignment internally when it comes to the roadmap, when it comes to communications, when it comes to anything. And DYDX has that edge because they've been around for so long. They survived two bear markets. And I think for newer chains, products, applications, and whichever vertical or industry, I think it is important to assess the success of that product after at least one full cycle, right? After three or four years. And another piece of big news is the fact that the XRP-L EVM sidechain is now on testnet. And this is coming just in time for the rollout of IBC Eureka. So very exciting to see that. In fact, Pearsys is the development company behind that. They're also core contributors to the Ripple XRP ledger. And they were also at Cosmos last year. So Pearsys was there and Ripple was also there. So we had speakers from both teams, panels and discussions. And Cosmos was also a great platform to enhance those relations, to accelerate those integrations. And I hope also that this year, the Pearsys team will be at Cosmos and split later in late October. Now let's talk about airdrops. We have Hyperlane announcing the Hyper token. And you have to do this very fast because registration closes on April 14th. So there will be two deadlines that you can't miss. The first one is registration deadline, April 14th. The second one is the claim deadline, which is May 6th. So very tight windows here. But if you are actively watching this, then there's absolutely no way that you miss out on this. Especially if you're a C2 Plus member, then there's absolutely no ways because we'll send out email reminders to all of our members to make sure they're not missing out on that. So check your eligibility. You can register multiple addresses here. And yeah, you'll be able to claim that right now. I did it quite smoothly. So all good on that end. Then we have Arceo, which is an RPC infrastructure chain that's been around for a very long time from the early 2021, 2022 days. And I also did an interview with the core team, the core contributing team, Michael Perklin, also Chad Bearer for the core contributor to Torchain, has been part of that project. And I think it's been on pause for a little bit. At least I haven't heard about it for quite some time. But now they're just coming out with Minute Launch and AirDrop claim site, which you can also check right now. FOX, which is the Shapeshift token that is also eligible for that AirDrop. FOX holders, because Arceo is also partially developed by Shapeshift contributors. Asmo, Atom and Rune. I think there was also Juno in there. I'm not sure why that's not listed here. But anyways, you can come here. Maybe they removed Juno from that list here. Anyways, you can come here, connect your Arceo wallet, your ETH wallet, your Torchain account, and then just claim. Also very simple, very intuitive. Then the third one is probably the biggest one in terms of the market cap it will reach. And that is, of course, Babylon, the baby airdrop for early adopters has been announced. 6% of the supply, which is 600 million baby tokens, total supply is going to be 10 billion tokens, will be airdropped. Most of it will go to Bitcoin stakers, which is why we kept reminding you to stake at least a minimum amount to farm those points. And also, there was a airdrop registration window, which we also sent out multiple reminders to our C2 Plus members. And I also covered it here, of course, on the channel for everyone. So if you're a watcher, a listener, or a C2 Plus member, then there's absolutely no way that you missed that one. But yeah, that's the kind of logic behind it. Also for Pioneer Pass, NFT holders, GitHub contributors, they are all eligible. And there will be other airdrops, apparently. There will also be a social contributor airdrop that is going to be interesting, especially for creators like myself. And there will also be other airdrops in the future. Anyways, I will have the interview with David coming up very, very shortly. So stay tuned for that. A lot of alpha in that interview. And it's only 25 minutes long. And yeah, that's that. And of course, also as a disclosure, I am an investor into Babylon with C2 Ventures. Been an investor into Babylon since two years. So that's a journey I've been part of for a long, long time. You can check your baby airdrop allocation right here. Also going to leave the link below this video. Again, total supply, 10 billion baby. Inflation rate, that is very interesting. It's going to be set at 8%. And it will be distributed 50-50 to Bitcoin stakers and to baby stakers. So we'll see how that plays out. Obviously, this is subject to governance for any adjustments to be made in the future. Babylon being a full-on Cosmos SDK blockchain means it's fully integrated with Kepler. You can just stick it there. We're going to be a Babylon Genesis validator from day one with Stuxedo. So you can delegate your baby tokens to us. We also have a analogy provider on the Bitcoin side. So you can also stake your Bitcoin with us. And that's that. If you want to learn more, read this article. It's all covered here. Also what Bitcoin secured networks are, the role of baby. And if you want to just listen to it while you're on the run in the car or whatever, in the shower, then I recommend you to wait for the interview that is coming with David. It's a fire episode and I had a lot of fun speaking to David. We also did a recap from the C2Zone account if you prefer reading and having all this information just trimmed down and summarized for easier digestion. Now, the final airdrop I want to remind you to claim is, of course, the Nisha one. If you're a testnet participant, level up your journey. If you are an interwoven stack partner, Milky Way, depositor, user, then you might be eligible here or a social contributor. If you've been active on Discord, Twitter or Telegram, then you might be eligible here as well. Now, that's all for today. I know it's been a lot. I know it's been a lot of information, a lot of excitement. As always, I am a perma bull, right? CryptoCito is a perma bull. I'm always bullish no matter what, right? And sometimes you might think I'm naive, I'm delusional, I'm this, I'm that, but I truly believe in what I talk about. I truly am convinced that the Cosmos thesis will play out. Interoperability, sovereignty, the AppChain thesis, and eventually everything will be Cosmos-fied because IBC will win as the interoperability standard for Web3. That's my true inner conviction and you can see by everything that I'm doing here on the channel with C2Zone, C2 Ventures, Cosmoverse, Stake C2, we're just doubling down on Cosmos, right? And we have been doing that even during times where things were not going well, where things were not looking well because there was too much infighting and drama. But I think now we're out of the woods when it comes to that and now we are on track to restore Cosmos vibes, to restore atom economics, something that I think if that is figured out will also have a massive leveraged effect on the rest of the Cosmos ecosystem. Let me know what you think. Are you still bullish? Are you still around? Sometimes I read the comments I see people not as excited or bullish which I understand the market is just absolute trash right now and it's just ridiculously low levels. Atom below $5 is also to be honest nothing to really cheer about because this thing should be at $20, $30, $40. But yeah, and so it's Osmo below $0.30, absolutely crazy. DYDX below $1, AKT around $1, TL below $3. Crazy discounts, that's what I'm seeing. It doesn't get me really frustrated or sad or doubting the ecosystem. I just see it as an opportunity to keep stacking. I'm fully deployed. I'm probably in a different position now because I also have to think about my team, my financial sustainability as a founder and a company owner of three companies in this space with 12 team members across the board. So for me, it's all about sustaining, surviving with the companies. And to be honest, this is not an easy thing right now. And we are a relatively large validator. I think we're a well-established player in Cosmos. But I think a lot of Web3 startups, a lot of companies, validators, contributors are currently really in survival mode and cutting a lot of their budgets and really slowing things down when it comes to spending. So that's just the reality of the industry as well is that a lot of companies right now are simply being shaken out, washed out because they're running out of funds. That's a big reality in crypto. It's like this survival mode for a founder, a company in crypto, a Web3 startup is very, very crazy. And it is really unpredictable and it can go like this and the market will just wash you out and flush you out. That's just how it is. But anyways, that's probably something that you're not as interested anyways. What is more interesting is the upfront price to continue to go up and show relative strength. That's what we all want and all deserve and I hope we're getting there. I'll see you very soon on CryptoSito. Watch out for the David interview. Until then, stay safe and be good.