CosmWasm has become a cornerstone of the Cosmos ecosystem, powering chains like Osmosis, Injective, Mantra, Neutron, and most of the 100+ chains in the ecosystem. With over 1.79 million downloads of the CosmWasm standard library, the framework’s reach and utility are undeniable.
Analyzing data from just 15 chains over the past 12 months, 15.7k CosmWasm contracts were deployed, with 5.2m accounts interacting with them, and $5.7 million generated in fees from those contracts!
Specifically for the Cosmos Hub, we currently have CosmWasm enabled on the Hub mainnet, utilized by DAO DAO on the Hub (which will allow for CP-funded DAOs’ funds to be closed back by governance vs other DAODAO instances). Soon, the Cosmos Hub’s CosmWasm deployment will host the DRIP module – critical to future Hub growth – and apps like Ark Protocol’s Interchain Launchpad. Given how easy CosmWasm makes it for developers to create cross-chain apps, we expect many other new applications to be built and deployed on the Cosmos Hub in the near future.
CosmWasm is also critical to Neutron – the Cosmos Hub’s economic partner – a CosmWasm platform secured by the Hub via Interchain Security.
While the Interchain Foundation previously funded the development and maintenance of CosmWasm, they have reduced their funding for Confio for 2025 to just 23% of the previous year’s funding. While this grant from AADAO, on behalf of the Cosmos Hub, is not enough to cover the entire shortfall of Confio’s annual budget requirements, our funding will extend the period of support for a further 2 months.
We believe there is a future where other smart contract VMs proliferate the Cosmos ecosystem – from EVM, SVM or MoveVM – such a shift will not happen within the next few months. That is, CosmWasm needs to be supported at least for the year 2025, to allow for the other VMs to be migrated into Cosmos, IBC tooling and support developed, and giving enough time for developers to port their apps from CosmWasm to one of the other VMs.
Our grant to Confio is matching the amount contributed by Neutron. We have also called on other chains to contribute to the funding.
