Cosmos

Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman co-founded Cosmos in 2014. The Interchain Foundation in Zug funds development and formed Cosmos Labs as its wholly owned engineering and growth subsidiary. The Hub's node software, Gaia, is open source and updated often: v28.3.0 was live on 27 September 2026. The project keeps changing direction. Proposal 1052, passed on 1 September 2026, removed Interchain Security, a flagship feature of earlier years. A tokenomics research process opened in November 2025, but no new model had been put to a vote by 27 September 2026.

• What is Cosmos (ATOM)? (Kraken Learn)
• Interchain Foundation
• cosmos/gaia CHANGELOG
• Cosmos Hub LCD: proposal 1052: Gaia v28.0.0 Upgrade

ATOM was first distributed in a 2017 token sale that raised more than $17 million. Institutional access is limited. In September 2026 governance paid Paxos 300,740 USDC from the community pool to list ATOM on its enterprise brokerage and custody platform, with institutional staking planned later. No facts on ETFs, ETPs or regulated funds holding ATOM were available, so data on the institutional base are insufficient. On concentration, the community pool held about 11.38 million ATOM, about 2% of supply, controlled by governance.

• What is Cosmos (ATOM)? (Kraken Learn)
• Cosmos Hub LCD: proposal 1054
• Cosmos Hub LCD: community pool

ATOM has no maximum supply; new ATOM is minted every block. Total supply was about 532.86 million ATOM on 27 September 2026. Inflation moves between 7% and 10% to target 67% of supply staked, and it stood at the 10% maximum because staking was below target. Proposal 848 cut the maximum from 20% to 10% in November 2023. Staking rewards come mainly from this new issuance plus fees, and 2% goes to the community pool. A research process opened in November 2025 to consider lower or fee-linked inflation and buyback or burn, but on-chain parameters were unchanged on 27 September 2026.

• Cosmos Hub LCD: total supply of uatom
• Cosmos Hub LCD: mint parameters
• Cosmos Hub LCD: current inflation
• ATOM Tokenomics Research Kickoff (Cosmos Hub Forum)

Validator participation is broad: 177 validators were in the bonded set and about 336 million ATOM, roughly 63% of supply, was staked on 27 September 2026. Usage of the Hub itself is very low: DefiLlama showed only about $158,000 of value locked on the Hub. Network health took a hit in September 2026. After a governance attack on Neutron sent about 1.73 million ATOM to the Hub, validators with over a third of voting power stopped their nodes, and the Hub halted for about 24.5 hours. A patched release moved 1,227,121 ATOM from the attacker's address to a 4-of-6 recovery multisig, an intervention in balances by validator coordination.

• Cosmos Hub LCD: staking pool
• Cosmos Hub LCD: staking parameters
• DefiLlama: chains TVL
• Neutron Governance Attack: Cosmos Hub Response and Recovery Update (Cosmos Hub Forum, Cosmos Labs)