Atom Accelerator (AADAO), a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) on Cosmos Hub (ATOM), and Neutron, Cosmos’ integrated application network, have each pledged $250,000 to support the development and maintenance of Confio’s CosmWasm in 2025, as reported to Finbold on Tuesday, December 17.
With early funding, AADAO and Neutron aim to secure priority consideration in Confio’s future endeavors and encourage other stakeholders to follow suit.
CosmWasm adoption and funding
Confio has been working on CosmWasm since 2020, and so far, the smart contract framework has been adopted by nearly 100 blockchain networks.
CosmWasm lets developers build decentralized applications (dApps) that interact across the Cosmos interchain.
Over the last year, CosmWasm dApps generated more than $5.7 million in fees within the Cosmos ecosystem.
Despite the broad adoption, the funding for CosmWasm has mostly come from the Interchain Foundation (ICF).
However, following the recent ICF restructuring, Confio’s budget for 2025 has been significantly reduced, resulting in a lot of doubt in regard to the future of the platform.
CosmWasm Coalition
Atom and Neutron investments are part of the newly launched CosmWasm Coalition, which builds on previous support from the Cosmos Hub, including a $1.25 million allocation under Proposal #103 in March 2023.
The coalition aims to raise the $2 million necessary to keep CosmWasm growing in 2025 and allow Confio to focus on security, performance optimization, feature development, source development kit (SDK) compatibility, and the overall developer experience.
Relying on CosmWasm for permissioned smart contract capabilities, Cosmos Hub sees Confio’s framework as an essential component of its network.
A number of consumer chains leveraging Cosmos Hub’s Interchain Security also depend on CosmWasm, meaning that fresh funds will affect an entire ecosystem.