This document's accuracy is in no way endorsed by Curious Cosmonaut Research. This paper’s content was aggregated from the Imperator.co blog here as part of a series to make content more accessible from one place in Cosmos.

Author:  Imperator.co

Source: Blog

Disclaimer: The information contained on this article and the resources available is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, financial advice. Nothing available this page should be understood as a recommendation to buy something.

The article aims to present five news/announcements that happened last week on the Cosmos ecosystem.

Our goal at Imperator is to help the community by summarising the most important information that should not be missed.

Weekly Newsletter: What happened on the Cosmos ecosystem this week? January 2–8

1/ Evmos upgraded to v10.0 ☄️

With this upgrade, when someone sends a token native to the Cosmos ecosystem to Evmos, it will be converted to an Ethereum-compatible token so it can be used immediately on Evmos and sent to Ethereum-compatible blockchains.

With this upgrade, Ledger users can now finally auto-compound their staking rewards.

2/ Discounts on Axelar 🛰️

You can now use Axelar to bridge to Osmosis and benefit from a $0.25 gas fee. It’s not clear how long this will last, but it’s worth taking advantage of while it’s available!

3/ ICNS is now supported on Mintscan

ICNS, which is your Interchain name linked to your Twitter handle, is now available directly on the Mintscan explorer!

4/ Saga x Celestia

Saga has begun work with Celestia Labs to implement sequencers-as-a-service to scale rollup architecture. The solution will enable applications to automatically launch Celestia rollups with decentralized sequencers on Saga.

The ultimate goal of this collaboration is to offer products that enhance scalability. Developers will be able to spin up rollups in an automated fashion using the Saga-featured Celestia Rollup Chainlet, which is capable of deploying any smart contracts starting with Ethereum.

5/ Juno is upgrading to v.12

The upgrade brings several new modules including the Token Factory module. This module allows for native token minting, querying, and sending without the hassle of the CW20 spec.

Another great news with this upgrade: the ICS-29 spec (IBC-Fees middleware) is added to incentivize relaying packets from other chains to Juno and distribute those fees to relayer operators.

That’s it for the week!

Weekly Newsletter: What happened on the Cosmos ecosystem this week? January 9–15

1. Stride: roadmap S1 2023 is out! 🌊

Stride unveiled its roadmap for the first half of 2023, highlighting plans to enhance security, governance, user experience, data transparency, and conduct core research.

The Stride team continues to innovate and introduce novel liquid staking features. We are excited about their plans to fully leverage IBC and look forward to seeing their Cosmos LSDs on other ecosystems such as Ethereum, Polkadot, and Near.

2. Stableswap is now live on Osmosis 🧪

Osmosis explains why this is a game-changer for users. Stableswap offers the most competitive prices to traders on stable assets, thanks to its capital-efficient liquidity pools

Pool 877 is one of the first stablecoin pools on using StableSwap with BUSD/USDT/USDC.

3. Station by Terra is live 🌕

Station, which was previously the wallet for the Terra ecosystem, is now extending its market to offer services to the entire Interchain.

Station has launched supporting Terra, Osmosis, Juno, Kujira, Carbon, HuaHua, Crescent, Terra Classic, Mars (testnet), and Sei (testnet), and the team is actively working on integrating more than 10 additional chains.

4. Mars Protocol: testnet is now live! 🔴

Mars Hub’s testnet, dubbed Ares, is now open to explorers, devs and validators. Developers and validators can interact with the latest features on the protocol’s standalone Cosmos-SDK appchain.

Mars Hub serves as the central or organizing “hub” in a “hub and spoke” design. Other L1 chains that Mars Hub interacts with operate as “spokes.” Each spoke will be home to an outpost consisting of the Red Bank and rover credit account contracts.

5. Quasar: New fundraising! 🛰️

Quasar has raised $5,432,100 for their bridge round, with a $70 million USD valuation. In total, the team raised more than $11.5 million for the development of their interchain Decentralized Asset Management protocol.

Quasar will be powered by IBC-enabled smart contracts and a dedicated Cosmos appchain. Anyone will be able to create vaults and activate strategies capable of using automation to deploy assets across multiple blockchains.

That’s it for the week!

Weekly Newsletter: What happened on the Cosmos ecosystem this week? January 16–22

1. Introducing Skip Secure

Skip Protocol has recently introduced Skip Secure, a private tx RPC that connects users directly to validators. With this, transactions are not visible to the public anymore, as they do not go to the public mempool.

The advantages of using Skip Secure’s private RPC are:

• Transactions are private until they reach the proposer
• No frontrunning
• No sandwiching
• No backrunning

If you want to know how to use that private RPC, check out this video:

2. Stride will provide liquid staking on Terra! 🌕

$stLUNA will soon be available, and Stride will deploy STRD incentives on the LUNA/stLUNA pool on Astroport to ensure the pool has enough liquidity.

A snapshot was taken on January 19, 2023 and $LUNA stakers will receive an STRD airdrop. 🌊

Minimum threshold: 50 staked LUNA

Maximum threshold: 25,000 staked LUNA

Date: To be determined.

3. WYND DEX is live!

A new DEX is now live on Juno Network, enjoy the great UI!

One great point to mention is that WYND DAO harvests the best of DeFi to fund positive real-world environmental impacts.

25% of the fees generated with these protocols will go to an Environmental DAO investing in projects that are spearheading actions to improve the environment.

4. Mars protocol is launching on January 31!

Mars is one of the most anticipated projects in Cosmos in 2023.

It is set to go live in less than 10 days, and it is an honor for our team to be among the 16 selected genesis validators on the network.

The very first Mars outpost will be on Osmosis, and the launch of Mars will enhance Osmosis’ DeFi capabilities by allowing users to lend and borrow assets as needed.

5. A Grant DAO serving the Cosmos Hub

There is currently a discussion taking place on the Cosmos Hub Forum regarding the creation of a Grant Program. The goal is to bring value to the Cosmos Hub in an efficient manner.

For any questions you might have, here is an FAQ that covers the most frequently asked questions from the various discussions.

That’s it for the week!