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The Cosmos Roadmap (2.0) describes a number of key planned updates to be delivered through Q1 2023. The Lambda upgrade in Q3 of 2022 is expected to feature V1 of Interchain Security; which will see the Cosmos Hub acting as a ‘provider’ chain to various ‘consumer’ hubs whereby smaller blockchains benefit from the Hubs security. At present, app-chains like Terra and BSC have had to create their own node networks and establish their own consensus security without support. Interchain Security fixes this by enabling projects with less capital available to launch on the ecosystem with security support from the Hub chain.

Theta Upgrade

WIth expected delivery in Q1 2022 the Theta upgrade plans to feature: 

• Interchain Accounts
  • Where Cosmos network participants can already share tokens between accounts on different chains, the Theta upgrade includes the ability to interact with other accounts (similarly to how Ethereum users interact with Smart Contracts) in other hubs. Interchain accounts are a key step towards interchain security, in addition to having other major impacts on the Cosmos network, essentially enabling developers to leverage existing functionality regardless of the hub on which it exists.  
• Routine updates to the SDK

Liquid staking is expected in the Rho upgrade slated for Q2 2022; where Liquid Staking essentially allows users to continue transacting with their staked ATOM rather than having it locked up. The Lido team which implemented ETH & Luna’s wildly successful and popular Liquid Staking procedures has suggested a proposal for Cosmos’s future development that builds on the limited V1 functionality of Liquid Staking expected in the first half of 2022. The V1 implementation generates representations of ATOM which are associated to a specific delegator/validator; Lido’s proposal would essentially decouple the fact of staking from a specific delegator, while still enabling users to hold onto their tokens (despite staking). The Rho upgrade will also include an NFT module for basic NFT management. 

EVMOS

The Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible EVMOS (a hub) has been experimenting with an incentivized testnet since 2021 and has a mainnet launch underway as of Q1 2022. EVMOS is essentially an EVM compatible blockchain built using the Cosmos SDK and could be a major step towards transforming Cosmos into a DeFi hub analogous to Ethereum.

CosmWASM

CosmWASM is software that interacts with the Cosmos SDK to make developers’ lives easier when writing code in various languages and having it executed in Virtual Machines. WebAssembly standards act as a sort of intermediary language which takes the user inputs and reliably executes state transitions in the Cosmos SDK. Think of writing Smart Contracts once that can execute on many chains. For more information, the docs can be found here.  

Superfluid Staking

A Staking upgrade allows wallets to earn staking rewards from both liquidity pools and validators simultaneously. It launched with some temporary limits, but ultimately enhances the liquidity of the Osmosis blockchain. This release is hopefully just the beginning as Osmosis plans to offer superfluid-staking-as-a-service to other pre-approved protocols.

Roadmap History 

Since launching Cosmos Network in 2017 with the private and public token sales, Cosmos has since rolled out an MVP of their hub, launched the mainnet on March 13th, 2019, and has onboarded several noticeable projects like Kava and Band protocol. 

Early 2021 was dominated by developments around the Stargate, the name of the upgrade which launched IBC. The upgrades present in Stargate were planned to complete the original Cosmos Whitepaper roadmap. Stargate was implemented in February 2021 and allows previously siloed blockchains to send tokens from/to one another. With it, 150+ Tendermint-based blockchains now were interoperable as well as allowing Cosmos SDK blockchains to communicate with other blockchain protocols. Blockchains that have onboarded and are now interoperable include Binance Chain, Terra, and the Luna network. 

In June 2021, when the Cosmos Hub development teams released Roadmap 2.0 the primary objectives outlined for 2021-22 revolve around enhancing liquidity in the Gravity DEX, bolstering economic security (moving towards Interchain Staking), and improving UX for users and developers. The next two upgrades, codenamed Delta and Vega upgrades introduced Gravity DEX and Gravity Bridge to the Cosmos Hub, respectively.