Tracking Wealth Through the AI Lens
Tracking Wealth Through the AI Lens
So, Cosmos decided to change its mind. Again.
Just three months after unveiling this grand vision to turn the Cosmos Hub into a bustling metropolis for smart contracts, Interchain Labs (ICL) slammed the brakes, threw the car in reverse, and floored it. The plan to launch an EVM on the Hub is dead. Gone. Scrapped because of "high costs" and a sudden realization that, gee, catching up to established ecosystems might take "massive resources and time."
You don't say.
You can almost picture the Zoom call. A handful of executives staring into their webcams, the faint glow of a PowerPoint deck reflecting off their glasses, as co-CEO Barry Plunkett admits they "got a lot of confidence that we were going over a cliff." It’s the kind of corporate candor that’s supposed to sound brave but just sounds like they finally looked at the map after driving for three hours in the wrong direction.
This isn't just some abstract strategic shift. Real people, real teams, got screwed. Take Stride, the biggest liquid staking platform on Cosmos. The Interchain Foundation itself—the Swiss non-profit steward of the whole ecosystem—literally funded them to build a DEX on the Hub. Stride got about 80% of the way done, and then poof. The rug gets pulled. Not by a scammer, but by the very leadership that’s supposed to be steering the ship. Now they're "exploring alternative deployment options." That’s corporate-speak for "we just wasted months of work and now we’re scrambling."
And what a waste it is.
When builders started, you know, complaining about this chaos, the response from leadership was a masterclass in tone-deaf dismissal. Simon Chadwick, a former contributor, laid out a brutal thread on X about why his team was leaving Cosmos, calling it "playing on constant hard mode." He pointed to the endless struggle for liquidity, users, and support. A struggle that has been going on since the Terra collapse left a smoking crater in the middle of the ecosystem.
ICL co-CEO Maghnus Mareneck’s response? He called it "doomposting." His advice was simple: "Same problems, different place," and my personal favorite, "winners win anywhere."
Give me a break. That’s the kind of vapid, hustle-culture garbage you see on a motivational poster in a WeWork that’s two months from bankruptcy. It completely ignores the reality that the playing field matters. Chadwick rightly shot back, "How many 'winners' are there on Cosmos?" It’s a damn good question. When your ecosystem is infamous for "governance drama" and "ideological malleability," you don't get to act surprised when people get tired of the ground constantly shifting beneath their feet. This ain't about winning; it's about being able to build a house without worrying that the landlord will decide to turn the foundation into a swimming pool next week.
It reminds me of my brief, soul-crushing stint in corporate marketing. Every meeting was a firehose of buzzwords like "synergy" and "disruption" meant to obscure the fact that nobody had a clue what they were actually doing. This feels exactly like that, except with other people's money and careers on the line.
The new plan is to pivot—there's that word again—to servicing "businesses, institutions and developers looking to launch their own chains." It’s a retreat to what Cosmos does best. This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a depressingly predictable and uninspired punt. They’re giving up on the ambitious, messy work of building a vibrant, competitive ecosystem in favor of becoming a glorified B2B toolkit provider.
Which brings us to the billion-dollar question that has haunted Cosmos for years: how does any of this make the ATOM token valuable?
For years, ATOM holders have been sold a story. A story about the Hub being the heart of the interchain, the central ledger securing a universe of interconnected blockchains. Now, leadership insists ATOM remains the "monetization layer" for this new, institution-focused vision. The specifics, offcourse, remain as vague as a politician's promise. They mumble something about "transaction fees," "routing services," and "institutional payments" that could buy and burn ATOM.
Could. Maybe. Someday.
It’s like owning stock in a company that builds world-class hammers, but instead of selling the hammers, they decide their new business model is to just give them away for free and hope that people will voluntarily donate to the company out of gratitude. It makes no sense.
And yet, the price prediction charts are still out there, promising a future that feels completely detached from this chaotic reality. Some analysts are calling for ATOM to hit $16 in 2028 and maybe, just maybe, touch $52 by 2031. Reading forecasts like the Cosmos price prediction 2025, 2026, 2027-2031 while watching the project’s core strategy implode in real-time is a truly surreal experience. How can a token that’s currently struggling to hold $4, with its core team admitting they were heading "over a cliff," possibly be on a trajectory to 10x or more?
Are these analysts looking at the same project I am? Or am I the crazy one for thinking that a clear, consistent strategy and a direct path to value accrual might be, you know, important?
The team says it's entering "startup mode." That means iterating fast and testing customer needs. But for the builders and investors who have been here for years, it feels less like a nimble startup and more like one pivot too many. They’re trying to serve everyone, and in the end...
Let's be real. This isn't a "pivot," it's a retreat. It's an admission that they can't compete in the brutal L1 arena, so they’re falling back to a comfortable, low-stakes role as a glorified infrastructure provider. The problem is, they're still trying to sell the dream of a high-stakes token. You can't have it both ways. Without a compelling reason for the Hub to capture value, ATOM is just a governance token for a project that can't seem to govern itself. All the technical elegance in the world doesn't matter if you have no idea where you're going.