Welcome to Edition 2 of "This Week in the Cosmos", my weekly look at some key events to look forward to over the coming week. These previews are always likely to miss some events, but I try to cover as much as possible.
First, a review.
The week we have just witnessed for the Cosmos, and crypto in general has been an interesting one to say the least. The good news is that Cosmos assets have held up really well during the market sell-off, with a number moving up the market-cap ranks showing smaller drops than many in the market. ATOM has crept up to p.16 on the cap ranks, having dropped in price by 10% over the last week. Similarly, OSMO has held strong, down also around 10% and moving up the cap ranks to verging on the top 50. Other assets have also held up better than the overall market.
OSMO's performance has been awesome of late, and it is now the number two DEX token in crypto, with only UNI ahead of it. It's market cap is half that of UNI, but every day that gap seems to close. It was not long ago that we watched OSMO overtake RUNE, and now it's market cap is more than double RUNE's. Wen OSMO flippen UNI is the question?
Anyway, enough about the past, what's coming up this week...
Osmosis
Not a lot to report this week. Incentives begin for the DSM pools (DSM/OSMO and DSM/ATOM, There are some governance proposals relating to matching external incentives, and also adding incentives to the DIG pools. The key event coming up for Osmosis will be superfluid staking, which the community is hopeful for by the end of February. Watch out this week for the continued climb of OSMO up the market cap ranks, hopefully to cement its position in the top 50 and set out to reign in UNI for the top DEX token position. Trade volumes are on the rise, and with the advent of Junoswap (see below) I would expect growth to continue. While seemingly a competitor, the two chains and DEX's are linked through IBC and much community overlap, and with very low friction from TX and swap fees, as Junoswap grows there will rise a strong arbitrage trade between the two Dex's.
OSMO - the number 2 DEX coin in all of Crypto - Image from Coingecko.
JUNO
A key project to keep a close eye on this week, with Junoswap growth and development being something to closely follow. A governance vote is live now requesting significant JUNO incentives for the three key pools they hope to attract liquidity to, being JUNO/ATOM, JUNO/UST and the upcoming JUNO/RAW pool. Hopefully, we will see some concrete information come out this week about RAW, and likely details of a stakedrop for many Cosmos ecosystem participants. Keep an eye out, because I would suspect the team will try to move quickly on this, to get the RAW token and a properly incentivized DEX growing as soon as possible.
Another interesting thing happening this week is a governance vote around adjusting the estimated number of blocks per year parameter for the chain. While this may seem inconsequential, it actually has a big impact on stakers of JUNO. The proposed changes would have the practical effect of increasing staking rewards by as much as 20 - 25 %, as the settings currently overestimates the block production rate. Long story short, if this prop passes, staking rewards will increase.
Juno's price chart for the last month, sourced from Osmosis Info website
The other point is that as incentives kick in for Junoswap, all pools there will need JUNO, which will likely push the price much higher in the short term. With a number of other projects on the way, and the airdrop to JUNO stakers of NETA happening soon, this could be a big week for the JUNO community. To learn more about Junoswap, check my recent post for more info.
EVMOS
The Evmos projects was scheduled to launch its chain during the week past, however this launch has been delayed. Hopefully, we will see this up and running soon, so that the "REKTdrop" can happen and this ambitious project can get underway. I won't go into to much more here, but to learn about EVMOS and the "REKTdrop" check this recent post
Other projects.
Always lots going on in the Secret community. There are more qualified to write about Secret than I, but it's definitely one to watch. Likewise LUNA of course. @melbourneswest always has great coverage of all things LUNA. Particularly pleasing over the recent sell off has been how well UST held its peg. I had seen questions around the strength of the peg during a rapid sell off for LUNA. The recent conditions have certainly stress tested this peg, and I for one have grown in confidence in UST as a stable in the past week.
One project I haven't posted about yet is CRAFT economy. The CRAFT DAO is being established to launch a chain based around Minecraft, with an economy server and a CRAFT token which will have an airdrop (as all good Cosmos projects do). You can see the rough details about the airdrop in this twitter thread. What is unclear is when the snapshot will be. This thread was from Jan 7, so its a few weeks old. Maybe the snapshot has occurred. In any regard, hopefully we see an update from Chandra Station Long time Cosmos eco-system validators and the team behind Crafteconomy.
That'll do for this week. Undoubtedly I will have missed some important events, but these are just some things I will be watching out for this week.
For further reading, check the following posts:
Thanks for reading,
JK.
