The Cosmos Hub Theta Upgrade Is Coming!

The Cosmos ecosystem is growing rapidly and the Cosmos Hub is making steady progress in its journey to be a service provider for the Interchain. Part of that journey includes regular upgrades with new features that lay the groundwork to fulfill the port city vision.

After successfully having upgraded to Theta on Testnet in March, we’re getting ready to upgrade on Mainnet on April 12th at block height 10085397.

What is the Theta Upgrade?

The Theta upgrade represents the first big step toward Interchain Accounts by enabling the Cosmos Hub to act as a host chain. After the upgrade, other blockchains with Interchain Accounts enabled will be able to execute two significant actions: 1. Create and control accounts on the Cosmos Hub and 2. Perform Cosmos Hub native transactions.

The second half of this story, scheduled for the Rho upgrade, allows the Cosmos Hub to also be a controller chain. When connected to other host chains, this would allow the Cosmos Hub to perform transactions natively on other chains. For example: if another blockchain enabled Interchain Accounts and became a host chain, the Cosmos Hub community could vote to interact with that chain and perform a predefined set of transactions. Previously, a community would have to elect a group to manage a multi-signature wallet and trust they would act fairly on the community’s behalf. Through batched messages sent using Interchain Accounts, transactions like swapping, staking, voting, and any other type of action native to that chain could be executed directly by the community without ever needing to appoint and trust a third party group. This allows the Cosmos Hub community to expose themselves to the entire Interchain in a completely decentralised fashion.

Also included in the Rho upgrade is Groups, which together with Interchain Accounts allows DAOs to natively interact with other Interchain Accounts enabled chains. With Groups, DAOs who manage funds across multiple blockchains will be able to do so while only having to interface with the Cosmos Hub.

What’s Next?

These exciting new features are the first steps to a fully decentralised interoperable multi-chain ecosystem with the Cosmos Hub at its center. The Theta Upgrade is the first major stepping stone to an entirely new universe of interoperability. If you’d like to learn more about Interchain Accounts we encourage you to read this blog post or the Interchain Accounts FAQ written by Charly Fei on the IBC team.

Cosmos Hub validators can get up to speed with the upgrade process here.

About the Author:
Noam Cohen works at Interchain GmBH and is a Developers Relationships Engineer for the Cosmos Hub team. Noam is on Twitter.

The Cosmos Hub Theta Upgrade Is Coming! was originally published in Cosmos Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.