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CosmWasm Integration 1 - Permissions and Upgrades

Community-spend proposal submitted by Ethan Frey ([Hidden link]) of Confio UO ([Hidden link]) and CosmWasm ([Hidden link])

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Full proposal: [Hidden link] Forum Post: [Hidden link]

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Amount to spend from the community pool: 25000 ATOMs

Timeline: 2-4 months from approval

Deliverables:

1. Adding governance control to all aspects of the CosmWasm contract lifecycle to make it compatible with the hub. Allowing governance to control code upload, contract instantiation, upgrades, and destruction (if needed).
2. Adding ability to upgrade contracts along with migrations (also allowing orderly shutdowns). This controlled by a governance vote.
3. Launch a testnet with working version of this code (Cosmos SDK 0.38 or 0.39) to enable all interested parties to trial the process and provide feedback.
4. Provide sample contracts to demo on the testnet, along with some migration scenarios

Within 2 months, the working code and binaries should be delivered and open for public review. Within 4 months, these binaries will be used on a testnet, with sufficient staking tokens given to all active voters on the Cosmos Hub, and we will go through a few governance voting cycles to trial contract deployment and migrations (with a shorter voting cycles, eg. 3 days)

Detailed milestones in the full proposal: [Hidden link]

Beyond the milestones, CosmWasm will enhance documentation of the platform and offer technical support on our Telegram channel.

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Problem With the upcoming launch of IBC, the hub will need to adapt more rapidly to the needs of the ecosystem, while also limiting chain restarts, which may be detrimental to IBC connections. In particular support for relaying Dynamic IBC Protocols and Rented Security, using ATOMs as collateral for smaller zones, would greatly benefit from CosmWasm's flexibility.

Solution We’re adding some key features to CosmWasm to convert it from a permissionless, immutable smart contract platform to a permissioned platform with governance control for upgrading or shutting down contracts. This is a key requirement to be able to integrate CosmWasm to the Cosmos Hub with minimal disruption.

Future We will continue development of CosmWasm, especially adding IBC integration as well as working towards a stable 1.0 release that can be audited and safely deployed (Q3/Q4 2020).

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