Gaia v11 Upgrade

Background

The roadmap for this and future releases can be found here: https://informal.systems/blog/informal-hub-team-jan-2023-update#2023-cosmos-hub-roadmap

The Gaia v11 release is a major release that will follow the standard governance process by initially submitting this post on the Cosmos Hub forum. After collecting forum feedback, a governance proposal will be sent to the Cosmos Hub for voting.

On governance vote approval, validators will be required to update the Cosmos Hub binary at the halt-height specified in the on-chain proposal.

Release Contents

This release contains a number of updates to core dependencies and a variety of fixes. The major features of note for this release are:

• An update of Replicated Security to v2.0.0
• A refactored version of the Global Fee module
• Removal of the Liquidity module state with forced withdrawal for all pool coins as preparation to remove the module, in accordance with passed Proposal 801

The release and further details can be found here: https://github.com/cosmos/gaia/releases/tag/v11.0.0

Note: v11 does not include the Liquid Staking Module as it is not yet production ready. The Liquid Staking Module is targeted for the next Gaia release (v12).

Testing and Testnets

The v11 release has gone through rigorous testing, including e2e tests, integration tests, and differential tests. Differential tests are similar to integration tests, but they compare the system state to an expected state generated from a model implementation. In addition, v11 has been independently tested by Hypha.

Validators and node operators can join a public testnet to participate in a test upgrade to a release candidate before the Cosmos Hub upgrades to the final release. You can find the relevant information (genesis file, peers, etc.) to join the release testnet (theta-testnet-001) here, or the Replicated Security testnet (provider) here.

Potential risk factors

Although very extensive testing and simulation has taken place there always still exists a risk that the Cosmos Hub might experience problems due to potential bugs or errors from the new features. In the case of serious problems, validators should stop operating the network immediately.

Coordination with validators will happen in the #cosmos-hub-validators-verified channel of the Cosmos Network Discord to create and execute a contingency plan. Likely this will be an emergency release with fixes or the recommendation to consider the upgrade aborted and revert back to the previous release of gaia (v10.0.2).

Governance votes

The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:

YES You agree that the Cosmos Hub should be updated with this release.

NO You disagree that the Cosmos Hub should be updated with this release.

NO WITH VETO A ‘NoWithVeto’ vote indicates a proposal either (1) is deemed to be spam, i.e., irrelevant to Cosmos Hub, (2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of ‘NoWithVeto’ votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned.

ABSTAIN You wish to contribute to the quorum but you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal.