v8-Rho Software Upgrade

Summary

This on-chain upgrade governance proposal is to adopt Gaia v8.0.0. By voting YES to this proposal, you approve of adding these updates to the Cosmos Hub.

This upgrade does not include the Replicated Security feature; that will be part of the v9-Lambda upgrade.

The forum post discussing this upgrade can be found here.

Background

Since the last v7-Theta upgrade at height 9283650 there have been a number of updates, fixes and new modules added to Gaia.

Updates

• Bump IBC to v3.4.0 from v3.0.0 which includes a fix for the interchain accounts vulnerability. See the full Changelog for more information.
• Bump Cosmos SDK to v0.45.12 from v0.45.9. See the full Release Notes and Commit History for details and updates between the last version of the SDK used in Theta.
• Bump Tendermint to v0.34.24 and replace with the Informal Systems fork to ensure software continuity.
• Bump Liquidity to v1.5.3 which notably includes updating Go to 1.18 and the Cosmos-SDK to v45.11 to ensure compatiblity with the Cosmos Hub.
• Bump Packet Forward Middleware to v3.1.1 from v2.1.1. Users should note that PFM was not configure properly in the previous version of Gaia. This module update includes necessary bug fixes to make it functional on the Cosmos Hub in v8.

Features

• Add the Global Fee module to the Cosmos Hub, which enables setting transaction fees at the network level via param-change governance proposal. For more information, see the module documentation.
• Add the debug bech32-convert command, enabling users to convert any bech32 string to the cosmos prefix.

Fixes

• Fix Bank Denom Metadata issue. In a previous upgrade, the x/bank metadata was incorrectly migrated, resulting in an incorrect bank metadata. See the fix in the upgrade handler for more information.
• Fix Quicksilver ICA exploit detailed in the forum post on the incident. See the fix in the upgrade handler for more information.

Tests

• Add a suite of E2E tests to ensure core features of the Cosmos Hub work as expected.

Testnet

V8 Rho went live on the persistent testnet after the successful simulated upgrade. For more information, see the testnet upgrade proposal or block explorer, and visit the persistent testnet documentation.

On-Chain Upgrade Process

This upgrade can be performed in multiple ways. When the network reaches the halt height, the state machine program of the Cosmos Hub will be halted. The classic method for upgrading requires all validators and node operators to manually substitute the existing state machine binary with the new binary. Alternatively node operators can use the Cosmovisor utility to swap the binaries automatically. Cosmovisor also includes the ability to download the binaries automatically before swapping them. Documentation on Cosmovisor can be found here. If you are interested in trying Cosmosvisor with a simulated local upgrade please see the local testnet documentation. Because it is an onchain upgrade process, the blockchain will be continued with all the accumulated history with continuous block height.

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. Cosmos Core Contributors will coordinate with validators in the #validators-verified channel of the Cosmos Developer 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 (v7.1.0).