Prop 234: Gravity Bridge Chain Fee Increase

Summary

Since Gravity's launch in 2021 as the premier decentralized bridge between the Cosmos and Ethereum ecosystems, over $1.5B has been bridged. While many interoperability protocols and bridges have emerged in the ecosystem since then, Gravity remains the only purpose-built bridge for RWA, utilities, and infrastructure. A testament to the hard work and dedication of its more than 100 validators and relayers who maintain the bridge, Gravity's reliability and resilience have proven that its design was indeed built for the high availability and credibility needed to interact with utilities, telecom, and infrastructure.

It is an excellent time to begin to lay the foundation for Gravity's next evolution - providing interoperability to more chains beyond the ethereum ecosystem, and the improvement of the UI and UX needed to allow Gravity to continue to provide the functionality needed that practical Blockchain L1s and applications can rely on.

Changes

The fee proposal outlines an increase to 20 basis points, which will provide for sustainable operations of the validator and relay set, as well as support the functionality of the auction system. This fee system will help ensure that Gravity is running reliably to support existing chains like NYM and Canto, as well as provide infrastructure for new supported chains like Althea.

In the future, the community could propose to develop and implement dynamic fees or evolve to revenue share with other chains.