Prop 1007: Enable Permissionless CosmWasm Smart Contract Deployment on Cosmos Hub

Today, CosmWasm (CW) is permissioned on the Cosmos Hub. This means that in order to deploy a contract, an address must first be whitelisted via an on-chain vote. Once whitelisted, that address can deploy as many contracts as it wants without going through governance again unless its permission is later revoked.

Current situation:

Very few deployments are happening on the Hub.

Suspected reasons:

A project needs visibility and certainty to get started. It’s hard to convince investors with a pitch like: “We’ll build for months, but we’re not sure if we’ll be allowed to deploy.”

The process is too slow and clunky, due to slow or inefficient governance.

Teams are sometimes reluctant to expose themselves publicly or be judged in a vote.

The whitelisting mechanism lacks granularity: once approved, an actor can deploy unlimited contracts without further review.

The Hub isn’t seen as a developer-friendly environment compared to simpler and faster alternatives (Neutron, Osmosis, etc.).

Low current activity creates a loop of inertia: low usage = low attractiveness.## Why CosmWasm?

Several well-known Cosmos teams want to deploy on the Hub.

CosmWasm is part of the native Cosmos stack, with a well-equipped ecosystem (IBC integration, CosmJS, etc.).

Some live applications are becoming critical (e.g. Hydro).

The Hub could attract meaningful use cases if development becomes easier.

CosmWasm enables strong modularity and security through smart contracts.

Historical concerns:

The main worry has always been security: risks of exploits, hacks, rug pulls, etc.

What community knows:

Neutron, a permissionless CosmWasm chain, shows that:

Deployment volume remains reasonable.

No major incidents have occurred to date.

Permissionlessness hasn’t led to overload or chaos.

Furthermore, in the current case of permissioned CW on the hub, a previously whitelisted address can deploy a multitude of contracts without authorization, which would be at risk in the case of an unperformed audit. Ultimately, the current permissioned CW only bottlenecks development on the cosmos hub.

If an issue were to arise, ICL (in charge of Hub software) could respond quickly.