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「Leading Lady」 Noble Leaves the Stage, Is the Cosmos Ecosystem Now a 「Hollowed Shell」?

Foresight News

2026-01-21 06:14

Read this article in 14 Minutes

Noble's "runaway" undoubtedly reveals a harsh reality: in the face of liquidity, the technological narrative often appears pale and feeble.

Original Title: "Noble Leads the Way Out, Another Solid Confirmation of 'Cosmos Is Dead'?"

Original Author: Sanqing, Foresight News

On January 20, Cosmos application chain Noble, focused on stablecoins, announced that it would migrate from the Cosmos ecosystem to an independent EVM L1 network. The Noble EVM is scheduled to launch on March 18, and the team will continue to support Cosmos-based blockchains in the short term. After the migration, Noble's own USDN stablecoin will become a core feature of the EVM L1, with the NOBLE token serving as a governance asset, closely tied to protocol decisions and the usage of stablecoins across the entire network.

Image Source: Noble Twitter

Subsequently, the founder of Cosmos responded in a post, stating that Noble's transition is not a deviation from the vision of Cosmos, but rather an embodiment of the core concept of "sovereignty and interoperability." Noble's migration does not mean a disconnect from the Cosmos Hub. Instead, through the IBC v2 protocol, the migrated Noble EVM will become a key bridge connecting the EVM ecosystem with the Cosmos economy. He stated, "We are entering an era not defined by chains, but by liquidity."

Cosmos's Stablecoin Ace, Why Choose to Exit?

Noble is one of the most successful stablecoin infrastructure projects in the Cosmos ecosystem. It is the chain that natively issued Circle's USDC to the Cosmos ecosystem, distributing USDC securely and frictionlessly to 50+ chains through IBC, processing over $22 billion in transaction volume to date.

Noble's presence has given the Cosmos ecosystem a competitive edge with a "native stablecoin" and has avoided reliance on trust risks from external bridges.

But why did Noble choose to migrate? The reason given by the Noble team is very practical:

The EVM ecosystem is overwhelmingly dominant. Over 75% of the stablecoin market is on EVM chains. Developers, tools, wallets, dApps are all concentrated on EVM, and since Noble aims to be the "L1 stablecoin infrastructure," it naturally has to follow the money and people.

The EVM technology stack is more developer-friendly. The EVM has a mature toolset including Solidity, Remix, Hardhat, etc., making it easier to integrate protocols like Uniswap, Aave. Although the Cosmos SDK is powerful, it has a steep learning curve, and its ecosystem tools are relatively behind.

The EVM has better performance and real-world use cases. Noble EVM aims for sub-second latency, targeting scenarios such as payments, embedded finance, agentic commerce, FX, etc. While Cosmos' Tendermint consensus is reliable, the EVM stack can better align with mainstream payment chains.

Noble has its own strategic ambitions. Noble doesn't want to be just a "workhorse" within Cosmos but aims to become an independent high-performance stablecoin Layer 1, directly competing with other stablecoin public chain projects.

Therefore, Noble voted with its feet. Cosmos provided the initial groundwork, but the EVM offers it a scalable future.

Noble's Departure Took Away Cosmos's "Half-Life"

Noble is Cosmos's only "super giant." Noble's 30-day IBC transaction volume reached USD 93.84 million, which is 1.8 times that of the second-ranking Osmosis (USD 50.06 million). Within the 110 Zones linked by Cosmos IBC, Noble contributed at a ruptive level of liquidity.

Image Source: MAP OF ZONES

Noble is the "faucet" for institutional funds. Osmosis has nearly 900,000 transactions, while Noble has only 73,000. This means that Noble's single transaction value is much higher compared to other chains. It handles institutional-level stablecoin settlements and large-scale distributions, not retail-level small exchanges.

Although there are 110 linked Zones through IBC, only 85 are active. This indicates that 23% of the chains are already in a state of death. Liquidity is highly concentrated in the top four chains, while projects outside the top ten have seen their monthly transaction volumes shrink to the million-dollar level, and the ecosystem's retail vitality is severely overdrawn.

The Cosmos Hub has approximately 30,000 monthly active users, which is six times more than Noble (around 5,000 people). However, the money actually flows to Noble. Most Cosmos users mainly stake or observe on the Hub, whereas the stablecoin activities that truly generate value are almost solely dependent on Noble.

The Soul of the Cosmos Ecosystem: How IBC Powers the "Blockchain Internet"

The core narrative of Cosmos is the "Internet of Blockchains" — an internet of blockchains, with IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol) being the technology that makes this vision a reality.

IBC is Cosmos's most unique and successful invention. It enables independent sovereign chains to securely and trustlessly communicate and transfer assets to each other, similar to TCP/IP on the internet. Its key features include:

Minimal Trust: Verifying the state of the counterparty chain through light client validation, without the need for asset custody or multi-signature bridges.

Permissionless Interoperability: Anyone can create a channel to support token transfers, Interchain Accounts, Interchain Queries, and more.

Universality: Agnostic to consensus mechanisms, already connected to 110+ chains (Map of Zones data), and expanding to non-Cosmos chains like Ethereum and Optimism.

IBC has demonstrated high security, never experiencing a large-scale exploit, with billions of dollars transferred cumulatively. Despite any controversies in other parts of Cosmos, IBC itself remains a top-tier interoperability solution in the industry.

However, Noble's migration also exposed an awkward aspect of IBC: while it interconnected the world, it couldn't retain projects — as everyone interconnected, they all wanted to dominate as a single chain on the EVM.

Exodus Confirmation: Which Cosmos Projects Have Died or Migrated by 2025-2026?

From 2025 to early 2026, the Cosmos ecosystem experienced a significant "project exodus/closure wave."

First, let's talk about the projects that have completely closed or ceased operations, with most of them having already perished by 2025, leaving only the community's regrets and sporadic maintenance attempts.

The privacy chain Penumbra has shut down completely, with the team exiting. While the chain is being reluctantly maintained by the community, it is mostly ignored, becoming the most typical example of complete closure. Pryzm has also shut down entirely, with Comdex and Kujira falling in succession, the latter even taking down sub-projects like Fusion and Levana, causing a fracture in the entire DeFi ecosystem.

Stride has formally sunsetted, ceasing operations; Quasar and Tower have successively perished, Picasso / Composable trapped users' SOL assets after a crash, leaving users empty-handed. Drop has abandoned its TGE and sunsetted, Milkyway has shut down, Demex failed to recover after a hack, Evmos has also essentially died.

These projects covered multiple tracks such as DEX, lending, privacy, NFTs, among others, mainly due to lackluster growth, insufficient revenue, team attrition, and the long-term aftershocks of Terra's collapse.

Meanwhile, some projects chose to migrate to non-Cosmos stacks or committed the ultimate betrayal to the Cosmos narrative. Except for Noble, Sei had also previously decided to abandon its dual-stack architecture in SIP-3 upgrade, planning to retain only the EVM chain by mid-2026.

Akash is migrating to Solana, while projects like Elys, pStake, Jackal, Omniflix are migrating to Base, Stargaze is forking to an independent chain and planning to migrate to the Cosmos Hub, Shade Protocol (rebranded Feather) first migrated to Sei, with potential further EVM-ization in the future.

The core motivation behind these migrations is almost unanimous: the developer tools, liquidity, and market size of the EVM ecosystem far surpass those of Cosmos; project teams are voting with their feet, choosing to follow the money and opportunities.

There is another group of projects that, while not dead, have entered maintenance mode or resource redirection, with slow project progress.

Osmosis has entered maintenance mode, still maintaining tokenomics and other updates, but with a noticeable outward shift in team resources and a significant drop in activity; Astroport is similar, essentially stagnant; after the Axelar team was acquired by Circle, the original project's influence sharply declined. These projects were once the pillars of Cosmos DeFi but have now become a microcosm of ecosystem contraction.

Mantra has undergone restructuring (January 2026 layoffs, cost optimization) and the OM token crash (nearly 99% drop), but the project is still advancing. The ERC-20 OM migration is underway, with RWA vaults, launchpad, and other features in development, and there will continue to be operations of an IBC-compatible RWA EVM L1.

Furthermore, a large number of DEXs such as Wynd, Hopers, Junoswap, Loop, TerraSwap, among others, closed in 2024-2025. Retail DeFi is basically cooling off, with only institutions and RWAs holding the fort.

The MAP OF ZONES shows IBC connecting 110 chains, but IBC traffic is heavily concentrated in the top few (Noble, Osmosis, Cosmos Hub), and once Noble's liquidity moves away, the entire ecosystem's vitality will be further diminished.

Although the Cosmos 2026 roadmap attempts to reverse the decline through EVM compatibility and high-performance upgrades, Noble's "walkout" undoubtedly reveals a harsh reality: in the face of liquidity, the technological narrative often appears feeble and inadequate.