Cosmos (ATOM) experienced a bearish trend on April 17, 2023, dropping the asset to a low of $10.12 from $12.88. However, the current month has seen a surge in demand for Cosmos (ATOM), leading to a remarkable price performance. The 24-hour trading volume is up by 9.04%, indicating that the market activities around ATOM are increasing. The ecosystem recently announced the adoption of its first Cosmos native shared security model by a widely known Permissionless CosmWasm platform called Neutron, which could attract more investors, traders, and institutions into the network, driving the demand for ATOM significantly over time.

Sparklo (SPRK) is a newcomer to the blockchain field but is rapidly gaining popularity due to its distinct features and quick growth. In comparison to Polkadot (DOT) and Cosmos (ATOM), Sparklo (SPRK) offers blockchain developers a more affordable and convenient option with lower fees and greater scalability. Additionally, investors can own a portion of the metal they invest in thanks to Sparklo’s special fractional ownership feature, enabling smaller investments and greater accessibility. On the other hand, Polkadot (DOT) has suffered multiple hacks and security breaches affecting users, raising serious concerns about its general dependability and security. Cosmos (ATOM) has also come under fire recently for its lack of decentralization and governance issues.

The Cosmos Hub community has voted to approve the integration of Stride into the ATOM Economic Zone. Stride will provide liquid staking services within the Cosmos ecosystem. As part of the integration, Stride will contribute a portion of its revenues to ATOM stakers and adopt the Interchain Security model. The integration of Stride is expected to boost rewards for ATOM holders and enhance security for the Cosmos ecosystem. Stride's neutral focus on liquid staking services makes it a good fit within the ATOM Economic Zone and could extend synergies to the broader Interchain. The move demonstrates Cosmos Hub's commitment to fostering an innovative and secure blockchain environment.

Despite a downturn in the broader cryptocurrency markets, Cosmos Hub's (ATOM) price has shown remarkable strength and resilience over the past few days. This may be due to the team behind the project announcing fresh updates, including the launch of the Replicated Security Model, which has gained adoption by a top smart contract and consumer chain platform. The Replicated Security Model provides security to smart contracts and consumer chain platforms, allowing them to focus on other application areas and services. Cosmos (ATOM) is currently trading at $11.04, with bulls pushing its price above the key resistance at $10.90.

Nolus, an interoperable application on Cosmos, has secured $2.5 million in pre-seed and seed funding to tackle inefficiencies in DeFi money markets. 

Blockchain scaling startup – Dymension – announced the launch of the world’s first IBC-enabled EVM rollup on testnet in collaboration with Evmos Core Teams and Celestia. The latest offering is part of Dymension’s roadmap to establish and bootstrap a new ecosystem of IBC-enabled rollups. The collaboration, on the other hand, will bring “superior” EVM blockchain access to the Cosmos ecosystem.

A vulnerability affecting the Cosmos ecosystem and Ethermint was recently discovered by Jump Crypto and blocked before it could cause significant damage. Ethermint, which enables the use of Ethereum smart contracts within the Cosmo ecosystem, was the affected network. The bug could have allowed an attacker to bypass specific smart contract functions and steal transaction fees, leading to denial of service to users. The Evmos Core Development team and the Cronos team collaborated with Jump Crypto to address the issue, including a patch to block transactions with certain messages to eliminate the attack vector. No malicious exploitation occurred, and the Cronos team awarded Jump Crypto a $25,000 bounty for their discovery. The root cause of the vulnerability was improper handling of transactional messages in Ethermint's implementation, specifically the interaction between two message types. The attacker exploited the vulnerability by embedding one message type inside another, bypassing a security feature responsible for deducting gas fees from transactions.

As more crypto projects — like dYdX and SushiSwap — search for cheaper and faster DeFi alternatives, Ethereum’s getting left behind. Are we Observing the fall of the king or the specialization of networks?

Bluzelle has introduced Capella, a new NFT marketplace that is designed to enhance Web3 gaming and digital asset management on the Cosmos network. Capella will allow users to buy, sell, and trade NFTs, which are unique digital assets that are verified on a blockchain. The marketplace will also provide tools for creators to mint and manage their own NFTs, which could help to democratize the creation of digital assets.

Cosmos has announced its intentions to push towards building and expanding an interconnected internet of blockchains again, starting with the implementation of IBC with solidity to connect Ethereum to Cosmos. This move will enable the transfer of data, tokens, and messages to multiple blockchains through IBC, including enterprise Ethereum and all EVM-compatible blockchain networks. Onboarding Ethereum will make Cosmos and the IBC more attractive to other potential prospects, and the demand for ATOM should go up as more blockchains get connected to the Cosmos hub. However, ATOM's performance has been delivering sideways action for the last 12 days, with limited volumes and low volatility prevailing. If Cosmos proceeds and succeeds with its plans this year, it could boost ATOM's potential value. (ambcrypto)