Context: With recent incentivized testnet program, The Akashian Challenge’ phase-3, it is proved that the Akash Software is ready to use in production and make DeCloud a reality. The software used in the incentivized testnet had some minor issues and it was using RCs (pre releases) from the Cosmos-SDK. Meanwhile Cosmos-SDK also had many improvements and fixes. We have a final stargate a.k.a v0.41.0 release from Cosmos-SDK now.

Akash team is following the SDK changes closely and updating the code base from time-to-time. It is time to plan the mainnet upgrade for Akash Network to experience the real power of decentralized cloud and IBC from the stargate release of Cosmos-SDK. Akash Network would be one of the first chains to integrate IBC.

The latest Stargate version of the Cosmos-SDK has a number of changes implemented and it is important to coordinate and allow Akash Network partners to upgrade and test their integrations. The following stakeholders will be impacted. Though most of the coordination happened from CosmosHub testnets, it’s still important to test and verify the integrations with Akash Network.

1. Exchanges
2. Wallets
3. Block Explorers
4. Staking Dashboards
5. Validators & Delegators (Infra, tools & scripts, ledgers etc)

The major expectation out of this proposal is to get a signal of approval from the ecosystem players on the changes and risks with the upgrade and readiness for the upgrade.

Plan:

If the proposal goes through, there will be a testnet followed by to test the featureset and integration with other ecosystem partners like exchanges, wallets, explorers etc.

Proposal details can be found on github: https://github.com/ovrclk/akash-governance/pull/1, rendered version here: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUe8PVfxHN5ufct6c4H1nhBjJpXSxvS5QLGkUnsNwJ5em