On-board the Stride blockchain for ICS

Summary
Stride’s ICS signaling proposal, passed by Cosmos Hub governance on May 11th, established social consensus around the terms of Stride’s admission into the ATOM Economic Zone and adoption of interchain security. But no actual changes have yet been implemented. In order to implement Stride’s ICS signaling proposal, two concurrent executable proposals are needed.
This is the first of two executable proposals. This proposal is to on-board the Stride blockchain for interchain security.
Assuming this proposal passes, the Stride blockchain will transition to interchain security on July 19th at 5pm UTC. Note, the changeover time is determined by Stride's upgrade height, not the spawn time (although Stride's upgrade height must happen after the spawn time).

Details

As Stride is a live blockchain, the changeover from sovereign to consumer chain works a bit differently than launching a new chain on ICS. On June 8, Stride successfully completed a changeover on the official Cosmos Hub testnet with 40+ validators. A second rehearsal is scheduled for June 21st.

This is the sequence of events:

Phase I - setup

1. Hub proposal goes live on June 13th*
2. Hub proposal passes on June 27nd
3. Stride passes a software upgrade proposal in July, with a target height of 4616678 (3 blocks before initial_height on the Hub light client). This targets a changeover at 2023-07-19T17:00:00Z

Phase II - launch

1. July 11th, Stride will distribute a commit hash for validators to verify. That way, they can review the Stride code. Stride will also provide a more detailed guide for validators on the Cosmos Hub forum (with the learnings from Neutron's launch and testnets).
2. June 18th - before the spawn time, the Hub validator set must run a Stride full node, assign their consensus keys, and sync with the Stride chain.
3. Spawn time occurs at 2023-07-19T05:00:00Z, 12 hours before the scheduled upgrade on Stride.**
4. A genesis file containing ccv state will be provided to Stride validators so they can execute the upgrade (this can only be generated after the spawn time).
5. Around 2023-07-19T17:00:00Z and block 4616678 on Stride, Stride will halt. The current Stride validator set must execute the upgrade. During the upgrade, the validator set will switch, and shortly after the upgrade the Hub validator set will start signing blocks (the synced full nodes will have voting power after the upgrade).
6. An ICS connection must be opened between the new light clients on Stride-Cosmos Hub

*Since Stride is transitioning from a live chain to an ICS chain, the genesis hash can’t be known in advance (the ccv state must be exported after spawn time, and the genesis file otherwise isn’t used). The value is simply sha256(genesis_hash). The binary may also have a few small tweaks before the upgrade. It’ll be frozen at least 7 days before, so that the code can be audited and shared by the Stride team.

**Spawn time must occur before the upgrade on Stride. To create the light client, we must know the Stride upgrade height in advance - given we’re estimating it 39 days in advance, we’re giving ourselves a buffer of 12 hours. If Stride block production is too fast, it will be slowed down through validator coordination on Stride.
Hub requirements

• Stride binary - will be provided on July 11th.

• Stride genesis - will be provided after the spawn time, before the upgrade height on Stride. Note - the full genesis file is not required at the Stride upgrade height! Only the ccv state is needed, to initialize the module. Stride has a live chain, so full nodes will sync from a snapshot. As mentioned, this file will be provided to validators.

• Repositories

  • Network
  • Launch Event

• Genesis file details:

  • Chain type and version:

    • Cosmos-SDK v0.47.1
    • Go version: v1.20

  • Economic parameters:

    • Default fee token: ustrd.
    • Fee split between consumer and provider: 15% Hub / 85% Stride

  • Network parameters

    • Soft_opt_out_threshold: 0.05 (e.g. 5% of the voting power)

• Ongoing involvement required from Hub validators (e.g., Governance structure, monitoring communication platforms, hardware requirements):

  • No required governance involvement: Stride’s governance is facilitated by Stride governors. No involvement from Hub validators is required.

  • Dedicated communications channels:

    • Discord: a dedicated channel has been created for Cosmos Hub validators.

  • Hardware requirements:

    • 4 Cores
    • 32 GB RAM
    • 2x512 GB SSD

Governance votes

The following items describe the voting options and their significance for this proposal:

-YES: You wish to on-board the Stride blockchain for interchain security, as previously agreed upon in Stride’s ICS proposal

-NO: You do not wish to on-board the Stride blockchain for interchain security

-NO WITH VETO: You 1) consider this proposal to be spam, 2) believe it infringes on minority interests, or 3) believe it violates the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of NoWithVeto votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned

ABSTAIN: You wish to contribute to quorum but you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal

For full details, refer to Stride’s ICS forum post:

https://forum.cosmos.network/t/proposal-794-vote-onchain-stride-to-join-atom-economic-zone-and-adopt-ics/10418