Noble Leads the Exit: Is “Cosmos Is Dead” Being Proven True Again?

On January 20, Noble—a Cosmos application chain specializing in stablecoins—announced it will migrate from the Cosmos ecosystem to its own independent EVM L1 network. The Noble EVM is set to launch on March 18, with the team continuing to support Cosmos-based blockchains in the near term. After the migration, Noble’s proprietary USDN stablecoin will become a core feature of the EVM L1, while the NOBLE token will serve as the governance asset, closely linking protocol decisions and value to stablecoin usage across the entire network.

Image source: Noble Twitter

Shortly after, the founder of Cosmos responded, emphasizing that Noble’s transformation is not a departure from the Cosmos vision but rather an embodiment of its core principle: sovereignty and interoperability. Noble’s migration does not sever its connection to Cosmos Hub. Instead, through the IBC v2 protocol, the new Noble EVM will become a critical bridge between the EVM ecosystem and the Cosmos economy. He noted, “We are entering an era where liquidity, not chains, is the focal point.”

Why Did Cosmos’s Leading Stablecoin Project Choose to Depart?

Noble stands as one of the most successful stablecoin infrastructure projects in the Cosmos ecosystem. It natively issues Circle’s USDC to Cosmos, distributing USDC securely and seamlessly to over 50 chains via IBC, and has processed more than $22 billion in transactions.

Noble’s presence gave Cosmos a competitive edge with native stablecoins, eliminating the trust risks associated with external bridges.

So why is Noble migrating? The official reasons are straightforward:

The EVM ecosystem is overwhelmingly dominant. More than 75% of the stablecoin market operates on EVM chains. Developers, tools, wallets, and dApps are all concentrated within EVM. Since Noble aims to be the “stablecoin infrastructure L1,” it must follow both the capital and the user base.

The EVM stack is more developer-friendly. EVM offers mature tools—Solidity, Remix, Hardhat—and makes integration with protocols like Uniswap and Aave much easier. While Cosmos SDK is powerful, its steep learning curve and lagging ecosystem tools are clear disadvantages.

EVM delivers superior performance and real-world use cases. Noble EVM targets sub-second latency for payments, embedded finance, agentic commerce, FX, and more. While Cosmos’s Tendermint consensus is reliable, the EVM stack is better suited for mainstream payment chains.

Noble is pursuing a strategic vision. Rather than remaining a “utility player” within Cosmos, Noble aims to become an independent, high-performance stablecoin Layer 1, directly competing with other stablecoin public chains.

In essence, Noble voted with its feet. Cosmos provided the launchpad, but EVM offers the path to scale.

Noble’s Departure Drains Cosmos’s Vitality

Noble is Cosmos’s sole “supergiant.” In the last 30 days, Noble’s IBC transaction volume reached $93.84 million—1.8 times that of second-place Osmosis ($50.06 million). Among the 110 Zones connected via Cosmos IBC, Noble provides a dominant share of liquidity.

Image source: MAP OF ZONES

Noble is the “faucet” for institutional capital. Osmosis processes nearly 900,000 transactions, while Noble handles only 73,000. This means Noble’s average transaction size is far higher, catering to institutional-scale stablecoin settlements and large distributions—not retail swaps.

Although IBC connects 110 Zones, only 85 remain active—meaning 23% of chains are already defunct. Liquidity is highly concentrated in the top four chains, while projects outside the top ten have seen monthly transaction volumes shrink to the million-dollar level. Retail activity in the ecosystem has been severely depleted.

Cosmos Hub has about 30,000 monthly active users—six times Noble’s 5,000—but the actual capital flows to Noble. Most Cosmos users are staking or on the sidelines at the Hub, while almost all stablecoin value exchange is centered on Noble.

IBC: The Heart of Cosmos and the Engine of the “Internet of Blockchains”

Cosmos’s core narrative is the “Internet of Blockchains”—realized through the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).

IBC is Cosmos’s signature innovation. It allows independent, sovereign chains to securely and trustlessly communicate and transfer assets—just like TCP/IP for the internet. Its key features include:

Minimized trust: Uses light clients to verify the state of counterpart chains, eliminating the need for custodial assets or multisig bridges.

Permissionless connectivity: Anyone can create channels, enabling token transfers, Interchain Accounts, Interchain Queries, and more.

Universality: Not limited by consensus mechanism—already connecting over 110 chains (per Map of Zones) and even extending to non-Cosmos chains like Ethereum and Optimism.

IBC is highly secure, has never suffered a major exploit, and has processed tens of billions of dollars in transfers. Even as other Cosmos components are debated, IBC remains one of the industry’s top interoperability solutions.

However, Noble’s migration exposes IBC’s dilemma: it connects the world but struggles to retain projects. In the end, everyone wants to dominate as a single EVM chain.

The Exodus: Cosmos Projects That Died or Migrated in 2025–2026

From 2025 to early 2026, the Cosmos ecosystem was hit by a major wave of project exits and closures.

First, the projects that completely shut down or ceased operations—most had already collapsed by 2025, leaving only community disappointment and sporadic attempts at maintenance.

The privacy chain Penumbra shut down entirely, with the team departing. Although the chain is barely maintained by the community, it’s essentially abandoned—a classic “dead chain” case. Pryzm also closed down, and Comdex and Kujira followed suit, with Kujira’s collapse even taking down sub-projects like Fusion and Levana, breaking the DeFi ecosystem chain.

Stride officially sunset and ceased operations; Quasar and Tower died in succession; Picasso/Composable collapsed, trapping bridged SOL assets and leaving users with nothing. Drop abandoned its TGE and sunset, Milkyway closed, Demex failed to recover after a hack, and Evmos is essentially defunct.

These projects spanned DEX, lending, privacy, NFT, and more. The main causes: weak growth, insufficient revenue, team attrition, and the long-term fallout from the Terra collapse.

Meanwhile, some projects opted to migrate off the Cosmos stack—a profound blow to the Cosmos narrative. In addition to Noble, Sei decided during the SIP-3 upgrade to abandon its dual-stack architecture, planning to retain only the EVM chain by mid-2026.

Akash is migrating to Solana; Elys, pStake, Jackal, Omniflix, and others are moving to Base; Stargaze became an independent chain and plans to move to Cosmos Hub; Shade Protocol (now Feather) first migrated to Sei and may further EVM-ize in the future.

The core motivation for these migrations is clear: the EVM ecosystem’s developer tools, liquidity, and market size far outpace Cosmos. Teams are voting with their feet, following capital and opportunity.

Some projects haven’t died but have entered maintenance mode or redirected resources, with progress slowing significantly.

Osmosis is now in maintenance mode—tokenomics and other updates continue, but team resources have shifted and activity has dropped sharply. Astroport is similarly stagnant. After the Axelar team was acquired by Circle, the original project’s influence waned. These projects were once pillars of Cosmos DeFi but now reflect the ecosystem’s contraction.

Mantra underwent restructuring (layoffs and cost optimization in January 2026) and an OM token crash (nearly 99% drop), yet the project continues. ERC-20 OM migration is underway, with RWA vaults, launchpad, and other features in development, and will continue as an IBC-compatible RWA EVM L1.

Additionally, numerous DEXs—Wynd, Hopers, Junoswap, Loop, TerraSwap, and more—shut down in 2024–2025. Retail DeFi has all but vanished, with only institutions and RWA sectors holding on.

MAP OF ZONES shows IBC connects 110 chains, but traffic is highly concentrated among the top few (Noble, Osmosis, Cosmos Hub). Should Noble’s liquidity depart, ecosystem activity will deteriorate further.

Despite the Cosmos 2026 roadmap’s efforts to reverse the decline with EVM compatibility and performance upgrades, Noble’s “departure” starkly reveals a harsh truth: in the face of liquidity, technical narratives often fall short.

Disclaimer:

1. This article is republished from [Foresight News] with copyright belonging to the original author [Sanqing]. For concerns about this republication, please contact the Gate Learn team, who will address the issue promptly according to relevant procedures.
2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute investment advice.
3. Other language versions are translated by the Gate Learn team. Unless Gate is mentioned, copying, dissemination, or plagiarism of the translated article is prohibited.