A few things of note:

Cosmos-SDK v0.9.0: We’ve been building a new Cosmos-SDK which has been in active development since late last year. The Cosmos-SDK is the core component that the first application-specific blockchain in Cosmos—the Cosmos Hub—is built with. As such, everything depends on the Cosmos-SDK. We had built a working light client daemon (LCD) already, but because we’ll need to refactor and migrate it to the new SDK, v0.9.0, a new LCD will be integrated in cosmos-sdk v0.10.0 .

In v0.9.0 , genesis state will be initialized, which means that the fundraiser genesis distribution will be reflected in the genesis state. You won’t have access to your ATOMs yet but the mechanism we build will be used to distribute everyone their ATOMs when the Cosmos Hub launches.

IBC, Staking, and Governance Modules: We designed the Cosmos-SDK to be modular, whereby the intent for developers is to allow them to simply plug a desired functionality into their blockchain application without breaking a sweat. These modules will be released in the cosmos-sdk v0.11.0 (release version subject to change).

Gaia Testnets: The existing gaia testnets from gaia-1 all the way to the soon to be released gaia-3 depend on the old Cosmos-SDK. Future iterations of the testnets will be upgraded to the new SDK (v0.9.0 and beyond).

Ethermint Testnet: The development of Ethermint is highly anticipated. We are rolling out a new testnet very soon where projects that rely on Ethermint can start testing their smart contracts in the test Ethermint VM environment.

Hardware Security Module: The HSM is an independent mini-project on its own, but it’s critical infrastructure which dictates the health of the entire ecosystem. Because of this, we cannot launch until this is ready. We’re working towards HSM implementations of both validator and user signing.

Cosmos Hub: The core components of the software stack—the Gaia testnets, Cosmos-SDK, Tendermint Core, and Cosmos-UI—are all pieced together to form the fleshed out Cosmos Hub.

Cosmos Hub Specs: (WIP)

Most of the pieces of code have already been written. However, since we are making major architectural improvements, each of the dependencies need to be refactored and updated accordingly to be compatible with the newly laid foundation.