Network participants process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Cosmos Hub is an interoperability & security platform for blockchains and applications. Cosmos was founded by Ethan Buchman & Jae Kwon and launched in 2019.

ATOM holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Cosmos’s investors include Paradigm, IOSG Ventures, 1confirmation, etc.

governance

github

twitter

discord

etherscan

website

Blockchains (L1)

Cosmos Hub

# Cosmos Hub Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Cosmos expenses metric measures the daily USD value of block rewards distributed to validators on the Cosmos Hub network. This metric treats validator incentives (newly minted ATOM tokens) as operating expenses of the network. The calculation tracks the daily increase in ATOM token supply, which represents new tokens minted as block rewards, converts these to USD values, and reports them as network expenses.

## 2. Data sources

- **Cosmos Hub blockchain data**: Daily snapshots of total ATOM token supply from the Cosmos Hub network, including `total_supply` values and associated `block_timestamp` and `block_number` information
- **External price data**: End-of-day token price feeds from CoinGecko API for ATOM token USD conversion

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block rewards calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate daily ATOM tokens minted as block rewards by tracking supply changes
- **Logic**: Daily total supply snapshots are ordered chronologically and the previous day's total supply is compared to the current day's supply. The difference represents newly minted tokens distributed as block rewards to validators. Only days with positive previous supply values are included to avoid initialization artifacts
- **Key fields**: `total_supply` (current day supply), `previous_day_total_supply` (previous day supply), `daily_minted_amount` (calculated difference)

### Component B: Token incentives calculation  
- **Purpose**: Convert raw minted amounts to standardized token units and aggregate by day
- **Logic**: The daily minted amounts from the block rewards calculation are converted from uatom (micro-atom) units to ATOM tokens by dividing by 10^6. Results are aggregated by daily timestamp, with each record labeled as "Block rewards" reward type and associated with the `uatom` token address and `cosmos` chain identifier
- **Key fields**: `daily_timestamp` (truncated to day), `token_incentives` (converted amount), `reward_type`, `token_address`, `coingecko_id`

### Component C: USD conversion
- **Purpose**: Convert ATOM token incentives to USD values using market prices
- **Logic**: Token incentive amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds from CoinGecko. The conversion uses the `coingecko_id` field to match ATOM tokens with their corresponding price data. Standard validation and formatting is applied through the finalize metric process
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` (USD converted amount), `timestamp` (daily), `chain_id`, `product_id`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The USD-converted token incentives from Component C are directly used as the expenses metric without additional aggregation or calculation
- **Currency conversion**: ATOM token amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day CoinGecko price feeds matched by token identifier
- **Time aggregation**: Data is aggregated and reported on daily boundaries using timestamp truncation to day granularity  
- **Final calculation**: The final expenses value equals the USD value of daily ATOM block rewards distributed to validators, representing the network's daily operational expense for security and validation services

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

Cosmos HubATOM

Expenses

Expenses

Competitive landscape