Cosmos Pauses EVM Plan to Focus on Its Core IBC Tech

• Cosmos has paused plans to launch an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) platform.
• Research and iteration led Cosmos to abort its EVM launch plans.
• The Cosmos project will continue to deliver services via the IBC protocol.

The team behind Cosmos, a decentralized network of interoperable blockchains, has announced it is pausing its plans to launch an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) platform.

In its latest blog post, the Cosmos team cited cost and potential impact on user experience as key reasons behind its latest decision.

New strategy to focusing on strengths; not competition

The Cosmos team noted that building yet another virtual machine does not align with the project‘s core strength, which is multi-chain interoperability. The team stated that it will now move forward by focusing on delivering services via its powerful Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), while strengthening the Cosmos Hub’s role in the Layer-1 services market.

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In the meantime, Cosmos‘ latest decision formed part of its 6-month review covering the first half of 2025. The project’s latest report highlighted a revitalized leadership, which formed Inter-chain Labs, and the unification of the Cosmos Stack, Cosmos Hub, and Cosmos ecosystem under a single mandate at the beginning of 2025.

Path Forward: IBC Everywhere, Starting with Ethereum

The decentralized networks team used the review opportunity to share its plans with the Cosmos community and ecosystem, including the already-mentioned decision to pause the launch of an EVM. The team noted that its decisions involved changes in product direction after research and iteration.

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According to the team, the research, which dominated its program in the past six months, tested different theses, explored Cosmos strengths, and identified the most promising paths forward, while still making substantial upgrades to the Cosmos Stack. The team boasted that customer feedback drove the core of the improvements it has made so far, with IBC v2 opening the door for IBC to be everywhere, starting with a direct connection to Ethereum.

In the meantime, the Cosmos ecosystems native cryptocurrency, ATOM, has shown notable strength in the current dispensation. The digital asset rebounded from a season low of $3.5343 towards the end of June to reach an impressive $4.8300 this week. Data from TradingView shows ATOM trading for $4.6848 at the time of writing, marking a 31.5% surge from the latest support.