Original author: Shenchao TechFlow

In the crypto world, there is often competition between different ecosystems, and competition within the same ecosystem may be more obvious.

For example, the recent war for people surrounding the decentralized lending protocol Mars Protcol in the Cosmos ecosystem has highlighted the desire for applications for infrastructure projects on the same track.

The proposal of whether the v2 version of Mars Protocol should be deployed on Neutron or Osmosis has caused extensive discussion in the foreign encryption community; both parties hope that Mars can be deployed on their own platforms, and each has extended an olive branch to Mars.

Below, Shenchao has compiled the course of the incident and the opinions of all parties, and will take you to understand the relevant details in detail.

Event overview

On December 4, Mars Protocol, a decentralized lending protocol on CosmosOfficial releaseAccording to reports, Mars Hub will deploy Mars v2 to Neutron (Cosmos smart contract platform).

official statement

On December 6, things changed. Mars Protocol released a new proposal on its official website, with the topic: Decide whether to deploy Mars v2 to Neutron or Osmosis.

Accordingly, both Neutron and Osmosis issued statements on the incident, hoping that Mars Protocol would deploy Mars v2 on their own platforms.

Detailed explanation of related projects and proposals

Mars Protocol

Project Description

Mars Protocol was originally a decentralized lending protocol on Terra. Later, with the collapse of Terra, Mars Protocol fled to Cosmos. On January 31, 2023, Mars Protocol announced the launch of the Cosmos application chain Mars Hu mainnet

Currently, Mars is the decentralized lending protocol of the Cosmos ecosystem. Mars v2 creates a framework that allows users to go long an asset, short an asset, borrow, yield mine, or borrow.

The token is $Mars, market cap $10.95M, currently $0.12.

Project official website: https://marsprotocol.io/

Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/mars_protocol

Official website screenshot

Cause of incident

September 2022,Mars Protocol published a paper on why Cosmos provides the best architecture for building DeFi products.Specifically, Mars believes that the Cosmos chain provides a series of inherent advantages that make it possible for the Cosmos ecological chain to win in the crypto world in the long term.

However, since that paper, the competitive landscape of AppChain infrastructure has changed. In particular, the Ethereum ecosystem has developed attractive alternatives for those looking for customization advantages, such as OP Stack, ZK Stack, and Polygon Supernets.

Mars believes that in order to compete, more integration, collaboration and coordination are needed within Cosmos. Therefore, Mars hopes to reorganize for long-term development.

Initially, Mars tended to deploy v2 on Neutron, evenThe proposal was released on December 4.

Then on December 6, Mars started a three-week discussion on its official website about whether to deploy v2 on Osmosis or Neutron.

Both Osmosis and Neutron hope that Mars Protocol will deploy v2 on their respective platforms, which are introduced below.

Osmosis

Project Description

Osmosis is a cross-chain DEX built on the sovereign Layer 1 blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem. The chain enables developers to design and deploy customized AMMs using its various modules and leveraging Osmosis’ on-chain governance system.

The token is $OSMO, with a circulating market value of $370 M and a current price of $0.75 U.

Project official website:https://osmosis.zone/

Official Twitter:https://twitter.com/osmosiszone

Screenshot of Osmosis official website

Osmosis proposal

December 4,Osmosis issued a proposal to migrate the Mars Protocol to Osmosis.

In the proposal, Osmosis mainly elaborated on why the migration of Mars Protocol to Osmosis is more conducive to its development.

• First, the relationship between Mars and Osmosis has been very close since its relaunch in February 2023. To help Mars go to market, Osmosis has generously provided 310 K OSMO funding to increase the liquidity of the Mars token. In addition, Osmosis alsoMARS token approved for regular OSMO incentives。

• Secondly, most of Mars’ TVL and token liquidity is on Osmosis. butAccording to DeFiLlamaData, more than 95% of Mars TVL is on Osmosis. Additionally, while the MARS token is listed on both Osmosis and Neutron, over 95% of MARS token liquidity and trading volume is on Osmosis.

• third,Osmosis has the highest IBC trading volume. Since Mars is an interchain protocol with outposts on many Cosmos chains, it makes sense for the Mars Hub to be at the center of the IBC network.

• The Mars Hub proposal to relocate to Osmosis does not contain any exclusivity clauses, and if Mars goes to Neutron, it may be restricted by the exclusivity clauses in Neutrons proposal (but on December 7, Neutrons exclusivity clauses have been removed).

Neutron

Project Description

Neutron is a permissionless smart contract platform built using the Cosmos SDK that allows developers to deploy applications once and scale them across the entire IBC network of interconnected blockchains without having to deploy or maintain multiple custom versions of their protocols .

The token is $NTRN, with a circulating market value of $147M and a current price of $0.65.

Project official website:https://neutron.org/

Official Twitter:https://twitter.com/Neutron_org

Screenshot of Neutron official website

Neutrons proposal

December 4,Neutron issued a proposal to migrate the Mars Protocol to Neutron.

The main contents of the proposal are:

• The Neutron Foundation will allocate US$3 million USDC to the Mars Protocol Foundation every quarter for two years to fund the development and development of the Mars Protocol.

• The Mars Protocol Foundation will award 60,000,000 MARS tokens to the Neutron Foundation. Granted MARS tokens will unlock linearly over six years, and granted tokens can be used for governance during the lock-up period.

• The Mars and Neutron Foundation will work to ensure that the MARS tokens awarded are used for the mutual benefit of the Mars and Neutron protocols.

• The Mars Protocol Foundation will work to propose and support the migration of Mars Hub to Neutron and will further work to propose and support the following goals, all of which are subject to final approval by the Mars Council:

• Mars v2 will be deployed on Neutron by the end of the third quarter of 2024.

• Mars governance and MARS tokens will be transferred to Neutron by the end of Q4 2024.

• Starting January 1, 2024, major protocol upgrades will launch first on Neutron. have

• 10% of the Mars Protocol DAO revenue will be used for the mutual benefit of the Mars and Neutron protocols within ten years.

market view

The migration of Mars Protocol has caused a lot of discussion in the three-party communities of Mar, Neutron, and Osmosis. Shenchao has compiled some popular opinions in the market for your reference.

There is a general consensus within the community that both Osmosis and Neutron have their own unique strengths and weaknesses.

Advantages of moving to Osmosis

• No exclusivity (but currently Neutron has also deleted the exclusivity clause, and the two are back to the same starting point)

• If Mars were to build perps (perpetual contracts), it might come to market sooner because Mars v2 is already deployed on Osmosis

• Compared with Neutron, Osmosis has a larger community and more frequent activities.

• Osmosis is the DeFi hub of Cosmos

Disadvantages of moving to Osmosis

• Osmosis technology innovates quickly, which is beneficial to Osmosis DEX itself. But it may be harmful to Osmosis L1 and Mars.

• Much of Osmosiss development efforts will be focused on the Osmosis product, rather than the tools and services that help other applications build on Osmosis

• Osmosis and Mars are potential competitors

Advantages of moving to Neutron

• If Mars develops smoothly in the later stage, Mars is likely to become Neutron’s flagship defi product

• Neutron provides a neutral platform that allows Mars to build v2 without competing with native projects

• The team behind Neutron comes from P2P (the same team that built Lido) and they are experienced builders

• Neutron is more of a general-purpose chain than Osmosis, so its incentives are more aligned with Mars long-term goals

Disadvantages of moving to Neutron

• Compared with Osmosis, Neutron has fewer users, less activity, fewer applications, and a smaller community.

• The major protocol upgrade will be exclusively available to Neutron for three months starting January 1, 2024, a 3-month delay could be detrimental to Mars

In general, the opinion of whether the v2 version of Mars Protocol should be deployed on Neutron or Osmosis has caused a lot of discussion in these three communities, and the heated discussion is expected to continue for another 3 weeks. Mars Protocol plans to launch it on December 26th. Governance proposals are published on the chain for voting.

To be clear, neither proposal involves Mars Protocol giving up"Osmosis "or"Neutron". Mars Protocol has strategic deployment intentions on these two application chains. Let us wait and see how it will develop in the future.

However, as the market picks up, the competition for users and TVL among the infrastructure within the ecosystem has become increasingly fierce; it is certainly not the last time that an application wins the favor of many parties.

The desire for traffic will always be the constant theme of the development of Web3 projects.