Escaping Cosmos' one-way door, Akash brings 300 million tokens to Solana
Author: David, TechFlow
TechFlow Reads: As one of the earliest star app chains in the Cosmos ecosystem, the decentralized computing power marketplace Akash is undergoing a substantive “self-rescue” and restructuring. This long-running legacy project has found that the cost of maintaining an independent sovereign chain is dragging down the expansion of its computing business. The Proposal 346 launched on October 26 shows that over 98% of votes support abandoning the independent sovereign chain to fully migrate its tokens and protocol to Solana. After settling the infrastructure bill, the old project is cutting off a limb to survive in pursuit of genuine commercial development.
Remember Akash, the legacy DePIN project in the Cosmos ecosystem?
As of October 27, the Governance Proposal 346 regarding the Akash protocol migration has received 98.42% approval votes. The turnout exceeded 50%, far surpassing the quorum threshold.
Although the voting window will remain open until November 2, Akash founder Greg Osuri has publicly confirmed that the migration is inevitable.
For this legacy project deeply rooted in the Cosmos ecosystem for years, abandoning the akashnet-2 sovereign chain is a risk-containment move. Under a clear computing business model, the former narrative dividend of the “Appchain” has turned into a concrete financial and operational burden.
The Economic Burden of 100 Redundant Nodes
The Akash team has laid out a clear financial breakdown in their official blog.
Under the current Cosmos architecture, Akash operates its own independent sovereign chain. Currently, about 100 validators are staking substantial amounts of AKT tokens, but the sole purpose of this capital is to secure consensus safety for the network, providing no direct business value to buyers or sellers in the computing marketplace.
Meanwhile, the core development team must continuously maintain forked versions of cosmos-sdk and CometBFT manually, while coordinating node upgrades across the entire network.
As a pure computing rental marketplace, Akash’s order and settlement mechanisms actually do not require deep underlying customization.
Through the AEP-79 proposal launched in 2025, the team evaluated multiple options including retaining the sovereign chain, moving to an Ethereum L2, or transitioning to the Solana mainnet. Final data comparisons revealed that if the business is restructured into a native program on Solana, the daily network fees for the entire computing market would be merely 0.075 SOL (roughly ten-plus dollars).
By relinquishing control over the consensus mechanism, Akash can directly offload millions of dollars in capital lock-in and high development costs, focusing resources on acquiring real customers in the AI computing market.
The Irreversible One-Way Gate and Retired Validators
To execute this “self-rescue,” Akash has designed a high-friction, one-way migration path.
According to the proposal details, within two to three weeks after Proposal 346 passes, security-audited AKT will be issued natively as an SPL token on Solana, launching a two-year one-way migration portal.
This is an irreversible process.
Once holders transfer AKT from Cosmos to Solana (maintaining a 1:1 exchange rate and 6 decimal places), there is no pathway back.
This phased migration mechanism has sparked objections from some legacy chain maintainers. The cosmosrescue node, holding 0.63% of the voting power, cast a dissenting vote, pointing out a mismatch in program design: Proposal 346 requires token holders to commit to asset transfers when the one-way gate opens, but the official code cutover for the computing marketplace still awaits another vote months later. During the window period, critical rules such as the handling scheme for unmigrated tokens after the old chain halts and the new chain's emission curve remain undetermined.
Meanwhile, for those 100 validators maintaining the old chain, their lifecycle is now ticking down. Ninety days after the marketplace’s final switch, the old chain will completely halt, bringing an end to validator roles and staking rewards.
Cosmos Exits, Solana Siphons
Akash’s migration is a microcosm of the broader restructuring of legacy Web3 infrastructure.
In its 2026 evaluation, the Akash team explicitly ruled out remaining within the Cosmos framework. The reason lies in liquidity and the clustering effect of similar projects. The Cosmos ecosystem is experiencing noticeable capital and project drain: the native stablecoin issuance chain Noble departed in March this year, while projects like DATA Network have also migrated to Sui due to excessive costs of maintaining independent chains.
Conversely, Solana has effectively taken over leading DePIN networks.
Helium shut down its native chain and completed its migration in 2023, followed by Render, io.net, and other projects with a combined valuation exceeding $3.5 billion landing on Solana. For computing projects requiring high-frequency billing like Akash, Solana offers a $15 billion stablecoin supply and over 2.2 million active paying users daily—a clearing channel essential for integrating institutional capital (such as BlackRock’s BUIDL) and expanding enterprise clients.
The pivot of legacy projects often comes with heavy historical baggage.
Leaving its former home with nearly 300 million tokens, Akash validates a maturing business logic. When businesses require genuine growth, adopting a shared public blockchain infrastructure with low marginal costs and deep stablecoin liquidity is far more vital for survival than maintaining an expensive independent chain.
If You Hold $AKT, Pay Attention to the Following
With the underlying switch, the circulation paths and staking rules for nearly 300 million AKT tokens will undergo fundamental changes. The proposal clarifies the following operational mechanisms and restrictions:
1:1 One-Way Exchange: Within 2 to 3 weeks after the proposal passes, the official cross-chain portal will launch (with a 2-year window). AKT will be issued on Solana as an SPL token (ticker and 6 decimal places remain unchanged). The migration is strictly one-way and irreversible; AKT sent to Solana will cease circulating on the Cosmos side and absolutely cannot be returned.
Stake Unbonding (21-Day Lock-Up): Stakers must first initiate unbonding (which takes 21 days). The official portal supports triggering unbonding and queuing for cross-chain migration in a single transaction. Before the official computing marketplace cutover, staked assets remaining on the old chain will continue to generate yields.
Zero-Friction and Custodial Differences: Self-custody wallet users need to connect both addresses via the official portal to complete cross-chain transactions. The official team will provide fee-paying relays (eliminating the need to purchase SOL in advance). Centralized exchanges will handle the process automatically in the background, requiring no manual intervention from users.
Top Security Threat: The official team explicitly warns that “phishing sites” targeting cross-chain approvals pose the highest risk. Users must wait for the official channel to publish the only authentic Portal domain.