Cosmos Hub rejects ATOM refund proposal with 95% veto vote
Cosmos (ATOM)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
Cryptobriefing reports that Cosmos Hub governance proposal #1056 was decisively rejected after receiving a 94.64% "NoWithVeto" vote. The proposal sought to return 1.2 million ATOM seized from a Neutron attacker to their wallet. On September 22, 2026, an attacker exploited governance vulnerabilities in Neutron, spending roughly 20,199 USDC to gain control of 10 to 11 protocol contracts.
The attack caused an estimated $9.4 million in impact, with $2.1 million in ATOM bridged to the Cosmos Hub. Validators halted the Cosmos Hub at block height 33,086,740, keeping the network offline for approximately 25 hours. Upon resuming operations on September 23, validators transferred 1,227,121 ATOM into a multisig address.
The proposal also offered a 500,000 ATOM bounty to voters supporting the refund. Voting occurred from September 23 through September 30, with 63.4 million ATOM casting veto ballots. Only 0.25% of votes were "Yes," while 4.02% abstained. The harsh rejection signals the community's refusal to reward exploiters for the interchain vulnerability.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ATOM, measured when this story was written up on 25 September 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
ATOM is trading at $1.79, with a 24-hour buy ratio of 50.7% indicating balanced market participation. However, shorter-term data shows fading buying pressure, as the 1-hour buy ratio dropped to 20.7% and the 4-hour ratio fell to 30.4%. Volume delta reflects this shift, showing a net outflow of $71,154 in the last hour and $446,200 over four hours. This contrasts with the 24-hour volume delta, which remains positive at $36,432. The cumulative volume delta (CVD) closed at -$640,232, suggesting that selling pressure has outweighed buying over the full day. Net buying occurred for only 10 of the 24 hours, highlighting a lack of sustained demand.
The latest daily buy ratio of 44.7% sits at the 9th percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 49.8% - among the weakest buying days it has had.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ATOM, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, ATOM saw a 13.3% price increase and 5 days of net buying out of 7. The 7-day average buy ratio was 50.7%, matching the current 24-hour reading exactly. However, today's spot volume of $2,794,096 is lower than the weekly average, trading at 0.79x the typical level. This volume contraction suggests that while price momentum remains positive, trading activity has slowed compared to the previous week. The current day is ordinary in terms of buy ratio but unusual for its reduced volume relative to the weekly norm.