During the last massive crash of the market - which doesn't seem completely over, by the way - one token (or, to be more precise, one ecosystem) held surprisingly well. ATOM, OSMOSIS, JUNO were by far the least affected by the dump.
There are many reasons for that. For instance, a big part of the supply of these tokens is locked in PoS, by staking. The cooldown period is between 14 days (Osmosis) to 21 days (Cosmos), which makes the funds illiquid. You simply can't sell it, so it stays there. There are also more subtle reasons, like the token distribution, which doesn't include as many VCs or private funds as other assets. And we all know that these VCs are more risk tolerant, so to speak (didn't want to use "more prone to market manipulation" here). Even Bitcoin, these days, is praised when Michael Saylor, which is "institutional money", makes a large buy. What we don't know, though, is when "institutional money" dumps, but we can look at the charts. Wink-wink.
To make a long story short, the Cosmos ecosystem finally proved itself during a very harsh test. With good comes bad, though, because during the last couple of days some important voices in the ecosystem decided to make a tantrum. Probably uncomfortable with the fact that all tokens in the ecosystem are seen as "Cosmos", and that may take value from other projects, and spread it more or less equally across the system, some builders started to argue publicly that we should make a difference between Cosmos Hub, and Cosmos, as an ecosystem.
For any retail holder, this is a non-issue. They literally don't care how it's named. All they need to know is that the project is solid, predictable, reliable and performant. If it includes other "sub-projects", or "para-chains", or "lateral chains", or "IBC chains", that's so unimportant for them, that they ran out of fucks to give many eons ago.
The Reverse Onion Process
As dumb as it may seem, this position of some of the developers, is, in fact, natural. It's the need for identity that every teenager has. And we all know, that in this process, teenagers tend to attack first the people who actually brought them to that point, namely, their parents. I've been there, on both sides, as a teenager and as a parent, and I recognize the symptoms.
Projects like Osmosis, which grew incredibly fast in less than a year, now feel the need to assert themselves. But they forget that they couldn't experience that level of growth without the foundation built for years by the Cosmos team. Osmosis brought many improvements, an excellent UI, less friction and good marketing. But without IBC (which was developed by Cosmos) it wouldn't even reach a tenth of its current TVL.
What these "teenagers" are doing is the "reverse onion process". Before explaining that, I want to be very clear that I use the concept "teenager" in a symbolic way, I have a tremendous amount of respect for all the developers in the ecosystem, and it's not meant to be derogatory in any way.
Now, about that onion.
You see, when you peel an onion, the closer you get to the core, the more you feel the need to cry.
The Cosmos ecosystem started from that very core, where you actually cry, and built layer on top of layer, to stop the crying. They built the Tendermint BFT chain, Starport, IBC and, overall, they architected an ecosystem of chains, at a time when people were still chasing the next big "blockchain of all blockchains". All these layers are making now possible the development of a cloud of chains, all linked together seamlessly.
The crying is gone, the problem is solved.
Trying to undo this, is akin to starting to peel the onion again, to separate the layers from their natural order. It's a "reverse onion process".
I understand the need for assertion from these new and incredibly talented and hard working builders. But, just like a teenager, they need to stay there, to keep proving themselves, without damaging the layers, without destroying the very structure that allowed them to express themselves.
Like the meme says, they need to stay unbothered, moisturized, happy, in their lane, focused, flourishing.
Otherwise, all those layers they are trying to peel back with all this naming tantrum will unleash the mother of all crying.