Proposal: Onboard Stablecoins and Ethereum Assets to CONX through Spectre

1. Motivation

Proposal 119 established a focus on onboarding Cosmos-native USDC to CONX. For users whose funds are already on Ethereum, the Cosmos-native route requires an intermediate network. The assets CONX wants to attract already exist on Ethereum; a direct connection would let users bring them onto CONX without that extra hop.

Spectre provides the infrastructure for that connection. It would complement CONX’s stablecoin onboarding by extending access to supported Ethereum assets, giving users a direct route to fund payments, purchase assets, trade, and provide liquidity within the ecosystem.

This proposal seeks community approval and funding to deploy Spectre on CONX, enabling supported stablecoins and other Ethereum assets to reach the ecosystem.

2. Ecosystem Impact

Deploying Spectre would provide CONX:

Asset utility: As CONX applications integrate these assets, they could support payments, lending, and purchases of tokenized real-world assets. Coordinating asset onboarding with DEX listings and liquidity provision would help turn cross-chain access into usable markets.
More Trading Pairs: Enable new markets across CONX’s DEX ecosystem, with supported stablecoins serving as quote assets and other tokens forming pairs with assets already on CONX.
Liquidity & Execution: Provide a direct route for liquidity providers and market makers to fund and replenish positions. With sufficient deposits, deeper pools could support larger trades with lower slippage.
New users and trading activity: A broader range of assets and pairs could attract users from connected ecosystems, introduce them to local applications, and generate trading fees for liquidity providers and participating protocols.

3. Proposal

The proposed work covers deployment and asset onboarding, followed by DEX integration and ongoing operational support, as outlined below.

[Integration & Asset Onboarding]

Spectre Deployment: Integrate Spectre with CONX’s existing stack and establish the initial Ethereum–CONX connection.
Asset Support: Enable transfers of supported stablecoins and other Ethereum assets to CONX, with documented token representations and transfer routes.
Testing & Launch: Validate transfers in both directions, complete testing and security review, and deploy the integration to mainnet.

[Maintenance & Operational Support]

Infrastructure Operations: Operate and monitor the Spectre prover and relayer infrastructure throughout 2 years.
Integration Maintenance: Address compatibility issues and coordinate updates with CONX and participating DEX teams.
Technical Support: Investigate transfer failures and provide troubleshooting and incident coordination for the deployed integration.

[Deliverables / Completion Criteria]

Mainnet Connection: Ethereum–CONX connection deployed, with public contract addresses and release versions.
Asset Transfers: Agreed assets list enabled, with a published asset list and token representations.
Transfer Validation: Successful mainnet transfers in both directions for each enabled asset, supported by public transaction records.
Documentation: Public user guides and operator documentation published, covering transfers, infrastructure operation, and incident handling.
Operational Support: Prover and relayer infrastructure operated from launch, with published uptime and incident summaries.

The requested funding supports delivery of this scope and continued operation after launch.

4. Why Spectre

The Protocol

Spectre is an interoperability protocol that extends IBC beyond Cosmos using ZK proofs, enabling supported stablecoins and other assets to move across networks. It brings together:

Trust-minimized security: Cross-chain verification without reliance on third-party bridge committees or attestors.
Speed and low costs: Reduced verification overhead, with operation on commodity hardware.
CONX compatibility: An integration that builds on CONX’s existing CosmWasm and IBC stack.

Comparison with other solutions

Horizontal bar chart of estimated annual operating cost and verification dependencies. Legacy Multi-Node Relayer & Verifier Networks uses third-party verifier operators, depending on configuration: US$200,000–300,000 per year. Legacy Oracle Middleware uses a third-party oracle network to attest messages: US$200,000–300,000 per year. Trustless Protocol (Proposed Solution) uses ZK light-client verification without a separate attestor committee: US$10,000–20,000 per year. Bar lengths use the midpoint of each range.

Team & Track Record

The Spectre team at Trustless brings experience in core blockchain development, cross-chain security, and infrastructure operations:

Core and cross-chain development: Cosmos SDK work with Binary Builders, 200+ IBC-go commits, Injective’s rate-limit module, and Osmosis Mesh Security V2.
Infrastructure: $150,000 across two Stellar Community Fund awards for RPC and indexing services, plus engineering support for Nillion, Dymension, and Celestia.
Recognition: First prize at VietChain Talents 2025 - a nationwide blockchain competition, and Best Developer Tooling at the Celestia Hackathon.

5. Funding Request

We request 6,186,243 CONX (approximately US$32,000) for a two-year engagement covering the initial integration, deployment, and ongoing operation and maintenance of Spectre on CONX.

Engagement period: 24 months, starting on the date this governance proposal passes.
Year one allocation: 3,866,402 CONX (approximately US$20,000) for integration, testing, deployment, and operation and maintenance during the first year.
Year two allocation: 2,319,841 CONX (approximately US$12,000) for continued infrastructure operation, maintenance, and technical support.
Price reference: US$0.005172768 per CONX, the arithmetic average of 30 daily closing prices from October 4–November 2, 2026 (UTC), using CoinGecko historical data.

6. Conclusion

Spectre’s protocol and the team’s cross-chain engineering experience offer a direct way to advance CONX’s asset onboarding objectives, with minimal tradeoffs across speed, cost, and security.

Through this proposal, we will deliver the integration and ongoing operations needed to improve connectivity on CONX. We invite the community to support this next step toward more assets, trading pairs, and liquidity opportunities across the ecosystem.