Secret Network has proposed relocating its SCRT token and core operations from Cosmos to the Ethereum layer-2 Arbitrum, citing growing security risks and thinning developer and liquidity support on Cosmos.
The team, which has run privacy-preserving smart contracts on Cosmos since 2020, said the ecosystem landscape has shifted. A central concern is that advances in AI make it far easier to analyze and exploit legacy code: ‘‘Old code is becoming dramatically easier to analyze … With AI, the cost of attacking stale code is falling across the board,’’ the proposal states. The rise of powerful models such as Anthropic’s newest releases has, according to Secret, increased the capability to discover and weaponize vulnerabilities in under-maintained software.
The proposal follows a June exploit involving the Axelar–Secret IBC bridge that resulted in roughly $4.7 million in bridged assets being lost. While the incident did not directly affect SCRT’s native token, the team argues it is emblematic of the risks of aging tooling and bridges, risks they say are amplified by AI-assisted analysis.
Beyond security, Secret cites liquidity and ecosystem reasons for the move. The team described Arbitrum as offering ‘‘deep liquidity, tooling, wallet and exchange support, and thousands of builders composing with one another,’’ while saying liquidity on Cosmos has thinned and many projects have migrated elsewhere.
Relevant metrics cited by the proposal and public trackers include:
– Cosmos ecosystem total value locked (TVL) around $2 billion, down roughly 88% from its 2021 peak.
– Arbitrum TVL about $17.4 billion, making it the leading L2 by that measure.
– Secret Network’s own TVL on Cosmos is roughly $1.3 million.
As proposed, the migration would require a governance vote. If approved, Secret plans a one-time snapshot of SCRT balances on Sept. 1; that snapshot would be used to issue a new ERC-20 SCRT token on Arbitrum.
SCRT holders reacted negatively to the announcement: the token fell about 24% in a 24-hour period to roughly $0.041, a decline of more than 99% from its 2021 all-time high.
Secret is not alone in moving away from Cosmos. Recent departures include NilChain (a privacy-focused chain that migrated to Ethereum), Sei Network (which completed a Cosmos-to-EVM transition and closed its native Cosmos transaction layer), and Noble (a stablecoin protocol that announced a move to Ethereum earlier in the year). These shifts are cited by proponents of the Secret proposal as evidence of builders and liquidity concentrating on EVM-compatible chains.
The proposal frames the migration as a defensive and pragmatic step: reducing exposure to aging infrastructure and leveraging Arbitrum’s larger liquidity, developer tooling, and wallet/exchange support. A governance vote will determine whether the planned Sept. 1 snapshot and ERC-20 issuance proceed.