[DRC] Revive Expired DyDx IBC Client to Sifchain

Hi DyDx!
@Matthew-Informal
I would like to apologize to everyone including Informal Systems for not first realizing that your governance system has a robust process and I skipped parts of it, and second for attributing actions of Informal Systems without directly receiving their approval. Please see DRC items below for clarity.

  1. Description: The Purpose of the proposal is replace the expired DyDx IBC Client revival connected with Sifchain with a new client that holds the same security parameters of the previous one.

  2. Rationale: I am not a Sifchain history expert but there was fallout from some influential members of sifchain in 2022 and 2023. Since that time, new leadership and effort has continued work to restore the chain both in infrastructure and in capabilities. To achieve this vision of rebirth of Sifchain, Informal Systems has a contract with Sifchain to revive and restore the infrastructure but I do know the specific details.

To successfully revive IBC pathways between chains, the expired clients must be replaced on both sides and as part of the contract with Sifchain, Informal Systems created substitute clients (07-tendermint-31 for 07-tendermint-10). I (Misfits) was asked as a good citizen of the cosmos to submit governance on DyDx to renew the bridge between DyDx and Sifchain.

I kindly ask that the community and Informal Systems forgive me for my mistake in not communicating with them first. I understand if the community needs more time to review this proposal as I skipped part of the governance process, if the DyDx community believes there are no further issues I ask for your approval and will be more mindful going forward.

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Could you explain what’s happening for those who aren’t in the private validator chats?

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I actually do not know what is going on in those chats as I am not in them. My current understanding is that I did not and sifchain did not give advanced warning about the governance proposal to informal systems and it is/was being conveyed as a security risk. I do not completely understand what is being said since it is not in open chat.

–more backstory–
I validate on sentinelhub, a member of sentinel and others had trapped assets on sifchain so I went through the work to restore those bridges along with some others on sifchain to help people out. A couple days ago sifchain asked me to submit governance on dydx to restore the bridge and shared a chat in open chat from Informal systems about them creating the substitute clients.

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I don’t think it’s dYdX’s goal to save users from other networks, and your proposal without prior discussion could pose security risks. I might not fully understand the relationships between networks within Cosmos, but what does Informal Systems have to do with this situation?

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My understanding is that restoring the bridge restores functionally of GTK on sifchain (not just a bail out) . Informal has a contract to restore infrastructure on sifchain and they did the client renewal. It appears there was not socialization to the wider community yet regarding their role. I had incorrectly assumed since they are a validator on chain, that they had brought up their role in creating replacement clients for sifchain infrastructure already to the validators on DyDX.

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The sole purpose of this proposal is restoring an IBC connection that Sifchain already had with the DYDX a few months back. It does not impose financial obligations on the DYDX community, chain, or token

Sifchain does indeed have an application (GTK) that relies on an IBC connection with DYDX however the connection expired and the proposal simply renewed it.

It’s fine to go over security constraints however, the code is very boilerplate and part of a broader effort from Sifchain to revitalize itself with IBC clients across many Cosmos chains like Osmosis, etc.

(I deleted the first post as I wanted to make a slight edit and don’t see an easy way to edit messages here)

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Thank you for contributing this it provides a lot of clarity.

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It would have helped to provide a little info on the essence of such a proposal: Governance Proposals | IBC-Go

@Misfits and @Kade can you please share more details on what would such an IBC channel be used for?

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@dimitar

We want to be able to move tokens back-and-forth between the two chains and
have a use case where people execute trades on our margin platform and hedge them on DYDX. This ran live for quite a while.

We already had a close relationship with the DYDX team for working with their private API when these use cases were originally built out
Back in April last year, multiple dydx engineers spent a lot of effort helping us integrate

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Lots of new users, joining a few days ago only and posting without much context.
We appreciate the community staying on their toes & vigilant.
@RealVovochka @dimitar :+1:
Don’t trust, verify.

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Okay we understand the initial proposal was made without a proper security review and governance forum conversation, we apologize.

That said, does this group have any actual issues (security or otherwise) with the proposal https:// www. mintscan. io /dydx/proposals/210/ (apologies for the spaces, I cannot share links) We’d like to get the IBC relayer back up and are happy to change as needed before resubmitting.