NilChain, a privacy-focused blockchain built with Nillion’s Cosmos SDK, is ending operations on Cosmos as part of broader shifts in the interoperability-focused ecosystem.
In an X announcement on February 17, the team said the network will cease operations on March 23, urging holders of the NIL token to migrate their assets to Ethereum before the shutdown.
NilChain is designed as a network for secure computation. But the chain has seemingly failed to achieve widespread adoption within the Cosmos ecosystem.
However, leaving Cosmos does not mean the end of Nillion itself, as the company plans to continue operating on Ethereum. Amid the news, nilChain’s native token NIL briefly rose more than 10% on the day to $0.06 and is currently trading around $0.053, according to data from CoinGecko.
It remains unclear why the team decided to migrate away from Cosmos. The Nillion team declined The Defiant’s request to comment on the move for this story.
NilChain may not be widely known compared to larger Layer 1 or Layer 2 networks, but Nillion has raised significant funding. In December 2022, the company closed a seed round of approximately $20 million led by Distributed Global, with participation from GSR Markets and HashKey.
It raised another $25 million in a round led by Hack VC in October 2024, with backing from the Arbitrum Foundation, Worldcoin, Sei, HashKey Capital and Animoca Brands.
Exodus from the cosmos
The move comes as Cosmos itself reassesses its direction. In July 2025, the Cosmos Hub scrapped plans to add native smart contract support, citing high costs and weak developer demand. Teams planning to deploy applications on the Hub were encouraged to build on other Cosmos-based chains instead.
That shift forced a reset for many teams and coincided with a wave of departures. Since mid-2025, several projects in the Cosmos ecosystem have announced exits or phase-outs.
Stablecoin-focused project Noble said earlier in January this year that it would be leaving Cosmos to launch its own EVM-compatible L1, saying the team wants to “meet users and developers where they already are.” Others have taken a different path, with chains like Pryzm and Quasar announcing closures or significant changes.
Some have publicly said they are leaving Cosmos after years of struggling with liquidity, user distribution, and developer traction following Terra’s collapse in 2022. Others, including infrastructure providers, argue that the ecosystem still makes sense for teams focused on interoperability rather than consumer DeFi.
TVL, app revenue and costs on Cosmos Hub. Source: DefiLlama
The Cosmos Hub itself has also seen a decline in activity. Data from DefiLlama shows that the total value captured on the network fell from about $2.65 million to about $131,000 earlier this month, the lowest level ever.
Network costs have also fallen sharply. In January, fees hit an all-time low of around $218,000, with only four of the eleven protocols deployed on the Cosmos Hub generating any revenue.
ATOM, Cosmos Hub’s native token, is down about 4% in the past 24 hours, although it is up more than 18% in the past week, according to CoinGecko.