Layer 1 blockchain
Neutron ticker NTRN
Summary
Proof-of-stake chain on the Cosmos SDK with CometBFT consensus and permissionless CosmWasm contracts. On-chain queries on 2026-09-27 showed 11 bonded validators (maximum 13), a 20-day unbonding period, and 5% slashing for double-signing. The May 2026 v11 upgrade added inflationary minting and slashing penalties and replaced contract-based DAO voting with the standard Cosmos governance module. A block commits once validators holding more than 2/3 of voting power precommit it. A June 2026 governance proposal retuned minting because the block interval was being raised from about 1 second to about 7 seconds; blocks were about 7 seconds apart in late September 2026. On 22 September 2026 a passed governance proposal gave an attacker admin control of Astroport and other contracts. Validators halted the chain and restarted it on 25 September with software that restored those contracts. 915161720242638
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchainNeutron (chain ID neutron-1) is a Cosmos SDK proof-of-stake chain with its own validator set. From its May 2023 launch until the April 2025 v6.0.0 upgrade it was a Cosmos Hub consumer chain whose blocks were signed by Hub validators under Interchain Security; since then only NTRN stake secures it. It has been in long-term maintenance mode since 1 July 2026, with no core development team and a revocable, security-only maintainer (Solva) appointed by governance.
- Settlement family
- Cosmos SDK
- Scarce resource
- Stake (proof of stake)
- State model
- Accounts
- Finality
- Economic finality
- Who makes blocks
- Validators selected round-robin in proportion to voting power, per the CometBFT consensus specification. On 2026-09-27 the three largest of the 11 bonded validators held about 35.6% of bonded stake.
- Fork choice
- No Nakamoto-style fork choice: a height is decided by +2/3 precommits from the active set. Two conflicting commits would need at least 1/3 of voting power to double-sign, which is attributable. With 11 validators, the three largest together can stop block production.
Qualifications
- Shared security · Not applicable. Neutron used Cosmos Hub validators through Interchain Security from launch until the v6.0.0 upgrade at height 22041500 (about 10 April 2025). Since then its security rests on its own NTRN-staked validators. The chain registry's asset-list description of NTRN still mentions Hub security; that text is out of date.
- Ibc · Applies. IBC connects Neutron to other chains through on-chain light clients. It is recorded under bridges and is not a rollup or channel layer.
- Governance control of contracts · Applies. Since the v11 upgrade the standard governance module acts as the authority of the smart-contract module, and the contract module lets that authority change the admin of, or migrate, any contract, whoever its admin is. In September 2026 proposal 9 used this to hand 11 contracts to the proposer, although their admins were Astroport's satellite contract, Drop's own contracts and a separate multisig, not Neutron governance. Cosmos Labs reports the proposal was the attack.
- Emergency recovery · Contested. No blocks were produced from 22 September 07:43 UTC to 25 September 13:28 UTC 2026. The restart block returned affected contracts to earlier code without any transaction doing so, which indicates validators ran software that changed state directly. That protected users, and it also shows a small validator set can coordinate such changes.
- Maintenance status · Partial. Long-term maintenance since 1 July 2026: the original node repository is archived, Neutron web properties redirect to a withdrawal guide, and Solva holds a revocable security-only mandate approved by governance in August 2026.
- Tps · Not applicable. No Neutron throughput figure is recorded. The roughly 7-second block interval cited in the June 2026 governance proposal is an interval, not a capacity claim.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Security and Scalability Contested
- Gives up
- Breadth of consensus participation. Governance cut the active set from 18 to 13 in June 2026 to lower latency, only 11 validators were bonded at review, and three of them together hold more than a third of stake. Application safety also depends on governance turnout and scrutiny, which failed in September 2026.Security here means single-commit settlement finality, not protection of applications. The reading is contested: finality did not stop a passed proposal from handing contract control to an attacker, and recovery depended on validators halting the chain and running software whose source was not public at review. Neutron no longer receives Cosmos Hub validator security.
- Full node at home
- Practical at home 810122139Neutron's node guide (docs source, March 2026) lists minimums of 4 cores, 16 GB RAM, a 500 GB SSD and 100 Mbps, and recommends 8 cores, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe and 1 Gbps. Polkachu's pruned snapshot on 27 September 2026 was about 39 GB. Upgrade notes through v11 recommend 64 GB of RAM, or swap, during upgrades. The v11.2.1 and v11.3.0 security releases shipped as prebuilt binaries that operators were told not to build from source, so the code could not always be checked. Archive-node needs were not measured.
- Throughput claims
- No classified figure recorded
Scaling layers
No scaling layer recorded in this profile.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Unknown | A trust-minimized cross-party swap mechanism on Neutron was not reviewed. IBC transfers and DEX trades are not atomic swaps in this sense. |
| Authenticated data publication | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Light clients | Built into the protocolLimited scope | CometBFT consensus produces the validator-signed commits that IBC light clients check. IBC (ibc-go v10 per the chain registry) verifies counterparty chains with on-chain light clients; relayers carry proofs but do not replace verification. Limited: this light verification serves IBC, where counterparty chains' on-chain light clients check Neutron's commits; no user-facing light client for Neutron itself was reviewed. 127 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No payment or state channel layer anchored to Neutron was reviewed. IBC channels are messaging paths, not payment channels. |
| Programmable spending | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | CosmWasm contracts; on-chain parameters on 2026-09-27 allow anyone to upload and instantiate code. A contract's admin can migrate it to new code, and a passed governance proposal can take over any contract's admin role, which the September 2026 attack exploited. 118243336 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; no feature for cancelling, delaying or reclaiming a payment, and no predefined recovery path, was verified. The September 2026 recovery was an emergency, validator-coordinated software change, not a feature users can set up. 2425 |
| Rollups | Unknown | No source was cited for absence, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown rather than not present. Earlier finding: no rollup settling to Neutron was found in reviewed sources. IBC-connected chains are separate sovereign chains, not rollups. |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | UnknownAstroport, Neutron DEX (withdraw-only) | Astroport's site lists Neutron. Its Neutron pools were drained in the 22 September 2026 attack and the contracts were restored at restart; current liquidity was not measured. Neutron's built-in DEX has been withdraw-only since the April 2026 v10.3.0 upgrade (on-chain parameter confirmed). 6192430 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | None found | Circle's USDC list includes Noble but not Neutron. USDC on Neutron is an IBC voucher from Noble (and axlUSDC comes via Axelar), not issuance on Neutron. 228 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | Algorithmic or hybrid stablecoins on Neutron were not reviewed. |
| Bridges | Native to the protocolIBC (ibc-go), Axelar (axlUSDC, Lido wstETH satellite) | IBC links Neutron to Noble, the Cosmos Hub, Celestia, dYdX and other chains; the chain registry lists IBC assets and an Ethereum-bridged wstETH. Neutron's bridge web page now redirects to the withdrawal guide. Circle CCTP does not list Neutron. Risk: IBC safety depends on each counterparty chain and correct light-client configuration; the Axelar route adds trust in Axelar's validators. In September 2026 the attacker moved stolen assets out over bridges before the halt, and bridge rate limits are now controlled by Neutron governance. 2914242729 |
| Block explorers | Established in the ecosystemMintscan, Celatone, ezstaking, WhisperNode, Validatorinfo, Valopers | The Cosmos chain registry lists Mintscan, ezstaking, WhisperNode, Validatorinfo and Valopers for Neutron; Celatone serves a Neutron explorer page. Listing is not a quality check, and explorer data is provider-indexed. 13132 |
| Hardware wallets | Unknown | See custody rows: Ledger support for Neutron could not be confirmed from vendor pages, and Trezor's Neutron page says Trezor does not support it. 40 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | UnknownSame as native: Unknown | Ledger's Neutron coin page returned 404 and the supported-assets listing did not show NTRN on its first page. Neutron uses the same key derivation coin type (118) as the Cosmos Hub, but signing through Ledger's Cosmos app via third-party wallets was not verified. |
| Trezor | None foundSame as native: No | Cannot: Manage Neutron with a Trezor: Trezor's Neutron page says Trezor does not currently support NeutronThird-party signing paths for Neutron with a Trezor device were not checked. 40 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for Neutron yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
-
Governance attack drained Neutron contracts; chain halted and restarted
Proposal 9, an expedited proposal passed on 22 September 2026, made its submitter the admin of 11 contracts, including Astroport pools and staking, two Drop contracts and a vesting contract. Cosmos Labs reports that the attacker added malicious code, drained liquidity and bridged part of it to other chains. No Neutron blocks were produced from 22 September 07:43 UTC to 25 September 13:28 UTC; at restart the affected contracts were back on earlier code. Solva reported that attack-linked voting power was removed and contained funds were placed in a community-controlled multisig.
- Proposal:proposal 9 passed 2026-09-22
- Implementation:attack executed; contracts restored by restart software
- Release:restart software distributed privately; source not public at review
- Activation:chain producing blocks again from 2026-09-25 13:28 UTC
Sources: Neutron on-chain governance (via Solva REST endpoint) — Governance proposal 9: AIATO: AI Agent Takeover. Phase 1: Agent Admin Registration (external site) · Solva public REST endpoint for neutron-1 — Code history of the Astroport NTRN-USDC pair contract (on-chain query) (external site) · Solva public RPC endpoint for neutron-1 — Neutron block 61635574 (last block before the September 2026 halt) (external site) · Solva public RPC endpoint for neutron-1 — Neutron block 61635575 (first block after the September 2026 halt) (external site) · Cosmos Labs (Cosmos Hub forum) — Neutron Governance Attack: Cosmos Hub Response and Recovery Update (external site) · Solva (CryptoCrew) on X — Solva (CryptoCrew) post on the Neutron mainnet restart (X syndication record) (external site)
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Governance appointed Solva as Neutron's security-only maintainer
Proposal 4, submitted 14 August and passed 21 August 2026, appointed Solva as security maintainer for up to 12 months, recognised solva-solutions/neutron as the canonical patch repository and funded a capped allocation from the community pool. The first patch under the mandate, v11.2.0, was applied at height 61317700 around 27 August 2026.
- Proposal:proposal 4 passed 2026-08-21
- Implementation:mandate active
- Release:v11.2.0 released 2026-08-24; v11.2.1 on 2026-09-07
- Activation:v11.2.0 applied at height 61317700
Sources: Neutron on-chain governance (via Solva REST endpoint) — Governance proposal 4: Neutron Security Maintenance Mandate (external site) · Solva — Proposal: Neutron Long-Term Security Maintenance Mandate and 12-Month Funding (external site) · Solva — Neutron v11.2.0 release (external site) · Solva — solva-solutions/neutron (canonical maintenance repository) (external site)
-
Neutron v11.1.0 released with CosmWasm dependency updates, scheduled for height 60580000
Neutron v11.1.0, published on GitHub on 25 June 2026, is marked as a consensus-breaking release that operators must not switch to early. Its listed changes update the CosmWasm virtual machine library (wasmvm, from 3.0.3 to 3.0.5 in the notes) and the wasmd contract module (v0.61.12, then a further update), and its upgrade handler only runs the standard module migrations. The operator notes set a coordinated in-place upgrade at height 60580000, about 1 July 2026 15:00 UTC, and require libwasmvm 3.0.7. It is the last release in the original neutron-org repository, which was later archived.
- Proposal:not stated in the release or upgrade notes; no proposal record was reviewed in this pass
- Implementation:released as v11.1.0 (wasmvm and wasmd updates, standard module migrations)
- Release:released 2026-06-25
- Activation:scheduled for height 60580000, about 2026-07-01 15:00 UTC, per the upgrade notes; on-chain application not checked in this pass
Sources: Neutron contributors — Neutron v11.1.0 release (external site) · Neutron contributors (mainnet-assets) — Neutron v11.1.0 Upgrade, Instructions (external site) · Neutron contributors — v11.1.0 upgrade handler source (external site) · Neutron contributors — neutron-org/neutron releases feed (external site) · Neutron contributors — neutron-org/neutron (archived repository and maintenance notice) (external site)
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Neutron entered long-term maintenance mode
Governance proposal 1, submitted 22 June and passed 29 June 2026, said Neutron was entering long-term maintenance. It cut the active validator set from 18 to 13, retuned minting for a block interval of about 7 seconds instead of 1, and lowered the minimum deposit ratio for proposals. Hadron Labs' engagement ended on 30 June; on the same day the Neutron account said foundation-supported front ends were deprecated and published a command-line withdrawal guide.
- Proposal:proposal 1 passed 2026-06-29
- Implementation:parameter changes executed on passage
- Release:not a software release
- Activation:maintenance mode from 2026-07-01
Sources: Neutron on-chain governance (via Solva REST endpoint) — Governance proposal 1: Governance, staking and mint parameters updates + Fund community pool (external site) · Neutron on X — Full Guide: Using CLI to Withdraw Funds From Neutron Applications (X syndication record) (external site) · Neutron contributors — Neutron v11.0.0 release (external site) · Solva — Proposal: Neutron Long-Term Security Maintenance Mandate and 12-Month Funding (external site)
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Neutron v11 moved governance to the standard module and added inflation and slashing
Neutron v11.0.0, applied at height 56277000 around 13 May 2026, replaced contract-based DAO voting with the standard Cosmos governance module, added minting and distribution modules, set slashing penalties and removed the fee-burning and revenue modules. Because token voting had not reached quorum since 1 April 2026, the upgrade height was submitted by the DAO-elected privileged multisig.
- Proposal:scheduled by the DAO-elected privileged multisig because token voting lacked quorum
- Implementation:released as v11.0.0
- Release:released 2026-05-12
- Activation:applied at height 56277000
Sources: Neutron contributors — Neutron v11.0.0 release (external site) · Neutron contributors (mainnet-assets) — Neutron v11.0.0 Upgrade, Instructions (external site) · Neutron contributors — v11.0.0 upgrade handler source (external site) · Solva public REST endpoint for neutron-1 — Applied upgrade plan v11.0.0 (on-chain query) (external site) · Solva (solva-solutions/neutron-wasmd) — CosmWasm module authorization policy (Neutron wasmd fork, v0.61.14-neutron) (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for Neutron through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- Neutron's own websites, documentation site and forum redirect to an X post that could not be read directly; the official documentation used here is the GitHub docs source, last updated March 2026, which predates the v11 governance, inflation and slashing changes.
- The neutron-contributor post-mortem of the September 2026 governance attack had not been published at review time; losses, recovered amounts on Neutron and the exact restart changes are not recorded here.
- The Solva restart post was available only as a truncated preview; its full list of restrictions (including staking restrictions) was not verified.
- The v11.3.0 source code and the software used at the 25 September 2026 restart were not public at review time, so their exact behaviour was not reviewed.
- Whether the April 2025 v6.0.0 upgrade is the event Neutron's docs call the Mercury upgrade is inferred, not stated in a single source.
- Current Astroport and Neutron DEX liquidity after the attack was not measured; the AMM row is marked unknown.
- Ledger support for Neutron could not be confirmed (Ledger's coin page returned 404); third-party wallet signing paths with Ledger or Trezor devices were not checked.
- Archive-node storage and the full unpruned state size were not captured; only a third-party pruned snapshot size was recorded.
- No atomic-swap mechanism, reversible or delayed transfer or recovery feature, channel layer or algorithmic stablecoin on Neutron was reviewed.
- On-chain facts come from public REST and RPC endpoints run by Solva; they were not cross-checked against an independently operated archive node, although a second public endpoint returned the same parameters.
- The date the block interval moved from about 1 second to about 7 seconds was not pinned down: the public nodes checked had pruned June and July 2026 blocks, and the June 2026 proposal only says the change was under way.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- Neutron chain registry record (external site)
- Neutron asset list (external site)
- neutron-org/neutron (archived repository and maintenance notice) (external site)
- solva-solutions/neutron (canonical maintenance repository) (external site)
- Neutron v6.0.0 Upgrade, Instructions (external site)
- Neutron v10.3.0 release (DEX withdraw-only) (external site)
- Neutron v11.0.0 release (external site)
- Neutron v11.0.0 Upgrade, Instructions (external site)
- v11.0.0 upgrade handler source (external site)
- Neutron v11.2.1 security release (external site)
- Proposal: Neutron Long-Term Security Maintenance Mandate and 12-Month Funding (external site)
- Running a Node (docs source) (external site)
- Tokenomics (docs source, pre-v11) (external site)
- Bridge Contracts (docs source) (external site)
- Neutron staking parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
- Neutron bonded validators (on-chain query) (external site)
- Neutron slashing parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
- Neutron CosmWasm code upload parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
- Neutron DEX module parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
- Governance proposal 1: Governance, staking and mint parameters updates + Fund community pool (external site)
- Governance proposal 8: v11.3.0 upgrade (external site)
- Governance proposal 9: AIATO Phase 1: Agent Admin Registration (external site)
- Neutron block 61635575 (first block after the September 2026 halt) (external site)
- Neutron Governance Attack: Cosmos Hub Response and Recovery Update (external site)
- Solva (CryptoCrew) post on the Neutron mainnet restart (X syndication record) (external site)
- Byzantine Consensus Algorithm (external site)
- IBC overview (external site)
- USDC contract addresses (external site)
- CCTP supported blockchains (external site)
- Astroport (external site)
- Mintscan Neutron explorer (external site)
- Neutron Explorer | Celatone Explorer (external site)
- CosmWasm module authorization policy (Neutron wasmd fork, v0.61.14-neutron) (external site)
- Contract record of the Astroport NTRN-USDC pair (on-chain query) (external site)
- Contract record of the Astroport satellite contract on Neutron (on-chain query) (external site)
- Neutron block 61633005 results (execution of proposal 9) (external site)
- Neutron block 61649155 (external site)
- Neutron block 61659155 (10,000 blocks after block 61649155) (external site)
- Neutron node snapshot (external site)
- Neutron wallet (external site)
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Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding