Partnerships: It would be great to know which chains IST leadership is currently having conversations with to have IST as a payment token on their chains as it seems like IST could gain a strong user base by aligning collateral assets with which chains IST can be used as a payment token. If I remember correctly, Dean mentioned conversations are occurring with Omniflix and Akash in his Gateway to the Cosmos presentation.
A decentralized stablecoin like IST also seems like it would be popular among decentralized application business partners and their users, particularly those reaching into real world markets like computing (akash and cudos), storage (jackal), vpn (dvpn), carbon trading (regen), legal cannabis (bitcanna-cosmos pay), and healthcare solutions (medibloc).
As for ATOM LSTs, I think partnerships should lead the way over popularity. Finding LST provider partners that will be IST allies and advocates, (and vice versa) and open to coordinating risk management efforts and share in the cost of analyzing risks for new LST collateral assets (perhaps done through opening up non-voting seats on the Econ Committee?) are a few things I think are well worth looking into.
Diversifying the collateral assets that back IST beyond ATOM though, whether they be nonLSTs or LSTs, seems like a priority from a risk management and user growth perspective. That being said, I do wonder how useful a AXL IST vault would be to the ecosystem, particularly for decentralized apps where Axelar bridged tokens can be used, and particularly for those that but don’t have their own native stablecoin like Kujira with USK and Shade with SILK, to bridge over wBTC, wETH, etc.
Oh…and still trying to get IST listed as a tx fee payment token on Osmosis. Osmosis is looking to add USDT as a tx fee payment token and I don’t see why IST shouldn’t be added at the same time given the IST/OSMO pool is larger than the USDT/OSMO pool and other reasons that I mentioned in my post on Osmosis CommonWealth. (See: Commonwealth) Anyone that would like to use IST as a tx fee payment token on Osmosis, please feel free to chime in. I’m sure Johnny Wiles would love to hear from other people besides just me. lol. 