Cosmos Labs buys Mintscan, opens Seoul unit for Hub work

Cosmos Labs has acquired Mintscan, a block explorer for the Cosmos ecosystem, and opened a Seoul-based subsidiary called Cosmos Labs Korea. The unit will oversee parts of the Cosmos infrastructure, add engineering capacity for the Cosmos Hub and pursue enterprise adoption.

Discussions over the sale began in October after co-founders of Stamper, the legal name of Cosmostation, approached Cosmos Labs, Barry Plunkett, co-CEO of Cosmos Labs, said. He declined to disclose the deal size, how it was financed or whether Cosmos Hub (ATOM) tokens were part of the payment. A select group of Mintscan employees will join Cosmos Labs; the full roster will be announced after onboarding. Stamper’s remaining business units will continue to operate independently.

Mintscan, which tracks more than 80 Cosmos-based blockchains, will be combined with other infrastructure projects including Skip:Go and IBC Eureka and integrated with direct engineering work on the Cosmos Hub. Cosmos Labs said the consolidation increases the team responsible for maintaining shared services that support the network.

The expanded organization will focus on two priority tracks: enterprise adoption and acceleration of the Cosmos Hub product roadmap. On the enterprise track, Cosmos Labs intends to pursue institutional use cases for the Cosmos technology stack, including tokenized deposits, real-world assets and capital markets infrastructure built internally and by teams across the ecosystem. The public infrastructure track will concentrate on developing the Hub’s roadmap and maintaining tools for user onboarding, cross-chain transfers via IBC, governance participation, staking and asset use.

Plunkett added, “The team joining us today has been building in Cosmos for eight years and shares our conviction about where the ecosystem can go from here.” He described the technical aim as a “connect once, access everything” model to reduce the need for multiple separate integrations when networks and institutions want to interoperate.

Cosmos Labs Korea will be based in Seoul and will manage combined engineering and infrastructure responsibilities while coordinating with regional developers and institutional partners.