IBC protocol: Expanding beyond Cosmos

The flagship blockchain communication standard Cosmos IBC is expanding beyond the Cosmos ecosystem. This article will cover:

1. What is the IBC protocol?

2. How will it conquer blockchain interoperability?

3. Who is currently building IBC and extending its interoperability beyond Cosmos?

1. What is IBC?

It is the leading Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) and has been battle-tested with 56 connected chains on the mainnet.

Some compare the IBC protocol to the ICP/TP of the Internet Network.

liquid riley @interchainriley

1/6 Blockchain networks are just like the early days of 🖥️ networks when there was a debate: Whether supercomputer/monolithic L1s would rule them all 🤔 Turns out: Computers interoperating using TCP/IP rule the world & Cosmos IBC is following the same path. Why?👇🧵

Three core layers of IBC protocol and its analogy with to the Internet Network:

• Application <> HTTP, gRPC ⇒ IBC interchain accounts.

• Transport <> TCP, UDP ⇒ IBC channels.

• State <> Physical network ⇒ IBC connections & light clients.

2. How will it conquer blockchain interoperability?

Other bridges like:

• Optimistic bridges (Nomad, Optimism rollup)

• Canonical bridges (Ronin bridge, Polygon bridge)

• zk-bridges (Starkware)

• Multi-sig bridges (Axelar)

are incompatible with each other and still need a unified transport layer. Solution?

IBC protocol: a standard for blockchain communication.

3. Who is working on IBC beyond Cosmos?

@PolymerDAO: the IBC Transport Hub. They build a modular interoperability protocol for all chains by hosting the Transport Layer and State Layer. Starting with connecting:

• Ethereum.

• Eth L2 like Eigen Layer.

• BTC through Babylon chain.

• Rollup.

• CelestiaOrg

• and more.

Other teams that are working on IBC beyond Cosmos:

• to Polkadot: Composable Finance.

• to Near: Octopus Network.

• to Avax: Landslide Network.

• to Ethereum L2s: Amherst Labs.

• Electron Labs: build IBC & Tendermint implementation in Solidity. They already have ETH <> Near IBC bridge on the testnet.

4. Teams that are working on IBC infrastructure

• Strangelove Labs: coordinating with many teams to expand IBC.

• Informal Systems: building the Rust implementation of the relayer.

• Interchain Foundation: maintaining the IBC repo and stewarding of Interchain Stack.

• Nomic BTC: working on Rust implementation of IBC with Informal Systems.

• @Anoma @Penumbrazone: extending IBC beyond the Cosmos SDK.

• @SideProtocol: adding more features to IBC by building atomic swap protocol that allows cross-chain swap in a bridgeless manner. This, together with the Interchain Account will unlock innovative IBC apps.

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