The Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol
#IBC
is a blockchain interoperability solution that secures $30B+ in annual asset transfers for 100+ chains.
But it can be tough to understand how IBC works.
@ibcprotocol
aims to explain IBC for developers and researchers.
Welcome
@solana
to the interchain.
To overcome technical barriers to integrating IBC for Solana,
@picasso_network
built a custom solution to connect Solana to the IBC ecosystem.
IBC 2023 Recap 💥
Highlights:
- 107 connected chains
- 124 Github contributors to main IBC repos
- 1,742 PRs merged
- Dozens of features, apps, tools
- DevX and usability improvements
- Expansion to new ecosystems
Thanks to the builders and community for advancing IBC. 🧵
1/
Reminder: Interoperability is a public good.
The core IBC protocol never extracts value. No in-protocol rent extraction or hidden fees.
The code is open-source, free to use, and rigorously peer reviewed by world-class developers.
All blockchains deserve to communicate.
8000+ NFTs have been IBC transferred in 2024, powered by ICS-721, the NFT transfer module, and its Cosmwasm implementation cw-ics721.
A technical walkthrough of the module and its development story, a collaborative effort between
@stargazezone
@irisnetwork
@arkprotocol
🧵
Dymension connects RollApps with IBC via a single IBC connection to the
@Dymension
Hub. Try it:
Plus, they are developing eIBC middleware to enable token transfer for optimistic rollups without waiting the dispute period.
👇
6/
March 29, 2021: Cosmos Hub enables IBC.
March 29, 2024: IBC has the largest network of interconnected chains in the world.
On April 2, a special episode of
#InterchainJam
with
@cosmos
@ibcprotocol
and iconic teams from across the interchain.
🎉 New Release: ibc-rs v0.52.0
Includes useful enhancements like better client handling and easier creation of CosmWasm contracts.
Features and enhancements 🧵
IBC is expansive.
Chains connect directly to one another.
There's no transaction routing through a hub chain.
Peer-to-peer connections open up endless possibilities for blockchain interoperability.
Check out IBC transaction flows from the perspective of
@osmosiszone
.
IBC lets blockchains communicate peer-to-peer.
There's no third-party intermediary with a set of admin keys. No multisig wallet. No liquidity pool.
Just 24/7 permissionless data-sharing.
Because all blockchains deserve to communicate.
The IBC protocol extracts no fees from users, and never will. Instead, relayers pay the gas fees for key stages of the IBC packet lifecycle, ensuring network liveness.
Is this model sustainable?
🧵 on the changing fee landscape, featuring work by
@Osmosiszone
@skipprotocol
.
Rollups require secure and flexible interoperability infrastructure. What's best for that?
IBC 🤝 Rollups.
A highlight thread on innovative rollup teams leveraging IBC.
1/
As IBC enters its third year, we look to the future.
IBC's vision is to become the TCP/IP for blockchains.
The protocol will evolve along two strategic pathways: expansion and usability.
Upcoming protocol and ecosystem development milestones 🧵
2024 is the year for IBC to expand to new ecosystems.
Ibc-go is used by 100+ chains, and ibc-rs and ibc-solidity are growing in adoption.
Multiple IBC implementations gives developers flexibility to build with IBC for versatile use cases. A quick walkthrough🧵
Smart contracts and modules are now IBC-enabled with the recent release of Callbacks Middleware v0.1.0.
Evmos
@EvmosOrg
is using the middleware to aggregate complex multichain actions into a single step, so their users never leave the Evmos front end. Technical case study 🧵
💥 New Release: ibc-go v8.1 with IBC Channel Upgradability
→ Upgrade existing IBC channels to use new features/apps like fee middleware
→ Use Interchain Accounts with unordered channels
→ Prune stale acknowledgements to reduce disk overhead
Traditional finance institutions demand best-in-class interoperability to bring RWAs on-chain.
IBC-based solutions are battle-tested and offer top-tier security.
A showcase of teams bringing IBC to traditional finance. 🤝
IBC Milestone 🚀
@tokifinance
@datachain_en
developed an IBC-enabled cross-chain infrastructure that has been adopted by the largest financial institutions in Japan.
The first step: Bank-backed stablecoins on ETH and BNB Chain testnets. 🧵
Redefine what's possible cross-chain, enabled by adaptable workflows with the IBC Callbacks Middleware.
🧲 Smart contracts and modules can receive callbacks from IBC apps
💡 Endless possibilities for "Send X, do Y programmatically"
⚡ 3+ step user flows → 1 transaction
April 2, 2021: The first IBC transfer takes place between
@cosmoshub
and
@irisnet
.
April 2, 2024: 113 chains are IBC-enabled. They perform complex cross-chain interactions using dozens of features & apps.
Milestone highlights from the last 3 years of IBC. 🧵
$2.7Bn USD has been lost in bridge hacks. 😱
☝️
@BanklessHQ
calculation as of August 2023.
Is IBC exposed to hacking risk? While it's never wise to say anything is bullet-proof, IBC's design does not have the points of failure that hackers often target in bridges. A 🧵
💥 New Release: 08-Wasm Client Module
Use a Wasm VM to host light clients as bytecode:
→ Write light clients in languages that compile to Wasm (Rust, C/C++, JS, Go, etc.)
→ Streamlined addition of new light clients
→ Easily instantiate clients for non-
@CometBFT
consensus
What’s next for IBC?
IBC's vision is to be the TCP/IP for blockchains.
To get there, IBC will develop along two strategic pathways: expansion and usability.
Expansion: connecting to more ecosystems.
Usability: better DevX and feature-rich cross-chain workflows.
🧵on 2024.
The Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) and Chainlink's CCIP are both general-purpose message-passing interoperability protocols.
On the blog, IBC Protocol analyst
@adi_r_r
provides an in-depth technical perspective on the differences between the two protocols.
Rollups can connect to the IBC network of 113 chains.🔥
Explore the future of IBC's expansion to rollups with IBC Product Lead
@susevans
,
@dymension
's
@0xOmri
and
@rollkitdev
's
@0xnavage
on X Spaces.
📅 March 25, 12 PM UTC
🔔 Set reminder:
💥 Two big tech updates for IBC this week.
Did you know? IBC has a global community of development teams working on the protocol, implementations, middleware, apps, testing frameworks, and more.
This week, 2 teams released major updates 🧵
Light clients are the superpower enabling IBC’s rich cross-chain interactions.
Plus, they provide robust security by enabling a blockchain to verify transactions on another chain.
More on IBC light clients 🧵
1/
Introducing the ibc-apps repo maintained by
@strangelovelabs
🤝
Ibc-apps is a hub for high-quality IBC applications built by diverse teams who power interchain IBC.
It offers a one-stop shop for discovering non-core IBC modules and middleware.
2 years ago, the launch of Interchain Accounts enabled blockchains to manage accounts cross-chain for the first time.
Since then, 60+ chains have enabled ICA account host or controller functionality.
🧵 on use cases from
@stride_zone
@NolusProtocol
and
@TimewaveLabs
.
In 2024, IBC will expand to new ecosystems.
One of the targets is the OP Stack, a framework built by
@optimism
, Ethereum's second-largest rollup.
But how do you port a well-defined interoperability protocol to the OP Stack framework?
A preview into architecture 🧵
1/
🚀 New Release for Interchaintest: v8.1.0
Interchaintest now supports Ethereum and Polkadot.
Teams can now reliably test their IBC implementations for these ecosystems, facilitating IBC expansion 🔥
Additional functionality improves DevEx for Cosmos SDK users, too.
🧵
2.4M 💥
The number of IBC packets transferred by relayers between the top 28 IBC-enabled chains, January 2024.
IBC relayers ensure the network's liveness.
Get to know what relayers do and how to get started relaying in this mega thread🧵
"We want interoperability to be straightforward, accessible, and extensible, without value capture by the protocol, and not controlled by one entity or person who benefits from interoperability as-a-service." - IBC Product Lead, Susannah Evans, on Ethereum scaling and
#rollups
Connect to a network of 110+ chains in any language that compiles to Wasm with the Wasm Client module.
⚡ Launch clients for new consensus models
🔌 Add more clients without a chain upgrade
♻️ Streamline development and use your preferred programming language, like Rust.
💥 New Release: ibc-rs v0.50
--> Added ICS-721 for cross-chain NFT transfers
--> Added ICS-08 wasm client: use a wasmVM to host light clients as bytecode; deploy contracts that connect to compatible ibc-go chains
--> Improved usability for ibc-primitives and ibc-testkit crates
IBC’s reference implementation, IBC-Go has never had an exploit.
The majority of IBC-enabled chains use this implementation.
This is because IBC's light client-based interoperability lets chains verify transactions peer-to-peer for a more secure system.
Announcing the IBC Protocol Contributor Showcase winner for Q1 2024:
@0xbonlulu
.
Ben Luelo is a Founding Engineer at
@union_build
working on their relayer implementation.
He opened a comprehensive Github issue to generalize the ICS-02 Client module.
6.7 million: the number of token transfers verified by IBC light clients in the last 30 days.
Light clients enable direct data transfer between chains.
They make IBC interoperability fault-tolerant.
🧵on IBC's light-client-based security model.
📣 IBC Developers: Solana IBC Deep Dive📣
Join the June IBC developer call for an architecture walkthrough by
@composableFDN
of
@picasso_network
's
@solana
AVS for IBC.
📅 June 11, 5PM CET
📍 Hop into the Google Group for call link:
Choose. Create. Connect.
A guide to IBC's modular, composable feature set and how it lets you and your team build what you want, how you want it.
A 🧵
1/
The ibc-go documentation now features an LLM.
This AI-powered tool is designed to answer development-related queries about using IBC, ibc-go, and the Hermes and Go relayers.
Talk to the bot at .
Introducing the IBC Contributor Showcase 💥
Celebrating the builders who support the development of the IBC Protocol.
Each quarter, we will highlight a selected contributor and share their work with the community. Want to nominate yourself or someone else for Q1 2024? 🧵
💥 New release: interchaintest and local-interchain v8.3.0
This release is jam-packed with features and enhancements for an improved IBC testing experience.
Walkthrough of updates by the team at
@strangelovelabs
🧵
Ibc-solidity now supports the IBC localhost client.
IBC users can interact with multiple smart contracts/modules on the same EVM chain using one interface.
This makes it easier to test IBC apps on EVM.
Say hello to multiple Cosmwasm contract calls to an EVM-based chain. 🔥
🚀 New Release for Hermes Relayer: v1.8.0
Hermes is now compatible with chains with EIP-1559 dynamic fee markets 🔥
Plus, compatibility with ibc-go v8.0.0, and new features and settings expand Hermes functionality across the interchain.
Feature Roundup 🧵
1/ As more chains are connected through IBC, relayers are struggling to keep up with the fees to make this communication possible.
💥 All until now, thanks to the IBC fee middleware
Let’s look at its impact not only on relayers but the ecosystem as a whole 🧵
Join the teams from
@cosmossdk
,
@informalinc
, IBC at
@interchain_io
, and
@polymer_labs
as they dive into how Polymer's new architecture will use IBC to standardize interoperability for Ethereum and rollups.
📅 Jan. 11, 12PM EST
✅ Set reminder:
Join us Thurs, Jan 11 @ 12pm EST for the 1st 'Informal Spaces' of 2024!
We'll be discussing
@Polymer_Labs
new architecture & what it means for the
@cosmos_sdk
&
@IBCProtocol
. The best & brightest from Cosmos will be there (which means you will be too 😉)
The only time of year when an IBC developer trusts a third party intermediary is when the delivery guy brings those last minute holiday gift orders. 🎁
Happy holidays from IBC.
@EvmosOrg
Execute callbacks during the IBC packet lifecycle in any execution environment, including Wasm and EVM.
Compatible with ibc-go v7.3.0 and above.
Learn how
@EvmosOrg
plans to use Callbacks Middleware on the blog.
An IBC integration requires that a blockchain has:
- a provable key-value store
- introspection capabilities to verify the historical state of an on-chain light client
However, Solana lacks these capabilities natively.
Immutability: the principle that a record on a ledger cannot be removed or manipulated after consensus is reached.
This quality is a key value proposition for blockchains.
But how do we reconcile immutability in contracts and protocols with the pace of technological change?
Hey, Interchain developers 👋 The new ibc-godocumentation site is live now. 🔥
Explore the revised docs to learn about IBC's technical architecture, implementations and more. 🛠️
Today's Blockchains are like early Macs and PCs: powerful machines unable to share files or execute cross-system programs natively.
IBC fixes this.
How? A secure and efficient framework for communication with two abstraction layers: transport and application. 🧵
A year end report from
@blockworksres
highlights IBC and interchain developer team advancements. The report states:
"The need for a trust-minimized bridging standard is sorely needed and no solution is better positioned today than Cosmos’ IBC."
#IBC
Scalability, security, decentralization.
Those were some of the key forces driving crypto infra in 2023.
Part one of our year-end review covers L1/L2s, infrastructure, and more.
Check out the full report, made free thanks to
@MarinadeFinance
116 chains use IBC for $2Bn+ in asset transfers every 30 days.
Chains verify transactions directly, through self-hosted light clients.
This security model is battle-tested in production for over 3 years.
Appreciation to
@cointelegraph
for this feature.
New release: ibc-rs v0.51.0💥
--> Decoupled ICS-02, and ICS-24 contexts for easier 08-Wasm client integration.
--> Use custom signature verifier with Tendermint light clients. Now, Near/ Solana users can use host-specific signature verifiers to reduce gas costs.
Release notes📝
IBC is the jewel in the crown of the interchain ecosystem.
Chains that speak IBC can share any data that is encoded in bytes, enabling the industry’s most feature-rich cross-chain interactions.
Therefore, the Picasso team developed a different solution, an AVS dedicated to implementing IBC on Solana.
Its data storage is in a Merkle Tree structure, enabling support for state proofs and light client verification required for IBC connectivity.
📷:
Code Walkthrough 🧑💻
Creating an IBC light client generates a local identifier, and the clientID, unrelated to the chainID.
This is a key component of IBC’s security model: no 2 light clients have the same clientID, making it impossible to spoof an IBC connection that way.
The IBC protocol continuously adapts to address the expanding needs of the community of end users who build with IBC.
This channel will share educational info and IBC development updates for developers and technical teams.
Read more on our blog:
The AVS for Solana IBC solution, while different from typical IBC, allows for light client verification for Solana without requiring changes in Solana's core architecture.
Explore the integration by
@picasso_network
.
1/ 🎨🔗
@Solana
@IBCprotocol
transfers are live on
We're excited to announce that users can now experience an implementation of IBC on Solana. This marks the launch of the first trust-minimized connection between
@Solana
,
@Cosmos
,
@Ethereum
, and
IBC is featured in the latest report by
@BinanceResearch
.
The report discusses the rapid and sustained growth of the IBC network in chains and transfer volume, plus the protocol's architecture and relationship with the Interchain Stack. ⬇️
Cosmos has grown into a vast ecosystem comprising a myriad of L1 blockchains tailored to different use cases and objectives.
Our latest
#Binance
report explores the intriguing ecosystem of Cosmos, examining its technology, and much more.
Have a read ⬇️
@tinydancerio
is implementing a light client for Solana; however, the chain does not yet support state proofs.
Adding these capabilities to Solana would require the chain to change its architecture.
More details⬇️
Now SIMD-0052 & 0064 work in theory but the mechanism itself required modifying Bankhash construction, which is a consensus breaking change.
Consensus breaking changes can be critical to the reliability and safety of a blockchain network, a minor bug can risk a liveness failure.
--> Ecosystem Expansion.
Teams in the interchain ecosystem are building IBC integrations and light client implementations for many ecosystems.
IBC is coming to
@avax
with the work of
@cosmosAVAX
, and to
@nearprotocol
via
@oct_network
.
@penumbrazone
is building private IBC.
Prefer to build in Rust? Ibc-rs by
@informalinc
has you covered.
This robust implementation of IBC was designed to be independent of the underlying consensus.
It aims to expand the realm of IBC-enabled chain architectures, making it easier to take IBC to new ecosystems.
New Releases: ibc-rs Standalone ICS-02 Client Integration and Hermes Relayer Release v1.8.1 and v1.8.2💥
These releases simplify light client development and enhance relayer features and diagnostics.
Together, these releases offer useful enhancements. Feature roundup 🧵
The team at
@polymer_labs
are bringing IBC as a feature to all of Ethereum.
This Ethereum L2 will use a modification of the OP Stack framework that also uses the
@cosmos_sdk
and ibc-go.
Ethereum itself will be verifying IBC execution on behalf of its rollups. 🤯
3/
Ethereum and its rollups deserve the best multi-chain infrastructure. That’s why it’s our mission to standardize interoperability with Polymer and
@IBCProtocol
.
We’re excited to present our new architecture as an ETH L2 bringing IBC to Ethereum.
1/
Therefore, the Solana AVS solution has an additional set of trusted actors compared to a standard IBC implementation.
These validators are subject to slashing conditions in case of misbehaviour.
📷:
ICYMI: 54 new chains enabled IBC between 2022 - 2023.
A short 🧵 on essential technical considerations that will inform your development process with IBC.
The IBC rollups space with
@dymension
@rollkitdev
starts at 12 PM UTC.
Join us to explore the future of IBC-enabled rollups, shared sequencers, fraud proofs, and L2 ecosystems.
IBC Channel Upgradability empowers chains and interchain builders.
It's now possible to add middleware like ICS-29 relayer fee incentivization to well-established IBC channels. 🔥
An actionable tutorial on wiring up ICS-29 by IBC Product Engineer
@srdtrk
in the next post 👇
Do IBC transfers use a multi-sig wallet? Will the protocol have an airdrop? Does IBC rely on a third party to process cross-chain transactions?
☝️ If you think the answer to any of the above questions is "yes", there's something for you...
—> Use case
#3
: Osmosis swap & bridge through Metamask.
Example: Alice invokes an Ethereum Outpost via Metamask with the intent to onboard to Evmos with ETH. The outpost bridges ETH to Evmos, swaps it on
@OsmosisZone
& EVMOS tokens are staked on Evmos, all in 1 transaction.