The IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol proposed by the Cosmos team is a completely open source and universal blockchain cross-chain interoperability protocol. Its layered technology architecture and open technical open source strategy allow IBC to support feature-rich, trustless cross-chain interoperability, becoming the well-deserved gold standard for cross-chain protocols.
For the first release link, please see Read the original text
Throughout 2023, the number of blockchains that have deployed and enabled the IBC protocol has increased from 53 to 107. In December alone, a transaction volume of US$2.5 billion was generated, and more than 5.3 million token cross-chains were completed. .
Number of IBC blockchains:
https://tfm.com/bridge?chainFrom=cosmoshub-4&chainTo=
5.3 million transfers https://mapofzones.com/zones?columnKey=ibcVolumeperiod=30d
At the same time, the IBC Github code base received code submissions from 124 contributors, upgraded the version, added many new features, tools and applications, and realized cross-chaining with the Polkadot and Avalanche test networks.
Based on the vigorous development over the years, the IBC cross-chain protocol has officially rebranded.
It is worth mentioning that although more than 50% of the Rekt rankings are cross-chain protocols, the IBC protocol has never appeared, further validating IBCs status as the cross-chain gold standard.
MapofZones.com
IBC adoption and use expands in 2023
IBC has seen significant growth in adoption over the past year. As of December, 107 chains have enabled IBC, which is a staggering 102% increase from last years 53 chains, most of them (>100) based on ibc-go. It is able to process approximately 5 million transfers per month, which is equivalent to US$2.5 billion in cross-chain transaction volume.
102% increase in IBC-enabled blockchains in 2023
MapofZones’ 30-day metric data for mid-December 2023 shows that Cosmos DEX Osmosis is the largest driver of IBC trading volume across chains. New and important players such as Celestia, dYdX, Noble and others have joined the cross-chain. They have brought abundant USDC resources, pushing IBCs trading volume and number of transactions to a new high at the end of the year.
In 2023, IBCs cross-chain scope extends far beyond Cosmos, with live links to Polkadot established, as well as test networks to Avalanche, and IBC compatibility for Ethereum, L2s, and Volume Networks to be released soon. We will elaborate on these ecosystem updates at the end of the article.
For ibc-go, the highlight feature for further adoption is the Interchain Account (ICA). A year ago, Stride was the sole user of the ICA controller. Since the refactoring in ibc-go v6, 34 additional chains have been added to the ICA controller submodule, which has also laid the foundation for 49 chains to implement the corresponding ICA host functionality. Base.
ibc-go v6: changes to interchain accounts
https://medium.com/the-interchain-foundation/ibc-go-v6-changes-to-interchain-accounts-and-how-it-impacts-your-chain-806c185300d7
34 additional chains:
https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/37cfb84a-8544-496b-92ff-0f7ff7dce1c6/page/HnOdD
ICAcontrollersubmodule、ICAhostfunctionality
https://ibc.cosmos.network/main/apps/interchain-accounts/overview#concepts
At the same time ibc-rs began to demonstrate its increasing adaptability. Users include Namada, a privacy-focused L1 blockchain; Nomic, the Bitcoin bridge for Cosmos; Octopus Network, which built NEAR-IBC; and ComposableFi, which is working on Solana<>Cosmos interoperability.
Ibc-solidity has seen increasing adoption in the cross-chain developer community and has unlimited potential. For example, Composable Finance adopts this module to build a bridge between the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems. Additionally, TOKI’s upcoming bridge on the public testnet will facilitate connectivity between Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. We expect more applications to expand into the EVM ecosystem.
IBC releases, features and applications in 2023
About ibc-go In 2023, we brought two major updates to ibc-go: V7 and V8.
ibc-go features and applications in 2023
Client refactoring
After refactoring, ibc-go will be easier to scale to new networks using lightweight clients that are not based on Tendermint. Refactoring moves some functionality of the 02-client submodule to a different lightweight client implementation.
Client Refactoring: Laying the Foundation for IBC Cross-Ecosystem Expansion
https://medium.com/the-interchain-foundation/client-refactor-laying-the-groundwork-for-ibc-to-expand-across-ecosystems-61ec5a1b63bc
Support Authz in ICS-20
Authz is a Cosmos SDK module that enables an agent to perform certain actions on a person, such as staking and de-staking. In V7 of ibc-go, we added support for authz in ICS-20, which allows agents to initiate transfer operations of ICS-20 tokens on behalf of the authorizer.
Authz： https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/tree/main/x/authz
localhost/Localhost client
In version 7.1.0 of ibc-go, we introduced the localhost/Localhost client. This powerful improvement improves the user experience and allows users to use a separate interface to interact with multiple smart contracts or modules on the same chain. Interaction. This client allows different applications on the chain to communicate with each other using the IBC interface. When packets are sent to a localhost client, they are routed internally to the application within that chain rather than going to another chain. We sincerely thank Strangelove and Polymer for their valuable contributions to this feature.
Introducing ibc-go v 7.1.0https://medium.com/the-interchain-foundation/introducing-ibc-go-v7-1-0-a4767a5f7beb
Callback Middleware/Middleware
Callbacks Middleware is an IBC module that provides callback capabilities for chains, products and smart contracts that have implemented IBC. It enables a primary application, such as transfer or ICA, to make callbacks to some junior application such as Wasm or EVM execution framework. This allows smart contracts on execution frameworks like x/wasm or ethermint to receive callbacks during the packet lifecycle. The callback middleware has its own go.mod and is supported in ibc-go version 7.3.0 and higher. Thanks to the Osmosis team, Nicolas Lara, Alex Peters, and the Confio team for their feedback while developing this feature.
Introducing Callback Middleware
https://medium.com/the-interchain-foundation/introducing-the-callbacks-middleware-compose-smart-contracts-and-modules-with-ibc-6f3fb527e44a
ICS-08 Wasm Client
The Wasm client module makes adding new light clients easier. It includes a Wasm VM capable of hosting light client bytecode, so light clients can be developed in any Wasm-enabled language such as Rust, C/C++, JS or Go. The Wasm client module has its own go.mod, distributed independently from ibc-go.
Thanks to Confio, Strangelove, Composable, Chorus One, and Ethan Frey for their valuable contributions to this feature. Please read the blog post to learn more about 08-wasm.
Wasm clienthttps://github.com/cosmos/ibc-go/tree/feat/wasm-clients/modules/light-clients/08-wasm
Ibc-rs
Informal Systems ibc-rs team has four major releases in 2023: v0.29.0, v0.40.0, v0.42.0 and v0.48.0, which provide usability improvements and expanded functionality for ibc-rs. This section details key features and improvements coming in 2023.
1. API redesign: The team redesigned the API to support a wider range of use cases, with the goal of helping the team bring IBC out of Cosmos. Please review ADR 005 and ADR 007.
2. Improved security and reliability: comprehensive error resolution and advanced validation checks consistent with ibc-go.
3. Selective module or domain library import: Reconstruct the ibc-rs warehouse from a whole library into multiple nested libraries, giving users the flexibility to selectively import different modules or types according to specific use cases.
4. Ibc-query and ibc-testkit libraries: Introduces the ibc-query library that accommodates the practical features and implementation of querying the ibc-rs enabled chain, and the ibc-testkit library that is used to simplify testing.
5. Functional client upgradeability: The host chain now has access to the API and upgrade proposal utility to handle upgrade client messages and proposals.
6. Compatibility of No-float and no-std environments: Compatibility of No-float and no-std environments has been added to achieve a smoother compilation experience.
7. Refactored basecoin-rs for integration testing: The ABCI application basecoin-rs has been refactored and is now the main place for ibc-rs integration testing.
Ibc-rs in 2023 focuses on optimizing ease of use
Ibc - solidity
Datachains ibc-solidity team has delivered a series of improvements that improve its compliance with IBCs Interchain standards while enabling expansion into other ecosystems. They also showed an example of linking Ethereum and Cosmos (ibc-go) using ibc-solidity and the LCP client, enabling an IBC connection between the two ecosystems. Here are some examples of new features and improvements:
1. Compatible with ibc-gos ICS-20, ICS-03 and ICS-04: ICS-20s token migration support enables IBC applications to be integrated into hybrid ecosystems such as CosmWasm contract calls and EVM-based links. ICS-03 and ICS-04 provide support for timeouts and connection version negotiation.
2. Reconstruct the ibc-solidity module: improve the gas efficiency of EVM chains such as Ethereum, and also facilitate the application of EIP-2535. See PR 130 and 234 for details.
IBC application and developer tools released by IBC-go
The release of IBC apps and developer tools has been stable in 2023, and the IBC contributor community remains committed to releasing useful apps and tools.
1、Interchaintest
https://github.com/strangelove-ventures/interchaintest
A powerful and easy-to-use IBC multi-chain testing environment that can help users quickly launch customized test networks and development environments to test IBC, chain infrastructure, smart contracts, etc. This framework enables Go testing via Docker containers, and has recently been expanded to include native interchain and Ethermint integration on private testnets. The framework is developed by Strangelove.
2、IBC Hooks
Wasm hook is an IBC middleware that enables ICS-20 token transfer to initiate Wasm contract calls through the memo field. Among them, cross-chain transactions are one of the main primitives of this middleware. This middleware is developed by Osmosis.
3、 ICS-721
https://github.com/cosmos/ibc/tree/main/spec/app/ics-721-nft-transfer
This application enables cross-chain NFT (non-fungible token) transfers on IBC. The app is developed by Bianjie and Stargaze.
Release of ibc-solidity and ibc-apps in 2023
ibc-go engineers’ contribution to the cross-chain technology stack
Interchains distributed development team all shares a common goal, which is to create the best technology stack.
Damian Nolan from the ibc-go team discovered a Ledger signing issue in a non-SDK repository and successfully resolved it. He also provided the team with documentation of the correct fix. Colin Axnér, technical lead on the ibc-go team, discovered and fixed an issue with the Cosmos SDK governance module and SDK error string non-determinism; his proactive detection and reporting capabilities helped prevent security risks. The ibc-go engineering team also discovered and fixed several smaller cross-chain technology stack issues this year. This includes parameter migration issues, changes in CometBFT key/value causing the repeater to miss certain events, and incorrect parameters in the origin migration code of SDK v.0.50.0. Although these findings are not critical, resolving them plays a key role in keeping the Cosmos SDK and CometBFT strong and reliable, and the IBC protocol stable.
This year, we have significantly improved our end-to-end (e2e) testing process, allowing us to detect and handle issues more efficiently. We would like to thank Strangelove for building the interchaintest framework, which is the basis of our e2e testing process. We would like to express our deep gratitude to the team building the Interchain Stack, especially Informal Systems, Binary Builders, Confio GmbH and Strangelove. The collaborative process of identifying and solving stack-related challenges emphasizes the interconnectedness of the Interchain ecosystem. This shows the spirit of our global network, working together to bring about continuous improvement and growth.
GitHub Data: A Tribute to the IBC Developer Community
The strength of IBC comes from its contributors.
The GitHub repositories of IBCs Interchain standards, ibc-go, ibc-rs, ibc-solidity and ibc-apps have 124 contributors, many of whom work on IBC-enabled chains and applications and actively invest time to improve the protocol . Collectively, the IBC contributor community works on hundreds of innovative projects, working together to advance the protocol and investing significant time in peer review of open source code.
Last year, ibc-go had 52 external contributors during its lifetime, however this number increased to 80 by 2023, achieving a remarkable 53% growth. The table below shows the performance of the top 5 external contributors to ibc-go in terms of number of commits as of November 27, 2023. Interchains IBC team expresses its deepest gratitude to these people and all IBC contributors. Their selfless contributions have pushed the development of IBC a big step forward.
Regarding GitHub activity, here is some data showing the development progress of the ibc, ibc-go, ibc-rs, ibc-apps and ibc-solidity repositories until the end of November 2023. A total of 1,742 PRs were merged this year.
IBC Github merged 1742 PRs in 2023
ecological development
The development of the IBC protocol reached several important milestones in 2023.
IBC rebranding
This year, Interchain GmbH made a new image design for IBC. A new website was officially unveiled in September, showcasing the new IBC protocol.
https://www.ibcprotocol.dev/IBC The official Twitter/X was launched last month to provide services exclusively to developers and teams involved in IBC development.
https://twitter.com/cosmos
Mitsubishi Financial adopts IBC
Of all the positive advances in technology, the most important may be Japans top bank, MUFG, deciding to use IBC for cross-chain stablecoin payments. As a development team, Datachain and its partner TOKI Finance advocate and promote the adoption of IBC by enterprises. They are the main developer of an electronic securities platform called Progmat Inc., which was launched by Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Banking Corporation and is mainly used to achieve cross-chain clearing of electronic securities and stable coins. Their unremitting efforts have made IBC the most ideal blockchain interoperability solution in the Japanese enterprise market, which also proves that IBC is fully capable of adapting to the needs of large financial businesses.
IBC successfully connected to Polkadot and Kusama
In July this year, the Composable Finance team successfully implemented the IBC link between the Cosmos chain and the DotSama ecosystem (including Polkadot and Kusama). With Centauri, their IBC connectivity project, the Polkadot network has achieved cross-chain interaction for the first time.
Rollup-IBC interoperability project in progress
Currently, multiple teams are developing IBC and rollup interoperability projects. Among them, Dymension is promoting other rollup projects to be deployed on their basis. In this way, all rollups can use IBC to achieve interconnection. In addition, they are also developing a middleware called eIBC that can implement optimistic rollup token transfer functions without waiting for the dispute period. Currently, Dymension already has more than a thousand incentivized test networks that have deployed rollup.
In order to formulate the rollup development framework, Rollkit and the IBC team at the Interchain Foundation are cooperating on interface integration, so that Rollkit and rollup, as well as Rollkit and IBC-enabled chains, can communicate through IBC. Another ZK-rollup framework company called Sovereign SDK is also working with the ibc-rs team to develop an SDK interface module to enable rollups built using Sovereign SDK to communicate through IBC.
IBC is getting closer to Ethereum step by step
As a chain with leading user activity, liquidity, developer tendencies, and market share, integrating IBC into the Ethereum mainnet is a very high-priority task. The Union team recently announced that they are making progress integrating IBC into the Ethereum mainnet. They already have a testnet, fully working lightweight client on both Cosmos and Ethereum (Sepolia testnet), member and non-member authentication, fully functional relay implementation, and a zero-knowledge prover . Composable Finance also already has a testnet for Cosmos and Ethereum IBC connections. Polymer Labs also recently announced that they have switched from the Cosmos SDK chain to a two-layer rollup that combines the Cosmos SDK and OP stack, aiming to provide IBC interoperability from the Cosmos chain to the Ethereum mainnet and other rollups. Ethereum itself will also verify the execution of IBC in its rollup. Landslide announced a testnet for integrating IBC into Avalanche. Landslide is an Avalanche subnet that aims to serve as an entry point for integrating IBC into the Avalanche ecosystem so that the Cosmos chain can interoperate with the Avalanche subnet and vice versa. Landslide currently has an incentivized testnet and plans to launch a mainnet next year.
Looking ahead to 2024
IBC goals for 2024 are to expand and improve ease of use
The power of the cross-chain communication protocol comes from its large community of developers, users, and enthusiasts, which is driving the development of the protocol and reaching new peaks every year. In 2024, IBC’s two main goals are to expand into new ecosystems and improve the protocol’s ease of use. The focus includes the integration of rollup frameworks including OP Stack, Rollkit and Sovereign SDK, improvements to test frameworks and developer tools, enhancements to existing functions, etc. We will publish an article in early 2024 with a more detailed introduction. We believe that IBC will become the TCP/IP of blockchain and be widely adopted.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and may not be relied upon as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
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