Home	About John	Resume/CV	References	Writing	Research

Cosmos IBC

Overview

Cosmos is a network of the many blockchains built on IBC protocol. The IBC protocol is a universal interoperability protocol that allows two different blockchains to communicate with one another. IBC guarantees reliable, ordered, and authenticated communication. See Cosmos Network Whitepaper

Blockchains based on IBC protocol may use validity based proofs for interchain communication. See IBC Protocol ELI5: What is IBC?

Protocol

Design: the primary repository for development and documentation
Docs: a quick introduction. See also ibc-go documentation
Implementation: Implementation in Golang, built as a Cosmos SDK module.
Roadmap

Bridging

Relayer: “…blockchains do not directly pass messages to each other over the network. This is where relayer comes in. A relayer process monitors for updates on opens paths between sets of IBC enabled chains…”
Light Clients: “…Light clients operate under a strict set of rules which provide security guarantees for state updates and facilitate the ability to verify the state of a remote blockchain using merkle proofs”

Utilities

Explorer: Monitoring interchain activities and messaging in 3D
Keplr: Wallet designed to work across blockchains on IBC (see Getting Started with Cosmos IBC Transfers)

(to be continued)