The Dawn of the Internet of Blockchains

Interoperability Cosmos Hub Cosmos Network

Four people standing in a wide open space, with a grid instead of a floor

Interoperability Cosmos Hub Cosmos Network

Welcome to IBC Eureka Why we Built IBC Eureka The End of the Bridging Era The Dawn of Multichain Applications The Cosmos Hub is the Hub for Multichain Applications What’s Next: Unleashing the Builders Experience the Magic 🪄

Authored by Maghnus Mareneck and Barry Plunkett, Co-CEOs of Cosmos Labs.

Welcome to IBC Eureka

We’re beyond thrilled to announce the release of IBC Eureka.

We committed to launching a ground-breaking product on the Cosmos Hub within our first 90 days after the acquisition of Skip, and the ICL team has exceeded our expectations. This was a massive, incredible effort that resulted from many weekends worked, sleepless nights, and deep conviction.

IBC Eureka expands the Cosmos and is the first step in the Cosmos Hub becoming a platform for truly interoperable applications that cannot exist today. We’re proud that it’s already being used in production by more than 10 top asset issuers and app chains, ranging from Babylon and Lombard to Nillion and ZkCloud.

Before we begin, we want to share gratitude for our many amazing partners who have done amazing work to scale IBC, including Union, Polymer, Succinct, Landslide, Celestia, Strangelove, TOKI, Picasso, Informal Systems, and so many others. IBC is a movement towards a fully open and interoperable crypto ecosystem, and IBC Eureka builds on the shoulders of giants.

Why we Built IBC Eureka

The goal of Cosmos has always been to build a more open, decentralized internet. That’s why IBC is the ecosystem’s most fundamental primitive. Just as the web we have today was built on top of TCP/IP, the decentralized web must be built on top of an open communication protocol. Only a neutral, open communication protocol can reach the scale of humanity. No single blockchain, data center, or token can do that.

For IBC to become humanity scale, it must connect all blockchains as a first step. But historically, we have struggled to scale the protocol to other blockchains beyond Cosmos. Instead of neutral interoperability protocols, other blockchains have used bridges that introduce opaque multisigs and limit composability, which causes fragmentation and stifles the existence of multichain apps.

What’s missing in crypto is a neutral interoperability protocol that is composable, transparent, and secure, along with great user experiences on top of it.

Say hello to the v2 of IBC and its canonical deployment, IBC Eureka.

The End of the Bridging Era

IBC v2 is dramatically simpler than the original protocol, so it can easily support any blockchain with a VM. This opens to door for expansion into Ethereum, its L2s, Solana, Ripple, and so many others that were previously off-limits. Wherever smart contracts can exist, so can IBC Eureka. Today, IBC v2 just supports Ethereum mainnet and Cosmos, but over the next few months, we’ll be able to bring all EVM, Move, and SVM chains into the IBC network.

This means we can bring the core properties of IBC — composability, transparency, and security — to every ecosystem, starting with Ethereum mainnet. The era of fractured cross-chain UX is finally over.

IBC Eureka is the end-to-end integrated interoperability solution we’ve built on top of IBC v2 designed to address the full-stack of developer and user cross-chain needs. Eureka handles everything needed to deliver great cross-chain experiences: routing with the Cosmos Hub, distribution with Skip Go’s ecosystem of 50+ integrators (Keplr, dYdX, Polaris, Neutron), instant intent-driven transfers with Go Fast, and all the necessary relaying and proving infrastructure. Plus we package all of it up into a simple developer API and widget.

We firmly believe it’s the best interop solution on the market for app chains. The proof is in the traction: We already have more than 10 major app chains and asset issuers representing tens of billions in TVL using Eureka in production on day 1.

For anyone wondering, we are staying true to the core values of IBC that make it the perfect to become the backbone of the new internet:

IBC v2 will remain an open and permissionless protocol that we hope many teams deploy and extend.
IBC Eureka will not require routing through the Hub. We will support teams with the rest of the Eureka infrastructure even if they want to deploy direct connections

Nonetheless, we’re confident Eureka with Cosmos Hub routing will be the best way to use IBC and distribute to every chain.

The Dawn of Multichain Applications

Internet applications rarely work in isolation. They connect to various subservices, data sets, and external APIs to deliver experiences. In crypto, this is becoming harder as protocols move to their own chains for scale. Chain tribalism causes this and encourages the creation of walled gardens. Our goal is to break them down.

Developers must be able to compose their protocols with liquidity and state on other blockchains as if it’s local. This will allow us to build better applications:

NFT marketplaces that can mint anywhere while concentrating their trading liquidity in one place
Lending markets that can safely use collateral anywhere to secure loans everywhere
Super vaults that can manage risk across perp DEXes on many chains

These are multichain applications, and they are 10x better than crypto apps today. IBC Eureka is the rails for these applications to function, but it’s only one part of the story.

The Cosmos Hub is the Hub for Multichain Applications

We are building the Cosmos Hub to be the home for multichain applications: a platform where apps can access fast, cheap, and expressive composability with protocols on every other IBC-enabled blockchain, starting with Ethereum and Cosmos.

This begins with IBC Eureka using the Hub as a router and ZK proof aggregator. This massively reduces relayer and proving costs for chains, which we can pass on to users and protocols. This also puts the Cosmos hub at the crossroads of major liquidity flows across chains.

On top of this foundation, the hub will offer an infrastructure that makes building multichain as easy as building on a single chain. We have so many ideas to build out this platform — like protocol-enforced relaying to guarantee low-latency connectivity & cross-chain oracles for accessing remote state locally instantly.

App chains will leverage this platform to distribute their protocols well beyond Cosmos. Multichain applications will leverage it to compose with IBC-enabled app chains everywhere. Infrastructure providers will leverage it to support the entire IBC network from a single integration point. In short, an IBC connection to the Cosmos Hub will give developers superpowers, no matter where or what they’re building. And for the first time, the success of the Cosmos ecosystem, Cosmos Hub, and ATOM will be aligned.

What’s Next: Unleashing the Builders

After IBC Eureka goes live to Ethereum mainnet, our major focus is to create an environment on the Hub that can natively and permissionlessly support Multichain Applications. To do this, we are working on launching a permissionless, fast VM directly on the Cosmos Hub and hooking it up natively to IBC Eureka. In doing this, we will create a liquid execution environment with cross-chain capabilities that’s never been seen before, and will enable a completely new class of applications. With the Hub as the IBC router, the applications built on the Hub will be able to access everything, everywhere, from one place.

Meanwhile, we will continue to improve IBC Eureka that will allow it to hyper scale in a few critical ways:

Adding contract call functionality, especially to support mint/burn bridging and to power cross-chain governance of IBC itself (Today only ICS20 is supported)
Adding fee markets for relaying and light clients. We will create vibrant ecosystems of relayers and developers helping to expand and operate the protocol. Transparent fee markets create the opportunity and the incentives. (Today fees are handled in out-of-protocol Skip Go contracts)
Expand to new chains and VMs. (Our top choices here are Solana and the major Ethereum L2s. There are also potential opportunities to collaborate with other bridging protocols that embody IBC principles, like Hyperlane and Union, and to build out an IBC-native fast-finalizing attestation network.)

Experience the Magic 🪄

At the end of the day, nothing compares to experiencing something yourself. Go to https://go.cosmos.network/ to experience the quality, speed, and affordability of IBC Eureka when bridging between Cosmos and Ethereum.