Cosmos and the Interchain Foundation have contributed the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), an open-source interoperability protocol for digital ledgers, to LF Decentralized Trust. LF Decentralized Trust is the Linux Foundation’s organisation for developing and deploying decentralised systems and technologies, and IBC will now be hosted as one of its projects. In addition, Cosmos provides an open-source digital ledger stack and DLT solutions, and the Interchain Foundation is the non-profit organisation that supports Cosmos and its technologies.
Google Cloud supports the move, and so do individuals from a range of financial and blockchain organisations such as Wells Fargo, Figure Markets, OpenZeppelin, Datachain, Cardano Foundation, Injective Labs, Agoric, and Turnkey. Individuals from Wells Fargo and Figure Markets also co-sponsored the formation of the new project.
Because the protocol already runs in production, the contribution is a governance change for live infrastructure rather than the launch of an early-stage project. A representative of LF Decentralized Trust said IBC brings five years of production use and an established developer community to the organisation.
Technology and use cases
IBC lets banks, financial institutions, and other ledger operators and users transfer data and assets between separate ledgers. It supports settlement, asset issuance, and atomic delivery-versus-payment (DvP) and payment-versus-payment (PvP) transactions. Its security features include cryptographic verification mechanisms and support for enterprise-grade key management systems.
Barry Plunkett, co-CEO of Cosmos, said developers need secure, open-source infrastructure for moving assets and data as more public and private financial institutions adopt digital ledgers. Datachain, which has worked for over five years to bring IBC to Ethereum and enterprise blockchains, said it will continue working with the community on the protocol’s development for financial applications.
Neutral governance and industry implications
The contribution has two stated goals. The first is to foster secure, shared standards for interoperability. The second is to strengthen collaboration among industry participants to accelerate financial modernisation globally. According to LF Decentralized Trust, its governance model gives organisations an open, neutral environment in which to contribute technical expertise, set shared priorities, and guide the protocol’s long-term development.
The Interchain Foundation said the move is intended to help IBC become a global neutral standard, with transparent governance and wider participation in its development and stewardship. Vitaliy Dorum, Head of Digital Assets Platform at Wells Fargo, described the arrangement as a neutral forum for industry participants to work on shared technical priorities in digital asset interoperability.
Google Cloud linked the contribution to its own ledger work. Richard Widmann, director of Web3 strategy, Google Cloud, said open interoperability standards with sound governance are core design principles for Google Cloud Universal Ledger. OpenZeppelin said that placing a protocol already used in production under community stewardship is how the industry raises its security baseline.