Hello everyone! Cosmos is sometimes mention on this sub but I think it isn't mentioned enough. How far had IBC evolved and will we see IBC widely used? None of what I write now is not my work I am just sharing incredible news of cosmos development.

IBC is protocol native to Cosmos ecosystem. It is used as a trustless bridge that is used for assets transfer between chains. Trustless bridge means that bridge is decentralized and not controlled by any third party. They rely on smart contracts and algorithms to operate. They are trustless, so the bridge’s security is the same as the underlying blockchain.

IBC is currently used to transfer assets but very soon there will be a possibility to transfer nfts, and usage of interchain accounts will be available (ICS-20 , ICS-721, ICS-27).

In order to implement IBC to be implemented other blockchains need a light client and sometimes it needs to be written in different coding language since ibc is writen in golang. Currently there is ibc-solidity and ibc-rust.

POLKADOT

On polkadot Composable Finance team using Centurai( first IBC-Substrate bridge built on Picasso) will be used to connect Cosmos and Picasso parachain. Useing Centurai Composible will also try to connect Near. In addition to bridging Centauri to NEAR they demonstrated at Cosmoverse 2022 that with IBC they can make:

1. First trustless Polkadot <> Kusama bridge
2. Parachain <> Parachain communication via IBC
3. Bridge DotSama <> Cosmos

Brainjar, the Founder and CEO of Composable Finance, said that the first use case for Centauri will be the first trustless Kusama <> Polkadot bridge.

On 16. August 2022. there has been made on test net Cosmos<>Harmony bridge. There hasn't been any news since than (none that I found) but something like IBC could pull Harmony out of the hole since there was an exploit on their bridge.

ETHEREUM

Ethereum has recently been upgraded from PoW to PoS. Given the fact ETH is PoS ethereum can now have light clients. However the verification cost on Ethereum is one of the most significant problems connecting to those blockchains through IBC. Also there is a problem when trying to implement multiple light clients on chains with high cost verification chains as you would need to develop multiple light clients for different blockchains connections. First solution to this problem is . LCP (Light Client Proxy) is one of the examples to solve this problem. LCP is a proxy middleware for light client verification. It adopts a Proxy Method that performs light client verification on behalf of a verifying chain and verifies its validity on the verifying chain. Someone feels it would add trust to the proxy system, but this is achieved by TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) to perform Light Client verification in the enclave, so it’s still a trust-minimized way of interoperability. The secound idea is Zero Knowledge The central concept of ZK-IBC is that it constructs a zk-proof of Ed25519 signature validity and verifies the proof on EVM chains to reduce the verification cost. Both Electron Labs and Polymer Labs are working on ZK-IBC. It’s still in the PoC phase, and there are some practical issues, such as proving cost and the trade-off between verification cost and latency, but it will possibly be a breakthrough in the future.

SOLONA

Nitro will be a first Solona VM which will function as a L2 with features from Seinami( Cosmos chain). So it will be a Solona virtual matchine which will have options as IBC, interchain accounts and Solona's smart contracts. TBH technical details of Nitro are still a bit confusing to me. As far as i understand it is a rollup of Seinami while also being a L2 on Solona, so it brings smart contract from solona and security of Cosmos with some extra features from seinami(which is also a cosmos chain which is still in testnet). Also there will be an L3 option as far as i got it for special app deployment. Here are docs for anyone interested. Nitro is still very early but still it will be interesting. Nitro could ultimately be used to connect assets from Cosmos to Solona via IBC.

AVALANCHE

Landslide network should launch in Q1 2023 on Avalanche. It will be a cosmos vm on avax. Their motivation is to connect cosmos and terra chain closer to avalanche( yea terra is built with cosmos sdk so it does have natively IBC). Landslide network should consist from cosmos sdk and avalanche sdk but just removing tendermint consensus. Landslide should have access to both avax subnets and cosmos ibc.

ENTERPRISE

Enterprise (Consortium) Blockchain; IBC is also beneficial in the enterprise space because of its trust-minimized way of interoperability. For now, there are light clients for Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Besu (IBFT 2.0 consensus) and Corda, which account for a large percentage of blockchains used in the enterprise space. Datachain is a core contributor to those light clients and teamed up with Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Bank, one of the largest banks in Japan, to realize interoperability between Quorum and Corda using IBC.

This is all great news but what about PoW blockchains like Bitcoin? As I understand using IBC is only possible through creating peg zones such as Nomic. Nomic is currently deployed but it is still being tested. As for other PoW chains this is currently the only option but I am not a developer so maybe it is possible to deploy it on some rollup or L2(write something in comments if you know anything).

EDIT 1:

NEAR

As u/0ne_too mentioned NEAR will also have implemented IBC. I found out Electron Lab will work on implementing IBC to Ethereum, Near and other EVM chains.

Also I found more information regarding adoption of IBC.

PENUMBRA

At the first look they seem like cross chain marketplace for asset trading. They implemented IBC currently on their testnet.

BABYLON

"By leveraging IBC as a vehicle to transfer security, Babylon aims to provide Cosmos chains with the security of Bitcoin. Using a method of checkpointing, Babylon uses the IBC transport layer to aggregate and timestamp transactions from Cosmos chains onto Bitcoin. "

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Everything is still being developed or in some early testnet but still a good start. We might see something later this year or next year? Who knows...

Write in the comments if I made some mistakes or should add anything to the post.

I will post some links where I found these data:

https://medium.com/@datachain/datachain-successfully-completes-building-an-ibc-bridge-between-cosmos-and-harmony-on-the-local-5910e094e6c6

https://medium.com/the-interchain-foundation/expanding-the-interchain-taking-ibc-beyond-cosmos-appchains-b0f9bebb4405

https://medium.com/lcp-network/lcp-a-proxy-for-light-client-verification-to-realize-trust-minimized-and-gas-efficient-f7d5868e4b0

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