[Baar, Switzerland] The Interchain Foundation (ICF), a Swiss non-profit and steward of the Cosmos ecosystem, has announced the release of Interchain Accounts, an Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) based protocol allowing for an entire blockchain to control an account on a separate chain. Interchain Accounts allow IBC enabled chains to interface the UI/UX of other chains in the ecosystem. Users will be able to access the entire Interchain through their single Cosmos Hub account. Interchain Accounts is the largest software upgrade since the historic Stargate release in 2021 creating a new standard for cross-blockchain coordination and exchange. To date, 38 projects have activated IBC, including; Terra, Crypto.org, and Gravity Bridge. In the last 30 days, the IBC ecosystem surpassed 8.4 million transfers.
Interchain Accounts help solve this issue by allowing one blockchain to access the application features of another blockchain (such as stake, vote, swap tokens, etc.) through what an ‘account’ can do. This provides a simple way of creating application composability, similar to how smart contracts interact with each other on the EVM, by leveraging IBC. Because the fundamental architecture of ‘sovereign, interoperable blockchains’ remains, the composability that Interchain Accounts introduce doesn’t take away the benefits of application-specific blockchains. The Cosmos Hub, Sommelier Protocol, and Osmosis will be among the first to take Interchain Accounts forward and pioneer the future of Interchain native products.
Charleen Fei, IBC Product Lead at the Interchain Foundation, said, “Enabling composability in IBC allows innovation in distinct applications to be deployed without needing to upgrade the entire Interchain, providing a more scalable innovation model that preserves compatibility. This is made possible by allowing lower-level primitives to be created, optimized, and then built into shared infrastructures that are both stateful (value through information) and permissionless (value through accessibility). Interchain Accounts will enable all the best bits of composable application and system design critical to the explosive growth in DeFi natively across the interchain. Of course, all applications and protocols that succeed with IBC and draw more users to Cosmos benefit the entire ecosystem and make DeFi on Cosmos a more engaging, satisfying, and rewarding experience for all.”
The Interchain Foundation funds, stewards, and advances the Cosmos Ecosystem. Actively supporting and incentivizing development within the ecosystem, the Interchain Foundation plays an integral role in the community-driven initiatives to drive innovation within Cosmos. This effort was spearheaded by the Chainapsis, Informal Systems, and Confio teams who share a vision to deliver exponential composability between the interchain without reducing zone sovereignty.
“The initial Cosmos thesis in 2016 already recognized that Proof of Stake was going to be necessary, and that interoperability would be key to scaling blockchain technology to mass adoption. Now, as the rest of the blockchain space catches up to the idea that the future is the multichain, we are paving the way for our vision of this world with features such as Interchain Accounts.
Reaching the end goal of mass adoption will require continued work being done on making interoperability protocols powerful and secure, but an equally important challenge to tackle will be usability. Having a truly interoperable landscape also presents a new set of usability challenges and we are already seeing the first iterations of solutions across the entire Interchain in the forms of Interchain native block explorers, interfaces, and wallets”
