The highly anticipated IBC (Inter Blockchain Communication) protocol is now live on the Cosmos network with the launch of Stargate, the new software development kit (SDK) on the Cosmos network. With this news going viral, the native token of Cosmos, ATOM, experienced a surge of almost 4%.
IBC is a reliable and authenticated protocol that connects the global economy with blockchain technology by relaying arbitrary messages between independently distributed ledgers. Though the existing internet protocols were great for transferring information, they were not enough for digital assets or even money transfers, for these developers had to rely upon what is known in the “internet of blockchains” or, more commonly, the IBS. It provides the standard foundation for a new token enabled economy, thus allowing anyone worldwide to seek secure and reliable exchanges.
The IBC demo on the Cosmos network was released one year after the mainnet launch. Before Stargate was launched, it was tested by multiple teams, including Interchain Foundation, Iqlusion, Regen Network, Agoric, Tendermint, and Informal Systems, etc. Apart from these organizations, there were plenty of other community contributors who have found bugs, provided invaluable quality assurance, and submitted specification proposals for testing the software.
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With the release of SDK, the IBS also underwent essential updates that improved the network efficiency of Cosmos and also allowed for the faster full-node sync. Also, with the launch of Stargate, various application-based blockchains can now operate with each other to share tokens or data. Developers can use the newly launched SDK to deploy decentralized applications that have the potential to work across various other blockchain networks built on Cosmos.
Another data serialization standard for Google called “protocol buffers” also underwent massive updates with the Cosmos SDK’s final release. It makes data transfer across various streams and programming languages easy. This way, with the help of the IBC protocol, the global economy gets easily connected to the blockchain, which also helps the existing blockchain networks to interact with each other across multiple chains.
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As such, interoperability is one of the contributing factors that played a vital role in launching the IBC protocol. This newly launched IBC specification will be available in full form on GitHub and will also include a canonical 1.0 specification version that any blockchain network can implement.
