Why IBC is a big deal and why you should know about it

Here at Dokia we’re all pretty excited about the upcoming launch of IBC.

We’d like to see Cosmos and IBC mass adopted and appreciated by non-technical users.

So a super simplified and friendly overview is in order and as someone that’s fanning over everything Cosmos, I’m going to give it a try.

Networks = progress

Networks are important for us as individuals and for any system that wants to scale. The IBC is all about networks and connecting them to each other.

Basically any complex system you can think of is a network: society, your brain, the internet, the economy, transportation…All of them are intricate networks with their own particularities and rules. But no matter what those particularities are, the ability to facilitate communication between participants (nodes) represents the fundamental force that allows networks to form and scale.

The genesis of a network, the way it operates and grows is never random. It’s based on the nodes’ adoption of the set of rules on which the network relies to function.

Humans learned how to create artificial networks exactly like we learned everything else, by observing nature.

Plants have their own networks that they use to communicate and trade resources. Sound familiar?

It’s so similar to the Internet that scientists like chemical ecologist Kathryn Morris call it the “wood wide web” and claim that “These fungal networks make communication between plants, including those of different species, faster, and more effective […] We don’t think about it, because we can usually only see what is above ground. But most of the plants you can see are connected below ground, not directly through their roots but via their mycelial connections.”.

Networks form and grow because nodes realise that by cooperating they can achieve more, faster and more efficient. The value proposition of decentralised networks is that the achievements of the network are also the achievements of its participants, as opposed to centralised networks where gatekeepers receive most of the benefits that the network worked to achieve.

What is Cosmos?

If you’re not sure you understand what Cosmos is, and would like a short intro before diving into IBC, here we go.

Cosmos is a network…of chains. It is an ecosystem in which many, different blockchains, that have previously existed independent of each other, finally get to connect with each other and exchange data.

The Cosmos vision is to build bridges between blockchains and allow these previously isolated islands to communicate and trade freely. These bridges are a protocol called IBC (inter-blockchain communication).

IBC is just one pillar on which the Cosmos network relies on, in order to transform its vision into a reality experienced by all its users. In many ways, the IBC is the vision, because it facilitates the interoperability that makes Cosmos so innovative.

The Cosmos ecosystem provides the tools to overcome many of the limitations that blockchain networks are struggling with, including scaling and mass adoption.

These tools are:

1. Tendermint BFT is a consensus and networking protocol that helps the network agree on the state of the ledger. Basically, it allows us all to agree about which transactions happened, when and in which order(We’ll break down consensus in a bit). It also prevents malicious actions, such as double spending of the same token.
2. ABCI stands for Application Blockchain Interface and it’s a protocol that allows the Tendermint BFT engine to communicate with applications running on top of it.
3. Cosmos SDK is the world’s most popular framework for building application-specific blockchains. In the Cosmos ecosystem, each application has its own blockchain and retains its sovereignty, as opposed to Ethereum for example, where all applications are built on top of the same blockchain and submit to that blockchain’s rules.
4. IBC stands for Inter-Blockchain Communication and is the protocol that allows blockchains to connect to each other.

There are 2 options for connecting blockchains this way. Either build an IBC connection from each blockchain to every other blockchain, which makes for a lot of bridges that have to be built and tailored to each blockchain’s particularities, or connect all the blockchains to a Hub that routes all the transactions and makes sure they reach their destination.

The Hub works like an airport:

• The countries are zones (previously isolated blockchains).
• The people travelling are the data that the blockchains want to send to one another.
• The airplanes are the IBC, facilitating the transport of the data.
• The airport is the Hub, coordinating the comings and goings of data between one flight to another, until the data reaches its destination.

Why is IBC such a big deal?

Because we can compare Cosmos to the biggest tech innovation in recent history: the Internet.

There are many similarities between the Cosmos network and the creation of the Internet. No wonder that its vision is to become “the internet of blockchains”.

The internet is designed as a 4 layer model:

1. Application layer: This is where you are right now. Your browser.
2. TCP: is short for Transmission Control Protocol and its job is to transport messages.
3. IP: is short for Internet Protocol and its job is to stamp a destination address to each message so they all know where to go, then send them on their merry way, using the Network layer.
4. Network interface: Remember the catchphrase “The information highway”? This is it. Wi-fi for instance, is a network layer.

Cosmos works in much the same way, connecting blockchains like the internet connects the server that hosts this article on Medium to you. And the IBC works like the TCP/IP, making sure that messages are being delivered.

And just like the internet, it can’t connect the nodes of a network, if they don’t have compatible protocols installed.

What are Peg Zones?

So what does Cosmos do in the case of blockchains like Ethereum or Bitcoin, that don’t have compatible consensus mechanism? It relies on peg zones.

Peg zones are blockchains that are specialised in allowing the Cosmos Network to communicate with incompatible blockchains.

The reason why blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum can’t be connected to the Cosmos network through IBC is because of the way in which these networks reach consensus.

When a network is decentralised and distributed, the challenge is to make sure that everyone agrees on what’s going on. So if I send you a Bitcoin, the network must acknowledge that transaction for it to be considered real.

If everyone in the network can keep track of transactions, then we can be sure that the same token isn’t spent twice. All blockchains have a protocol that makes sure participants agree upon what has happened, but sometimes these protocols are so fundamentally different that they can’t talk directly to each other.

It’s like trying to speak to someone without seeing them, hearing them or even knowing they are there. So peg zones were created to make the invisible visible, the inaudible loud and clear, and the person you want to talk to easily identifiable.

Peg zones are custom-made solutions, acting like translators between previously incompatible blockchains, while the IBC is a standard connection between two compatible chains.

This interconnectivity has not been possible so far and it’s something to get excited about. It’s worth understanding and exploring, because allowing this type of communication, cooperation and coordination was crucial to the development of culture and civilisation as we know it.

When the Internet took over our lives and connected people all over the world, we were fascinated by the promise of a global, democratic, free and permissionless platform, that would ignore borders and allow us to come together regardless of gender, nationality or race.

A lot has happened to sabotage that vision in the past 30 years, but with decentralised networks as a foundation, we get a second chace to get it right. The real question is how will we choose to use this newly found freedom? How and what will we choose to build on the post IBC Cosmos Network?