IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 Upgrade Pre-Announcement

4 min readJan 21, 2021

IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 upgrade is expected to happen in early February, and new functions including IBC, enhanced iService and NFT will go live accordingly. The upgraded Mainnet will usher in the KUAFU stage of IRISnet, bringing us one step closer to achieve the vision of an Interchain Service infrastructure and protocol for building trustworthy and distributed business applications.

New Features Preview

The software powering the IRIS Hub 1.0 mainnet upgrade will be irishub v1.0.0, which has integrated not only the IBC function provided by Cosmos SDK, but also IRISnet’s unique functions including NFT, enhanced iService and so on.

1. Enhanced iService

As an application layer protocol, the enhanced Interchain Service (iService) framework can support connections between heterogeneous blockchains and centralized systems, and bridge the gap between the crypto world and the traditional business world.

2. Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC)

IRIS Hub 1.0 will be one of the first mainnets in the Cosmos ecosystem to integrate the flagship cross-chain IBC protocol. IBC along with the enhanced iService can serve as the blockchain world’s “TCP/IP + HTTP” protocols over which the Internet of Blockchains can be built out.

3. Oracle

Powered by iService, a flexible and innovative oracle function has been built into IRIS Hub 1.0, enabling cross-platform data services with various on-chain/off-chain interaction patterns.

4. NFT

The NFT module built into IRIS Hub 1.0 supports the complete lifecycle management of non-fungible tokens and can be used for asset digitization on blockchains.

These innovative functions will support partners like StarryMedia and Chainlink to expand the IRISnet ecosystem in areas such as NFT e-ticketing and oracle integration, poised to increase the overall network values.

Upgrade Method

The procedure of the upcoming upgrade is similar to previous mainnet upgrades: submission of an on-chain governance proposal for network upgrade -> voting by validators/delegators to pass the proposal -> mainnet upgrade. The technical details will be a little different — especially in the last step.

Since Cosmos SDK v0.40.x that IRIS Hub v1.0 relies on has many non-compatible functions from Cosmos SDK v0.28.x which is being used by the current mainnet, this upgrade has to use a non-compatible restart upgrade method. The process is very similar to what was done, for example, to upgrade Cosmos Hub from cosmoshub-2 to cosmoshub-3.

Upgrade Plan Preview

The IRISnet’s mainnet upgrade is expected to take place about 1 week after Cosmos Hub’s upgrade (currently scheduled for Jan 28, 2021). The important events and their timeline are estimated as follows:

Note: Since the upgrade process depends on the voting progress of the governance proposal, the actual timeline may change and is subject to the on-chain upgrade proposal and official upgrade announcement.

2021/01/22: irishub v1.0.0 release

After the test tasks of Bifrost Phase 2 are completed, the software for the new mainnet will be released as irishub v1.0.0 — hopefully by this weekend or early next week.

2021/01/22: Mainnet upgrade on-chain proposal submission

A network upgrade proposal (text proposal) will be submitted to the current mainnet, including specific information about new software version, upgrade time (block height), upgrade steps and other details. The proposal is expected to be submitted on the same day when irishub v1.0.0 is released.

2021/01/22: Voting for the upgrade proposal

The upgrade proposal will enter the voting period after the minimum requirement of deposit is met. The voting period is 5 days.

2021/01/27: The proposal passed and upgrade announcement published

After the upgrade proposal is passed based on the on-chain governance rules, an announcement of mainnet upgrade will be published which includes deterministic contents of mainnet upgrade plan. The upgrade announcement is expected to be published on the same day when the proposal is passed.

2021/02/04: Network upgrade started

The current mainnet will stop at the block height specified in the proposal.

The blockchain state at this block height will be exported and migrated. After the mainnet validators verify the migrated state, they will run irishub v1.0.0 to start the new mainnet as IRIS Hub v1.0 (chain-id will be changed to irishub-1).

For developers and validators: testing before the upgrade

IRISnet’s DeFi and interchain testnet Bifrost Phase 2 has been launched with new incentivized tasks to make the final dash for IRISnet mainnet upgrade preparation.

Developers and mainnet validators are strongly recommended to treat bifrost-2 as the staging environment and use it for active testing.

For IRIS Hub users: backup mnemonics or keystores

For IRIS Hub users, it’s very important to back up your wallet mnemonics or keystore files. Rainbow wallet users can refer to Rainbow wallet tutorial, while users of other wallets should follow their own manuals to perform similar operations.