Interchain Around the World — EthCC Week in Brussels
It’s been a busy few weeks for the ICF teams stewarding the development of the Interchain Stack. Product Leads and representatives from IBC, CometBFT, Cosmos SDK, and CosmWasm were in Brussels during EthCC week holding workshops, giving keynotes, debating on panels, and meeting and greeting developers from the interchain and beyond. With a plethora of events including EthCC, Cosmos Hub, and Nebular Summit, the teams showcased the latest developments in the Interchain Stack, onboarded new developers, and networked with other builders. Catch the highlights below.
Cosmos SDK
The Binary Builders team stewarding the development of Cosmos SDK had a jam-packed agenda in Brussels. Cosmos SDK engineer Facu Medica and DevRel Sam Ricotta hosted a ‘Cosmos SDK Crash Course’ workshop at the Cosmos Hub EthCC side event, which saw a room packed with eager developers learning how to bootstrap a sovereign appchain in just 90 minutes, discover additional resources for developing their chain, and ask questions in a real-life setting.
The team was also out in full force during the EthCC conference, discussing the benefits of building an application as a sovereign chain over launching as a smart contract in a shared-state environment. With so many developers from across the industry present, they took the opportunity to meet with interchain projects Stargaze and dYdX to interview them about their experiences building with Cosmos SDK and why they chose the interchain over any other ecosystem. Catch their Builder Stories soon by following Cosmos SDK on X!
IBC
This year’s Nebular Summit didn’t disappoint, bringing together more than 600 founders and developers to showcase their achievements and push the boundaries of the interchain. IBC Product Lead Susannah Evans gave a keynote on ‘Tomorrow’s Token Transfers: Unveiling IBC ICS-20 v2’ in which she discussed updates from the IBC team and how the latest release enables multi-token transfers, path unwinding, and forwarding natively in transfer. The informative keynote taught developers what to expect from the release and how to leverage its new features to optimize their projects, shaping the future of token transfers across the interchain and beyond.
Susannah also took part in a panel discussion about two of the most pressing issues on the quest for mainstream adoption — interoperability and chain abstraction — with Union founder Karel Kubat, Squid co-founder Fig, and Hyperlane co-founder Jon Kol.
CosmWasm
CosmWasm stewards were at Nebular Summit too, where Confio co-founder Simon Warta gave a talk on ‘Pushing the Boundaries of IBC with CosmWasm 2.1’. In this inspiring keynote, attendees learned how CosmWasm 2.1 delivers enhanced features for IBC-enabled contracts and protocols.
CosmWasm maintainer at Confio Christoph Otter also gave developers a hands-on workshop at the Cosmos Hub side event, specially designed for Solidity developers wanting to explore the versatile and efficient CosmWasm VM. Throughout the session, they learned the core concepts and architecture of CosmWasm, how it differs from Solidity, and how to set up their environment and build their first contract. If you missed the event, you can dive into the CosmWasm docs here.
CometBFT
With the Informal Systems team hosting the Cosmos Hub side event, they had their plates full during EthCC week. The event united interchain builders from around the world and attracted curious developers looking to understand the advantages of launching their chain with Cosmos Hub and the Interchain Stack. The Cosmos Hub side event included four dynamic workshops about CosmWasm, IBC, Cosmos SDK, and Interchain Security (ICS), as well as an AtomEconomic Zone (AEZ) Pitch Night.
Informal Systems Director of Product Adi Seredinschi also gave some interesting talks about the collaboration with Starknet at Nebular Summit and StarknetCC, showcasing how CometBFT and IBC are decentralizing the Starknet L2 and expanding the reach of its applications with seamless interoperability.
Interchain Foundation
The ICF’s DevRel Lead Ollie Gilbey hopped over the pond to the European hub to network with the steward teams, discuss developer onboarding strategy for 2024 and beyond, and participate in lively panels about a sovereign, multichain future. At Nebular Summit, Ollie joined panelists from Skip Protocol and Osmosis to discuss why sovereignty is important for protocols, the types of tradeoffs it involves, and how the ICF stewards a sovereign ecosystem.
He later joined representatives from Agoric, Mystic Labs, and Particle Network to talk about their visions for a multichain future and the importance of chain abstraction in securing mainstream adoption.
Ollie said, “Being “feet on the ground” at events like these is always productive and fun! Meeting in person with the teams building the Interchain Stack and beyond gives a great platform to verify ideas and plan future initiatives. Out of the many conversations at the Brussels events, particularly the Nebular Summit, we have a great point to really begin executing on improving the Developer Experience of the interchain. I look forward to working with so many of the ecosystem to bring that to fruition.”
EthCC week presented so many opportunities to network, discuss the latest trends in the industry, and showcase the components of the Interchain Stack. We enjoyed getting the steward teams together and meeting developers and community members in real life, and we look forward to many more occasions to come. Keep up to date with the Interchain Around the World by following us on X.
