IBC is coming to Avalanche: Meet Landslide

The Interchain Foundation (ICF) is delighted to introduce Landslide — the team developing the IBC light client on Avalanche. Their effort signifies a monumental step toward expanding and fortifying the interchain, enabling enhanced connectivity and interoperability among various blockchain networks. Landslide is launching its incentivized testnet on November 1; sign up on their website.

Landslide, a distinguished member of the Interchain Builders Program and a groundbreaking subnet on Avalanche, is proud to announce its IBC connection to Avalanche. This development paves the way for seamless interoperability between Avalanche, Cosmos Hub, and over 100 other IBC-enabled chains. The initiative is set to revolutionize the DeFi ecosystem by enabling IBC-compliant dApps to run seamlessly on the Avalanche network. Leveraging the unparalleled security features unique to IBC, this development promises not just interoperability, but also a level of trust and security that sets a new standard for cross-chain interactions.

Avalanche’s Promising Landscape

Avalanche’s innovative metastable consensus protocol addresses challenges surrounding scaling sub-linearly and minimizing communication overhead. This design enables Avalanche to support very large numbers of validators without sacrificing decentralization or throughput. Additionally, the Avalanche consensus scales to thousands of concurrent validators without suffering performance degradation, making it one of the most secure protocols for internet scaling systems. Permissionless and permissioned custom blockchains can be deployed as Avalanche Subnets, featuring custom rulesets designed to comply with specific legal and jurisdictional considerations. The network has successfully onboarded prominent EVM projects, processing an average of approximately one million transactions daily.

A Unique Collaboration

This IBC light client is a result of a unique collaboration between Landslide and StrangeLove. Each team contributes indispensable talents and groundbreaking expertise to the project. Strangelove, as one of the Distributed Development Teams of the ICF, specializes in IBC-centric initiatives, including the development of the IBC Go relayer and interchain tests. Landslide, on the other hand, leverages its years of innovation and technological mastery to elevate the project to unprecedented heights. Together, they form a powerhouse alliance with the skills and vision to redefine blockchain interconnectivity and scalability. Their collective efforts mark an exciting advancement in the decentralized web, reflecting a future where collaboration fuels progress and transformation.

Nathan Windsor, cofounder and CEO of Landslide said, “it is an honor to be working with the Interchain community and the ICF has been enormously helpful to us. Our team has had a long history of working on Cosmos infrastructure since back in the Ethermint days in 2018, and we are excited to bring IBC to Avalanche. IBC is fundamentally the most secure, and safest bridge technology in the world. Between January 2022 and February 2023, IBC processed $29B in transaction volume and lost $0. Even banking infrastructure can’t provide that type of service; only IBC can.”

“Bringing IBC to Avalanche marks a huge milestone for the future of IBC and trustless blockchain interoperability,” said Jack Zampolin. “Strangelove is thrilled to have partnered with the impressive Landslide team on this crucial development that advances our mission to expand IBC across the entire crypto industry.”

Ava Labs shared this comment, “Landslide brings CosmWasm to Avalanche’s novel consensus mechanism along with a gateway between the Cosmos and Avalanche ecosystems unified by IBC and Avalanche Warp Messaging. We are excited to see where this partnership takes the technology.”

Uniting Visions and Technologies

Landslide’s commitment to build the IBC light client on Avalanche resonates with the ICF’s vision of fostering seamless and robust connections between various blockchain networks. By leveraging Avalanche’s unique scalability characteristics, Landslide’s project has the potential to greatly enhance the interchain’s functionality.

The expansion of the interchain into additional ecosystems is an incredibly positive development. IBC connectivity enables a diverse, sovereign, and interoperable network of blockchains. This allows for a variety of consensus mechanisms, security protocols, and SDKs to coexist and operate in harmony. Landslide’s innovative approach to overcoming technical barriers echoes the secure permission-minimized ethos of IBC. We are optimistic that their endeavors will greatly advance the continuous evolution of the interchain, facilitating smoother transactions and connections across diverse networks.

We look forward to collaborating with the Landslide team and witnessing the progress they will make in this critical area of development. This project aligns perfectly with our goal of creating a more cohesive and effective web3 ecosystem, and we are excited to be a part of this journey.

Stay tuned for updates on this and other initiatives as we continue to work towards the realization of our mission.