ICF Spotlight: Agoric
Composable Smart Contracts on IBC
ICF Collaborates with Agoric
The Interchain Foundation (ICF) is proud to collaborate with Agoric to build and support the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. Agoric brings composable, reusable, safe, smart contracts with a new security model to blockchain networks. Composable decentralized finance (DeFi) smart contracts will be reliable, more affordable to execute, and accessible — written in JavaScript.
The Agoric team consists of long experienced and respected developers. In particular, they are distinguished network protocol and JavaScript developers and standards creators. They have created an infrastructure that lets smart contracts, applications, and other code safely interact across networks in lightweight, isolated, compartments. These range from open and permissionless networks to off-chain databases. Interoperability is a core Agoric value, and the team’s prior work makes them especially well-qualified to help build and support IBC.
“The prior work of the Agoric founders was one of the key inspirations for the architecture of the Cosmos Network. We expect that Agoric’s smart contract and digital asset architecture will enable trillions of dollars in assets to be managed by networks of blockchains.” — Zaki Manian, Co-Founder of Iqlusion
Realizing IBC
For the IBC Cosmos SDK, the Agoric team improved its correctness, design of non-final chains, solo machine testing, and provided general code reviews and bug fixes. In particular, the team prepared it for Dynamic IBC (dIBC).
Dynamic IBC supports the dynamic addition of application protocols, including VMs. Agoric supports IBC channel endpoints routed to smart contracts deployed on an Agoric chain, where the new application protocol packets will be parsed and processed in JavaScript. Because new contracts can be deployed essentially permissionlessly on a running chain, newly launched zones can create and deploy their own counter-party smart contracts. Their smart contracts on the Agoric system can fully interoperate with the rest of the Agoric and Cosmos ecosystems and so, for example, provide new digital assets into their new application protocol and zone.
Agoric believes the ability to rapidly and permissionlessly deploy counter-parties is crucial for the development of new application protocols, which in turn is crucial to the healthy and rapid growth of an IBC ecosystem. An upgraded dIBC that supports the IBC relayer was demoed at Ready Layer One in Spring 2020.
The team’s additional work on VatTP over IBC enabled public chain users to easily use integrated side chains with the same contract model as the public chain. For instance, a developer could implement an OTC desk in a private chain, and provide its quote objects on the public chain to claim assets there. This example represents a use case built using Agoric over IBC; see VatTP IBC demo.
Agoric Economy: Expanding opportunities for the Cosmos and IBC Community
Agoric delivers an open, permissionless, economy letting anyone participate in safe transactions.
The Agoric launch will include a full IBC integration, where assets on IBC can be pegged in the Agoric environment to transact and interact safely with other networks. IBC and Agoric developers will be able to write new voting mechanisms, trade agreements, real-world use case agreements, and much more.
We are most excited about these new opportunities Agoric brings to IBC participants and Cosmos’ Atoms holders. This will propel innovation and drive the further decentralization of the Cosmos ecosystem, making our vision of the ‘Internet of Blockchains’ a reality.
We are thrilled to support the Agoric team in realizing their vision and building on IBC with the Cosmos community. To stay up to date on Agoric, follow @agoric, and join their discord to learn more about their API.
