Interchain Standards

Synopsis

This repository is the canonical location for development and documentation of inter-chain standards utilised by the Cosmos network & interchain ecosystem.

It shall be used to consolidate design rationale, protocol semantics, and encoding descriptions for the inter-blockchain protocol (IBC), including both the core transport, authentication, & ordering layer (IBC/TAO) and the application layers describing packet encoding & processing semantics (IBC/APP).

Contributions are welcome.

The rendered, ordered set of all interchain standards written so far can be read as a single PDF.

Ecosystem

For a list of IBC implementations, IBC-supporting blockchains, and special IBC bridges, see ECOSYSTEM.md.

To add your project to this list, submit a pull request.

Learn more about the IBC Ecosystem Working Group.

Check out a list of frequently asked questions.

Standardisation

Please see ICS 1 for a description of what a standard entails.

To propose a new standard, open an issue.

To start a new standardisation document, copy the template and open a PR.

See PROCESS.md for a description of the standardisation process.

Learn more about the IBC Steering Committee.

IBC Quick References

If you are planning to review inter-blockchain communication protocol specifications, the following are required reading:

IBC Terminology
IBC Architecture
IBC Design Principles
IBC Usecases
IBC Design Patterns

Translated versions of some of these documents can be found in the translation folder.