2024 Year in Review | IBC
This year, we saw an expanded IBC network, new features, protocol improvements, and community activations. This blog post will share achievements in development, usage, and community contributions for the IBC Protocol in 2024. IBC succeeds because of its incredible community of builders and users. Let’s celebrate 2024.
Finishing 2024 Strong
December 2024 30D IBC metrics are impressive: IBC-enabled chains have exceeded $3.5B in 30d volume and 3.2M IBC transfers, with 1.5M MAUs across the network. The top chain, Noble, has over $1B in volume alone. Osmosis and dYdX followed at $633M and $489M of volume over the last 30 days. As always, our IBC data is from MapofZones.
In 2024, the IBC Network Grew by 13%
In 2024, the number of IBC-connected chains increased by 13% compared to the previous year. As of writing, 119 chains communicate over IBC.
Defillama Now Supports IBC Data
In August, DefiLlama integrated IBC data into its front end, showcasing data points such as USD volume (24h, 7d, 30d) and the number of transactions. IBC ranks consistently in the top 5 cross-chain protocols by volume.
New IBC Versions and Features
Several exciting ibc-go versions were released this year:
- v7.5.0: Introduced Interchain Accounts (ICA) with queries and support for using unordered IBC channels with ICA. Queries allow controller chains to query modules on a host chain and fetch data using ICA.
- v8.1.0: The main addition within this release was IBC Channel Upgradability. It allows chains to upgrade existing IBC channels to leverage new features requiring a new packet data structure or add a middleware on both channel ends.
- v8.3.0: Added support for conditional clients. Conditional clients are light clients that are dependent on another client to verify or update their state. They are essential for integration with modular chains.
- v9.0.0: ibc-go v9 marked the release of ICS-20 Token Transfer V2, introducing multi-token transfers within a single IBC packet and native support for packet forwarding and unwinding.
Ideahacker’s Guide to IBC, the IBC Ideathon
In October, we hosted Ideahacker’s Guide to IBC, an IBC ideathon aimed at generating innovative use cases for IBC in any ecosystem. Participants used the IBC Idea Builder to map out IBC-powered workflows, then submitted their Idea Builder export and a writeup to the judging panel. The judging panel comprised 13 experts from the Interchain and Solana ecosystems.
We received an impressive 207 submissions from 319 ideahackers. The first-place winners will get to incubate their ideas IRL next year at the IBC Incubator in Istanbul.
A New Website for IBC
Our online home has a new look! The new ibcprotocol.dev site offers real-time IBC network data front and center: the complete chain ecosystem is visible right from the homepage with a clean, modern UI that’s easy to navigate.
The new resource catalogue provides developers with an aggregated repository of apps, tools, and dashboards – streamlining your building experience and making it easier to find what you need. For open-source contributors and security research, we’ve consolidated instructions in one accessible location on the Get Involved page. Builders evaluating interoperability protocols can view a technical comparison of features and architecture on the Comparison page.
IBC Ecosystem News
The builders in the IBC ecosystem have been busy this year. A quick recap of top news.
An IBC Connection to Solana
Picasso Network developed a custom solution for an IBC connector to Solana, overcoming technical limitations in Solana's native architecture that previously prevented IBC integration. The solution involves an Application-Specific Validation System (AVS) using a Merkle Tree structure for data storage, enabling the necessary state proofs and light client verification capabilities. This AVS operates on-chain within the Solana network and utilizes its own validator set through a restaking mechanism. This implementation enables light client verification without requiring fundamental changes to Solana's core architecture.
The IBC team at Interchain Labs is developing an additional IBC connector to Solana within the upcoming IBC Eureka implementation.
Cardano IBC
The Cardano Foundation is developing a custom IBC implementation to connect Cardano to the IBC network. Cardano's IBC implementation uses their smart contract platform, Aiken, and Mithril by IOHK for the threshold-based signatures and state proofs required for a native IBC connection. The implementation also provides an additional option for connecting Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-based sidechains to Cardano.
XRP's XRPL sidechain will be IBC-enabled
Ripple and Peersyst are developing the XRP Ledger (XRPL) EVM sidechain using evmOS, a modular tech stack that enables EVM compatibility and IBC connectivity. The XRPL sidechain will connect the Ripple community to Cosmos via evmOS Outposts, which allow XRPL users to interact with Cosmos SDK chains like Osmosis without switching wallets.
First cross-chain NFTs over IBC
Over ten thousand NFTs have moved across chains through IBC in 2024 using cw-ics721, the CosmWasm implementation of the Cosmos SDK NFT transfer module, ICS-721.
Cw-ics721 was built through collaboration between Stargaze, IRIS Network, and Ark Protocol. It adds security controls like whitelisting and supports contract callbacks to combine an NFT transfer with an action in a single step.
WenChang chain (part of IRIS Network) uses the module to serve thousands of Chinese businesses, while Stargaze has deployed it on Juno, Aura, Osmosis, and Terra networks, with the Mad Scientists collection seeing over 2,500 transfers. The technology powers cross-chain NFT staking between Juno Network and Stargaze through Enterprise DAO, and collections like PixelionsDAO and Osmosis’s Mad Scientists have used it for transfers to Stargaze.
Looking Ahead to 2025: IBC Eureka
Perhaps the most important release in the history of IBC’s development since its launch will be IBC Eureka, which will launch next year.
IBC Eureka is V2 of the IBC Protocol. Eureka drastically simplifies the IBC Protocol, making it 10x easier to implement on VMs other than the Cosmos SDK. It removes connections, handshake protocols, and limitations on encoding standards, and offers IBC’s light-client backed transaction verification. Like IBC Classic, Eureka has no in-protocol rent extraction, is fully open-source, is free of charge and permissionless to integrate, and is backed by an international developer community of 150+ individuals.
As of today, IBC Eureka will be deployed on Ethereum at launch. Users will be able to transfer assets between Ethereum and Cosmos chains. Ibc-solidity v1 will launch along with Eureka, allowing Cosmos SDK chains that upgrade to Eureka to communicate with Ethereum.
Concluding Thoughts
2024 was a transformative year for IBC, marked by new features, integrations, and community initiatives. In 2025, IBC Eureka will simplify the protocol to its core abstractions while maintaining its security and improving developer experience. Eureka will bring IBC closer to realizing its vision of being the TCP/IP for blockchains.
About IBC
The Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) is the most widely adopted trust-minimized, permissionless, and general messaging-passing protocol. IBC connects 115+ chains for cross-chain activities such as token transfers, inter-chain account control, shared security, data queries, and much more.
