Wednesday, May 10th marked the launch of , the first replicated security consumer chain that is secured by the Cosmos Hub’s entire set of validators. This milestone is the culmination of approximately two years of work on the Interchain Security protocol by many teams collaborating toward the shared goal of making the Cosmos Hub more sustainable.
Interchain Security serves to lower the barrier to entry for new chains into the Cosmos ecosystem by enabling producer chains, i.e., existing Cosmos Hub validators, to produce blocks for consumer chains, i.e., chains that seek the high level of security offered by the Hub’s validators, without having to bootstrap their own validator set.
The launch of Interchain Security was undoubtedly one of the most monumental tasks undertaken by the Cosmos ecosystem; it was certainly a task that required a greater degree of collaboration than any prior undertaking. For that, there are so many people, teams, and parties to acknowledge and thank for the success of this launch. Apart from Informal Systems that led the work, there are many organizations that have contributed to the project: the ICF, the IBC team at Interchain GmbH, the Cosmos SDK team, DCL lab at EPFL, All in Bits, Hypha, Strangelove, CryptoCrew, Notional, Architect Nodes. The Cosmos Hub was built for the community, by the community and we are proud to collaborate with some of the best minds in the space.
Here, we will also take the time to delve a bit more deeply into the respective contributions of the teams at Informal who helped make the launch a success.
Everything starts with protocol design.
The Protocol Design team at Informal was responsible for coming up with the initial specification of the Interchain Security protocol. This work was critical for rallying the Cosmos ecosystem around a shared goal: to lay a solid bedrock foundation upon which myriad dev teams in the ecosystem could build the implementation of Interchain Security on top of. As this work gained more traction, it paved the way for many teams of developers within the Cosmos ecosystem to contribute to the success of Interchain Security.
The hand-off to the Hub team.
The lion’s share of the work was borne by the Informal Systems Cosmos Hub team
. As the team that stewards the Hub, the folks on the team worked tirelessly to ensure that the launch of the Hub’s first consumer chain went as smoothly as possible. This involved coordinating amongst the many parties involved in the Neutron launch as well as ensuring that the software powering the Cosmos Hub was primed and ready to handle Neutron’s launch. If you’re interested in the nitty gritty details, the Hub team has their own write-up of how the launch went, which you can find here. On the whole, the launch went relatively smoothly, thanks in large part to the hard work of the folks on the Informal Systems Cosmos Hub team!
What are chains if not linked.
One of the crucial steps required to launch a chain on the Cosmos Hub mainnet is to link it to the other chains on the Hub via the IBC protocol, i.e., create the requisite clients, connections, and channels to facilitate the exchange of IBC packets with other IBC-enabled chains. This linking is performed by operators running relayer software, and once it has been done, the consumer chain must process a backlog of replicated security packets in order to synchronize with the other chains on the Cosmos Hub. In the case of the Neutron launch, the initial linking was performed by Strangelove’s Go relayer (check out their announcement on that ), while Informal’s Hermes relayer was used to relay the backlog of packets in a timely manner.
To bring us to the finish line.
The validator team helped coordinate the launch by providing instructions and helping other validators to get online. They were also instrumental in surfacing and resolving issues around signing transactions with multisigs and Ledger devices that triggered an emergency Gaia upgrade as well.
The unsung heroes behind the successful debut of Interchain Security and Neutron, our auditors, played a significant role in reinforcing the security and efficiency of these platforms that are set to transform the digital landscape. For an in-depth look into their meticulous work, find the audit reports for Interchain here and Neutron here.
With the successful launch of the Cosmos Hub’s first consumer chain, the way is paved for many more consumer chains to come online, each secured by the Hub’s robust underlying infrastructure. Congratulations to all of the teams and contributors who made this launch a success! Look forward to many more consumer chain launches in the future 🙂