According to a report by The Block, StarkWare, the development company behind the Ethereum Layer 2 network Starknet, is collaborating with Informal Systems, the developer of the Cosmos network, to integrate Cosmos’s Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol into Starknet. This integration will enable Starknet to connect with any IBC-compatible chains, including all chains within the Cosmos ecosystem as well as other compatible chains outside the system.
Currently, Cosmos and Starknet operate on different codebases. Starknet functions as a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup on Ethereum, utilizing STARK proofs to ensure high throughput and low transaction costs while maintaining the security of the mainnet. In contrast, Cosmos is an ecosystem composed of multiple chains developed using the Cosmos SDK, which employ the Tendermint consensus mechanism and communicate with one another through the IBC protocol.
StarkWare explained that the focus of this collaboration with Informal Systems is to explore the Tendermint consensus algorithm and the IBC protocol to achieve better decentralization of Starknet and expand its interoperability. Over the past year, StarkWare has been engaged in several research and development projects, such as introducing zero-knowledge (ZK) scaling solutions to the Bitcoin ecosystem, the “ZKThreads” framework for fractal scaling, and parallel transaction execution.
