According to a report from “The Block,” StarkWare, the development company behind the Ethereum Layer 2 network Starknet, is collaborating with Informal Systems, the development company of the Cosmos network, to integrate Cosmos’ Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol into Starknet. This integration will allow Starknet to connect with any chain that is compatible with IBC, including all chains within the Cosmos ecosystem and other compatible chains outside the system.
Cosmos and Starknet currently operate on different code bases. Starknet is a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup operating as a Layer 2 network on Ethereum, using STARK proofs to ensure high throughput and low transaction costs while maintaining the security of the mainnet. Cosmos, on the other hand, is an ecosystem composed of chains developed using the Cosmos SDK, which utilize the Tendermint consensus mechanism and communicate with each other through the IBC protocol.
StarkWare explains that the key focus of this collaboration with Informal Systems is to explore the Tendermint consensus algorithm and IBC protocol to achieve better decentralization for Starknet and expand its interoperability.
Over the past year, StarkWare has been dedicated to several research and development projects, such as introducing zero-knowledge proof (ZK) scalability solutions to the Bitcoin ecosystem, the “ZKThreads” framework for fractal scaling, and parallel transaction execution.