Interchain Inc., a company created by Interchain Foundation after it acquired Skip from the Interchain Foundation. This marks a major change in the Cosmos ecosystem. This represents a change from ICF’s previous funding of diverse teams towards a more centralised and cohesive approach.
ICF has announced that the new subsidiary will be led by Skip founders Barry Plunkett, and Maghnus Marneck. They are responsible for product development and ecosystem strategy, as well as execution. On Thursday, the ICF released a report that revealed that an “community town hall” X Space shed light on future expectations.
Unified stack
Cosmos is known for having a modular tech stack that includes Cosmos SDK (software development kit), IBC (internet business center), CometBFT (computing base technology), and CosmWasm. Plunkett cited a lack in coordination for the development of the Ecosystem.
“There wasn’t any cohesive overarching connection,” Plunkett told Blockworks. “Each of them was going off in their own direction.”
Interchain Inc. is a company that aims to connect these disparate silos. “version 2” upgrades to both IBC — known as Eureka — and the Cosmos SDK. The SDK upgrade promises a 10–25x performance boost, while IBC Eureka simplifies the Interchain interop protocol to enable faster integration with non-Cosmos chains like Ethereum, EVM rollups and Solana.
“It’s a massive simplification of the IBC protocol that’s really going to allow the ecosystem to connect to other chains beyond [Cosmos]…in days or weeks,” Plunkett spoke during the X-space.
Eureka! “is like if ‘IBC Classic’ and Hyperlane had a baby,” Zaki Miana, Cosmos’ veteran builder and host of the Bell Curve blog podcast said as much on the most recent edition.
A new cornerstone in the strategy involves expanding support for virtual machines (VMs). The team is working on an open-source version of the EVM, and has been in contact with other projects such as Injective or Cronos about adapting their implementations.
“Most Cosmos chains want a simple, reliable and free path to add EVM functionality,” Plunkett stressed that Solidity SDK modules will interact with Cosmos SDK contracts seamlessly.
Cosmos chain will now be able run any VM. “Users shouldn’t have to say, ‘If I’m going to build a Cosmos chain, then I can’t use whatever VM I want,'” Plunkett added.
Cosmos Hub: What is its role?
Interchain Inc. is committed to tackling the problem of liquidity fragmentation. The Cosmos architecture has led inadvertently to the isolation of liquidity pools. The overall ecosystem is hurt by this and developers are discouraged.
Mareneck told X that the liquid gets trapped on one chain. It is not accessible through other chains. “One of the things we want to do is really unite that liquidity so that it’s more accessible from more applications, so we can use the full weight of Cosmos liquidity.”
This strategy is centered around the Cosmos Hub. Hub’s ability to provide liquidity and reduce friction among developers could make it the engine for growth of the entire ecosystem.
Permissionless Interchain (ICS), will help projects onboard the Hub. ICS no longer requires chains to request Hub governance in order to use it.
Interchain Inc. also focuses on the developer’s experience by ensuring that the Cosmos hub provides the essential services.
“We need to make it easier for builders and ensure the Hub provides services to grow and scale chains,” Plunkett said.
Skip’s collaboration reputation will be crucial to realizing the new Hub vision.
“We have relationships at Skip with a lot of different projects…we want to continue to do that, working from the platform of the Cosmos Hub,” Mareneck, said
Plunkett stated on Bell Curve that Skip is focused on providing useful products and services for the users. One of these products, Skip Go, powers more than half of IBC volumes.
Instead of forcing participation, the team is going to offer “carrots, not sticks,” Aligning incentives to encourage growth.
The ICF hopes that by consolidating the development of the ecosystem and focusing more on accessibility and liquidity, it will create an even more dynamic and united one, re-igniting Cosmos’ vision as the future. “Internet of Blockchains.”
Ethan Buchman is a departing ICF board director and co-founder at Cosmos. Buchman sees the move as an opportunity for the ecosystem to be revitalized, bringing fragmented bits together.
“We’ve been struggling with the organizational challenges and fragmentation,” Buchman said to Blockworks. Buchman told Blockworks.”
“He said, “It’s as if I spent so long trying to put the pieces together of Humpty Dumpty and then we went ahead and hired Batman.”
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