Cosmos blockchain this week released its Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol allowing Cosmos to bridge the gap to other blockchains, allowing for information transfers over decentralized networks. As the native DeFi solution and DeFi hub of Cosmos, this upgrade will bring tremendous potential to Kava upon the integration of IBC.
“Kava’s adoption of IBC will bring key financial building blocks to the Interchain. We’re very excited to see the first economic flows between Kava, the Cosmos Hub, and a wave of IBC chains coming online this year,” Billy Rennekamp, BOM and grants manager of the Interchain Foundation said.
As the primary decentralized finance protocol to support the Cosmos network, Kava has allowed users to earn rewards on cryptocurrency deposits like BNB, XRP, and others. The Kava team has established decentralized bridges to Bitcoin and Ethereum and to improve security measures., the company said.
Kava has also brought Chainlink’s price oracle technology to Cosmos as the exclusive provider, bridging access to price feed data to the more than 100 blockchains within the ecosystem.
Faster encoding and quicker transactions are just a couple of the benefits provided by the Cosmos Stargate upgrade, the company said. For nodes, this means upgrade processes are cut down from weeks to hours. Letting all nodes upgrade faster more rapidly makes it easier for Kava developers to introduce new features and options.
“With over $225M in collateral deposits on Kava and almost $1B in assets managed by Kava, we are very cautious with anything we add to our codebase, which rivals in size that of the Cosmos Hub (ATOM) itself,” Kava Labs founder and CEO Brian Kerr said. “Before the adoption of IBC can happen, we need to do a robust set of internal testing and review to ensure it interacts with the Kava blockchain as intended. Once this is performed, Kava is excited to release the integration of IBC with its next major upgrade.”
Kava plans to introduce other changes in the coming months. Releasing the HARD Protocol Version 2 will occur by the end of February, including more complex mechanisms for borrowing with variable rates. Later this year, users can benefit from an autonomous market making (AMM) service.
As Kava remains the largest Cosmos-SDK blockchain based on assets under management, the network is likely to become a Tier 1 hub once the IBC protocol goes live.
