Explore a Wide Variety of IBC Use Cases

Chains built using CometBFT and Cosmos SDK can now interoperate seamlessly with parachains within the Polkadot ecosystem.

Cosmos chains use the ibc-go implementation with the wasm and GRANDPA clients, and parachains use the ibc pallet with the hyperspace relayer. 

There are also other initiatives to bring IBC to ecosystems like Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche. Applications built on these chains can become interoperable with applications on other chains over IBC.

Connecting your chain to the IBC network allows you to build functionality for your users to swap tokens - even if your chain doesn't have a DEX. You can implement this use case by connecting smart contracts to IBC. How it works is an end user will request a swap on your chain's front end. Under the hood, your smart contract will send tokens tokens to a chain with a DEX, like Osmosis, where the tokens are then swapped and the resulting balance is forwarded to the user's wallet.

Using Interchain Security, a provider chain can use the economic stake backing their validator set to provide economic security to a consumer chain. Information such as validator set updates, slashing messages, and reward distribution are sent between the provider and consumer over IBC. The IBC application that enables Interchain Security is called Cross Chain Validation.

Chains might require external data for their specific use case, but may not want to run their own oracle service. With the oracle data module implemented by BandChain, a user can request and receive an oracle data feed over IBC. Applications for these data feeds include lending, money markets, asset pricing, tokenization, and both on-chain and real-world insurance. Band's oracle is commonly integrated into CosmWasm smart contracts for DeFi applications that rely on data from the real world, too.

Liquid staked tokens are some of the fastest growing asset classes. The Interchain Accounts feature allows for cross-chain account control that enables cross-chain-native liquid staking across multiple blockchains. On a liquid staking protocol such as Stride, if a user wants a liquid-staked version of OSMO (Osmosis token), they deposit OSMO on the Stride app on the Stride blockchain. The Interchain Accounts module liquid stakes that OSMO via the Osmosis chain and mints stOSMO to the user's wallet - all without the user ever leaving the Stride front-end.