Cosmos Gains Interchain Accounts as Upgrade Kicks In

An upgrade to the Cosmos blockchain network known as Hub Theta went live yesterday, developers confirmed.

The upgrade brings interchain accounts, a feature long-awaited by the Cosmos community. These allow blockchains to change data on another supported blockchain.
Other features of the upgrade are updated versions of Cosmos SDK – a developer framework – and the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, which allows users to transfer crypto assets between supported blockchains.

Interchain accounts allow users to give permission to an application running on one blockchain to perform an action on another. This requires the blockchains to set up a mutual interchain account and be based on either Cosmos SDK or Tendermint, protocols used to replicate and launch blockchain applications.
The feature is a step ahead of IBC, also a Cosmos innovation.
“In a traditional framework, the end-user would log into an interface representing chain A and pass an asset to chain B via an IBC transaction,” Cosmos developers explained in a post. “The user would then be required to log into another interface, this time representing chain B, and complete the remainder of the product flow.”
“With an Interchain-native product model, a user can complete the entire flow within a single, streamlined user experience where chains pass sets of instructions and execute transactions under the hood — all without the user ever having to leave the first interface,” they wrote.
While blockchains are robust and immutable stores of data, they cannot communicate with each other. Networks like Cosmos work on this problem and aim to allow users to access several different blockchains from a single interface.
ATOM, Cosmos’ native token, was up a nominal 1.2% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows. The tokens have lost 7% since last week amid a broader market decline.

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Shaurya Malwa

Shaurya is the Deputy Managing Editor for the Data & Tokens team, focusing on decentralized finance, markets, on-chain data, and governance across all major and minor blockchains.

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