Research corpus InteroperabilityBLC-STUDY-0084

The Interblockchain Communication Protocol

Two chains verify each other with light clients. A relayer carries packets and proofs. The relayer is not trusted to tell the truth. It is trusted to bother showing up. Security is the security of both chains.

Official external source only
Design paper
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Record

Authors: Christopher Goes and the Cosmos IBC specification
Date: 2020
Publisher: Christopher Goes and the Cosmos IBC specification
Version: Source cited by the 2020 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0084
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.

Direct answer

Where to read

Official source — Cosmos IBC specification
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

What changed

The study separates the text from later network behaviour. This bibliographic page does not repeat that essay.

Relationships

Canonical readingIBC study
Related paperCosmos
Related paperAtomic swaps
Related paperLightning

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Goes, C., & specification, T. C. I. (2020). The Interblockchain Communication Protocol. Christopher Goes and the Cosmos IBC specification. https://github.com/cosmos/ibc

BibTeX

@techreport{ibc2020,
  title = {The Interblockchain Communication Protocol},
  author = {Christopher Goes and the Cosmos IBC specification},
  year = {2020},
  institution = {Christopher Goes and the Cosmos IBC specification},
  url = {https://github.com/cosmos/ibc},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/ibc}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - The Interblockchain Communication Protocol
AU  - Christopher Goes
AU  - the Cosmos IBC specification
PY  - 2020
PB  - Christopher Goes and the Cosmos IBC specification
UR  - https://github.com/cosmos/ibc
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0084",
    "title": "The Interblockchain Communication Protocol",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Christopher Goes"
      },
      {
        "literal": "the Cosmos IBC specification"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2020
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Christopher Goes and the Cosmos IBC specification",
    "URL": "https://github.com/cosmos/ibc",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections