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Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) IBC interation

The Internet Computer is a sharded blockchain platform that can scale out by provising additional subnet blockchains. Smart contracts on one subnet can seamlessly interact with smart contracts on other subnets by X-Net messaging authenticated with threshold BLS signatures. Smart contracts are WASM modules with associated memory pages (which can store up to 404GB of data), and can interact with other smart contracts by sending asynchronous messages following the actor model. We have SDKs for Rust, TypeScript, Python and Motoko, a language purposefully designed for ICP. Furthermore developers have built smart contracts in C, C++ and Haskell.

Certain subnets are enabled with additional threshold crypto protocols. Currently, smart contracts can request ECDSA (over the Bitcoin curve secp256k10) signatures.

This allows ICP smart contracts to securely sign transactions for other chains. Further threshold crypto protocols are currently in preparation (Schnorr and EdDSA signing, as well as vetKeys).

This capability allows to send authenticated messages securly from ICP to e.g. Cosmos chains, and would be a much more efficient path than verifying BLS signatures in a Cosmos chain.

However, this does not yet help to read state from other chains.

For Bitcoin, there is a dedicated ICP subnet that runs a Bitcoin Adapter process next to the ICP replica process. The Bitcoin Adapter implements part of the Bitcoin protocol, connects to the Bitcoin P2P network, and provides block data to a Bitcoin smart contract. The Bitcoin smart contract acts as a (SPV) light client for Bitcoin, checks proof of work and computes the current Bitcoin UTXO set, and provides an API to all other smart contracts. More information about the Bitcoin integration can be found here

For Ethereum, we plan to eventually have a dedicated subnet where ICP nodes run an Ethereum node in a parallel process. For now, however, smart contracts can use the EVM RPC smart contract to fetch data from Ethereum and other EVM compatible chains. The EVM RPC smart contract fetches data from multiple cloud RPC providers and only accepts data if a quorum RPC providers returns the same result. The EVM RPC smart contract uses a feature called HTTPS outcalls, which allows smart contracts to call APIs under the hood. On a side note, we've done the experiment to port the Helios Rust-based Ethereum Light Client to ICP.

The Bitcoin and Ethereum Integration are the basis of ckBTC and ckETH. Those tokens are fully-backed by BTC and ETH, and are controlled by smart contracts and threshold signatures, and thus have lower trust assumptions in comparison to typical bridged or wrapped assets.

For reading state from Cosmos chains, we could either imagine a similar model than the EVM RPC smart contract or - better - the IBC model with a smart contract that verifies consensus of the respective Cosmos chain. Because of HTTPS outcalls, we can also get rid of relayers and fetch the data directly from RPC endpoints.

Hence, I'd be interested in exploring a communication model where IBC messages are authenticated via ECDSA signatures from ICP to a Cosmos chain, and via the normal IBC consensus verification method from a Cosmos chain to ICP.

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Dominic Wörner
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Bitcoin Bounties

Decentralized Inscription Service

Jul 21, 2023
ICP Hackathon Cheat Sheet

Hey fellow hacker :wave: , great that you want to explore the capabilities and possibilities of the Internet Computer Protocol. We've compiled a list of resources to make starting off as simple as possible, and provide you a quick reference to find more information, tools and help. General Introduction Tweet thread sized pitch of ICP Introduction to ICP Introduction video from ETHDenver Comparison between different blockain platforms

Apr 25, 2023
BNT-X - Decentralized Exchange Data Interface

Overview Status: Draft Project Type: Cooperative - Multiple workers can submit work, and the bounty is shared Time Commitment: Weeks Experience Level: Intermediate Size: USD 25'000 in ICP (at time of distribution) Description In order to provide more visibility of the Internet Computer DeFi ecosystem, ICRC-1 tokens and decentralized exchanges should be listed on the popular financial data provider websites of the cryptocurrency industry, such as CoinMarketCap and DefiLlama. For this, the IC ecosystem needs to define and implement standard interfaces that meet the requirements of the financial data providers. The goal of this bounty is the creation of interface standards and implementations for AMM and orderbook-based decentralized exchanges (DEXes).

Apr 6, 2023
RFP-5 Canister-based Ethereum Light Client

Overview The work on the Bitcoin integration already does some heavy lifting for integrating other chains with the Internet Computer. Most notably, chain-key signing allows canisters on the Internet Computer to sign transactions targeting platforms that support ECDSA, and HTTPS outcalls allow to submit them without incentivizing 3rd party relayers. However, the approach to access Bitcoin state relies on a custom implementation in the Internet Computer replica software, and is as such not a scalable approach for the integration of other chains. One general pattern to allow accessing the state of other chains is to maintain a list of RPC provider services for a given chain and use HTTPS outcalls to interact with a random sample. Depending on the selection of the services and the size of the sample, there can be a high assurance of the valididty of the data if all services in the sample agree. However, with the recent development of the proof-of-stake beacon chain and the merge, there has been significant progress in the development of Ethereum light clients which allows an integration without having to trust the RPC providers. These light clients enable the verification of state and inclusion of events through the use of merkle proofs and the reliance on sync committees - a slowly changing (approx. 25h), random sample of 512 validators - to obtain block headers with BLS signatues, rather than requiring the validation of the entire blockchain. Areas for RFPs We'd like to encourage individuals and teams to explore the integration of Ethereum light clients as canisters on the Internet Computer to allow other canisters secure access to data from the Ethereum blockchain. The nascent Helios client, which is implemented in Rust, could provide a good starting point.

Jan 17, 2023
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