Cosmos and the Interchain Foundation have handed the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol, the messaging standard that links Cosmos chains to each other and to other networks, to the Linux Foundation. IBC is now a project of LF Decentralized Trust, the foundation’s group for ledger technology, the two organizations said on Monday. The code stays open source and the protocol stays free to use. What changes is who holds the trademark and how technical decisions get made, though Cosmos Labs will chair the new steering committee for its first two years.
What actually moves
Under the new setup, the Linux Foundation holds the IBC trademark on behalf of the project, and governance runs under a public charter. The code remains under the Apache 2.0 license. According to a Cosmos forum post from the ecosystem team, the charter “keeps the protocol layer free of fees or monetization.”
Technical decisions will sit with the maintainers and a Technical Steering Committee. Three groups maintain the code at launch: Cosmos Labs, Japanese interoperability firm Datachain, and security company OpenZeppelin. Cosmos Labs engineers chair the committee for the first two-year term. The same post says the Interchain Foundation, through Cosmos Labs, “remains the main contributor to and funder of IBC development.”
So the day-to-day direction of IBC will not shift much at first. The longer-term change is that outside companies get a formal route into the roadmap. Contributors can become committers and maintainers based on their work, and organizations that adopt IBC get a voice through the project’s product and use-case group.
Who signed on
The announcement lists Google Cloud as a supporter, along with individuals from 21 organizations, among them Wells Fargo, Figure Markets, Cardano Foundation, Injective Labs, Cronos Labs, Blockaid, Espresso Systems and Turnkey. The wording matters: apart from Google Cloud, the release credits “individuals from” these firms rather than the companies themselves.
Daniela Barbosa, executive director of LF Decentralized Trust, said “IBC brings five years of production use and an established developer community to LF Decentralized Trust.” Biba Homsy, president of the Interchain Foundation’s board, said the move “will help it become a global neutral standard with transparent governance for expanded participation in its development and stewardship.”
The Linux Foundation has taken in crypto infrastructure before. Hyperledger Besu, the Ethereum client built by ConsenSys, has been part of the group since 2019, and Hedera contributed its codebase as Hiero in 2024. The Cosmos forum post also points to x402, Coinbase’s internet payments protocol, which moved to the Linux Foundation this year.
How big is IBC
All the materials agree that IBC has carried more than $50 billion in transaction volume since it went live in 2021. They do not agree on how many networks use it. The press release and the forum post say 115+ networks. The Cosmos blog says 200+ networks and puts the public IBC network at 229 networks by 2025, while an LF Decentralized Trust blog post says IBC is used by over 200 public ledgers. The gap probably reflects different definitions, such as chains that have ever connected versus those active now, but none of the documents explains it.
The forum post lists institutional users beyond Cosmos, including the Partior settlement network used by DBS, JPMorgan and Emirates NBD, the Japanese tokenized deposit and issuance platforms DCP and Progmat, and central banks in Latin America and the Caribbean. IBC now has implementations in Go, Solidity for EVM networks and Rust. Its pitch is that each chain verifies the other with a light client, so messages are not checked by a separate group of third-party verifiers. Supporters made the security case directly. “Cross-chain movement has been one of the biggest sources of losses in digital assets,” Blockaid said.
What it means for ATOM and Cosmos users
For chains and wallets already on IBC, Cosmos says nothing changes and there is nothing to migrate. That includes the apps people use to move tokens between Cosmos chains, such as Keplr, whose developer Chainapsis is credited with work on Interchain Accounts. Keplr was in the news last week when it paused Google and Apple logins after unauthorized transactions, an issue unrelated to the protocol itself.
IBC does not require a token and charges no protocol fees, so the move does not create a direct revenue link to ATOM. The forum post says the Cosmos Hub stays governed by ATOM stakers, that the Hub’s Eureka bridge to Ethereum keeps running, and that nothing in the change stops the Hub or related products “from building and commercializing on top of IBC.” The case for ATOM holders is indirect: if banks and other chains adopt IBC because no single company controls it, the Hub has more counterparties to connect to. Whether that happens will show up in who joins the steering committee and the maintainer list over the next two years.
FAQ
Is IBC still open source and free to use?
Yes. The code remains under the Apache 2.0 license, and the project charter keeps the protocol layer free of fees or monetization.
Who controls IBC development now?
The maintainers, Cosmos Labs, Datachain and OpenZeppelin, plus a Technical Steering Committee under LF Decentralized Trust. Cosmos Labs engineers chair that committee for the first two-year term.
Do Cosmos chains or ATOM holders need to do anything?
No. Cosmos says existing connections keep running with nothing to migrate, and the Cosmos Hub remains governed by ATOM stakers.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
