Interchain Jam Highlights: CosmWasm Expansion recaps the live X Interchain Jam session hosted by the ICF’s Robb Stack. In this edition, we learn about the exciting products and features being built with the Interchain Stack, with a special focus on CosmWasm, which enables developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) in Rust and connect to a flourishing ecosystem via IBC. We catch up with representatives and founders from Archway, Abstract, Nolus, and StreamSwap, and discover how they’re leveraging CosmWasm to drive the ecosystem’s growth.

Getting to Know the Interchain: Archway

Archway is one of the earliest adopters of CosmWasm and is an incentivized L1 chain that allows developers to capture the value of their dApps, enabling sustainable economic models. Founder of Phi Labs and Archway Protocol, Griffin Anderson, says, “What’s unique about Archway is we redesigned the chain so that if a developer was building a dApp on top of Archway, they could start to earn incentives and economic value for contributing to the underlying protocol… we really allow third-party developers to capture the value that they create on the chain.”

Archway makes it easy for third-party developers to build CosmWasm-based dApps, deploy them on Archway, and interact with other contracts and protocols via IBC. The team has made several notable contributions to IBC and built many custom modules using Cosmos SDK to help achieve this goal. These include a callback module that allows scheduling of transactions in the future and automating callbacks, and a fee grants module that enables developers to set rules on who interacts with their smart contracts and provide configurable gas fees for users, enabling the creation of subscription models.

The Archway ecosystem is also expanding with an NFT marketplace under development focusing on high-quality permissioned collections and DeFi tooling and initiatives, such as fiat onboarding, portfolio management, permissionless restaking, and a universal app Connect, to access all DeFi-related components from one single interface. Griffin says, “Most people aren’t aware that we have all these dApps and products… We’re really starting to expand in the application space so expect to see a lot more fun things to do on Archway.”

Abstract

Abstract is the IBC orchestration platform of the interchain, providing tooling for developers to create cross-chain applications using IBC. Co-founder Robin Bisschop explains, “As our name suggests, we have a bunch of abstractions that allow developers to not have to be too specific with what IBC actually is but just use our abstractions, our on-chain tooling, and our dev tooling to write their application, ship it to not one but any chain on which Abstract is live and then access all the app-specific chains over IBC. The goal of Abstract is to create an environment in which developers can actually use this crucial, super important technology that is IBC as easily as possible.”

Abstract was early in the chain abstraction area, allowing its technology to mature. The company aims to play to this strength through its Interchain Launcher, which will enable users to onboard easily, create an Abstract account, and access all the different chains within the IBC and EVM ecosystems. He says:

“They can use our infrastructure to orchestrate their actions on all of the blockchains that will be supported by IBC… That way we hope to bootstrap an ecosystem similar to what you can find on a Google Play Store or an Apple App Store where developers can create code and publish it to users without having to go through the hassle of raising funds… We’re really trying to lower the barriers to entry for innovators within the space and be the application platform for the interchain.”

Nolus

Nolus is an application-specific blockchain built using the Interchain Stack and leveraging CosmWasm to provide a native lending market. Nolus bridges lenders and borrowers in the DeFi money market. Lenders can deposit stablecoins or volatile assets single-sided and earn rewards in the same deposited asset with additional Nolus incentives. The borrowing aspect of Nolus sets it apart from other lending solutions, as borrowers can provide a deposit, known as a down payment, and borrow up to 150% of that deposit’s value. This allows for cross-chain margin long and short positions with a fixed, unchanging interest rate until the position is active.

Nolus believes more real-world assets will soon be tokenized on-chain, making it easy for users to access them conveniently. The team aims to build efficient, fast, safe, and convenient solutions to address inefficiencies in lending markets, such as high collateral requirements, high risk of liquidation, and liquidity fragmentation. Upcoming features for Nolus include detailed P&L history for users, stop-loss and take-profit features, and expanding the lending market to other ecosystems like EVM and Solana VM using trust-minimized cross-chain technologies like IBC.

Metodi Manov of Nolus says, “What’s unique about Nolus besides the greater exposure with lower exclusion properties coming with that lending market is that it’s completely interoperable with other IBC-enabled chains such as Osmosis with the Osmosis DEX deployed there and Astroport on Neutron.”

StreamSwap

StreamSwap is a protocol for time-based token swaps like community-driven token launches within the interchain ecosystem. StreamSwap enables the creation of streams, allowing users to lock up tokens and subscribe to those streams on a second-to-second basis. While currently not fully permissionless, the protocol is working to achieve that goal while maintaining a safe and curated environment. StreamSwap’s plans include expanding into low-liquidity and high-volume swap environments, such as OTC markets and DEXs. The protocol is also exploring the concept of one-minute streams for flash sales and other e-commerce-like applications.

StreamSwap has already seen success with several projects like Gitopia launching their tokens using its protocol and is excited to see how developers and projects utilize the platform in innovative ways, such as media streaming and other use cases. Core contributor to StreamSwap DAO and OmniFlix co-founder Sistla Abhishek says:

“We are exploring the paradigm of time within token swaps and any kind of tooling that can be built with this time-based token swap model. The first use case that we put together is the price discovery of tokens that are yet to launch or are launching, but eventually, we aim to expand to OTCs and multiple other types of token transfers especially high-volume token transfers in low liquidity environments. We use CosmWasm and are currently deployed on Osmosis and Injective and we aim to expand.”

Why Build Using CosmWasm?

Four projects with different use cases are united by their decision to build with the Interchain Stack. What is it about this technology — and CosmWasm in particular — that makes it the compelling choice for their projects’ development?

A Secure Smart Contract Language

As a second-generation smart contract language, Robin says CosmWasm learned from the security issues inherent in EVM and Solidity, which is notorious for its broad attack surface related to reentrancy. Griffin reinforces this point by saying, “What we find with the EVM and writing in Solidity is there’s just a lot of issues and bugs and hacks that would happen, for instance, reentrancy attacks and things like that at the security level.”

CosmWasm provides much greater security by not allowing for reentrancy, ensuring that individual contracts can securely manage their internal state without the risk of in-process interference by an attacker. Metodi adds:

“First, security in smart contract protocols is paramount to having more and more users use your protocol… With the EVM, there have been many reentrance attacks — that’s probably the most popular attack on smart contract protocols — and having this security baked into your environment with CosmWasm is a huge plus.”

Rust Is the Most Popular Programming Language

Another advantage of CosmWasm is the Rust programming language, which is widely regarded as the most popular programming language and makes writing complex applications much easier than Solidity. “The Rust language is an amazing language. It’s the fifth year or even sixth year that it’s the top most preferred programming language in the world,” Robin says. Sistla adds:

“The use of Rust is important primarily because you have a lot of the basics sorted with Rust and WebAssembly, like security and memory optimization… All of these are very effective while writing CosmWasm contracts and reduce any fundamental adapters that we might have in other specific smart contract languages like Solidity.”

Griffin emphasizes this point, “The benefits of writing contracts in Rust and compiling them up to Wasm is definitely around the features you can build out with it…

“Something we’re doing on Archway for instance is called NFT reveals. It’s all done natively in the contract and that’s something that would have been incredibly difficult to do with Solidity-based code. That can be done much easier in Rust compiled up to Wasm.”

While the primary programming language supported by CosmWasm is Rust, Griffin is excited about the possibility of supporting other contracts and programming languages that can easily be compiled up to WebAssembly. “That would allow us to reach a much larger developer audience. We played around and experimented a little bit with writing Golang-based smart contracts… The tooling and infra still has to get there but that was another major reason [for choosing CosmWasm].”

Ability to Build Modular Applications

Robin points to CosmWasm’s modularity as another reason Abstract decided to build with it:

“There’s this unique feature of being able to migrate contracts that makes CosmWasm something that you can use to build modular applications that work with microservice abstractions where you have smart contracts talking to each other through a very simple API and then the smart contract itself can handle a very complex business logic.”

Griffin says CosmWasm in conjunction with Cosmos SDK enabled Archway to build its developer-incentivized platform the way it wanted:

“The way we designed a protocol was all around redirecting rewards to developers instead of just folks that were in typical PoS networks… the Cosmos SDK has been much easier to work with and allows us to build custom modules that cater specifically to that use case.”

Powerful, Complex Applications

All four projects agree that CosmWasm’s design enables extremely powerful and complex dApps that are easier to write in Rust. Robin explains, “The way that we view the battle between CosmWasm and Solidity from a different perspective is having access to liquidity… most of that liquidity is on EVM but the most important aspect is being able to access the liquidity. It doesn’t necessarily have to live on the same chain as where your application logic is defined… that is where we see CosmWasm really being very influential and powerful…

“We can write very complex and intricate applications in CosmWasm but they are still able to access the liquidity of EVM chains over IBC and that’s something that we’ve been exploring together with the Union team as well as some other teams in the space.

Integration with the Interchain Stack

Metodi points out that another major advantage of CosmWasm is how it works together with the rest of the Interchain Stack enabling flexible, modular development and seamless interoperability:

“One of the major reasons the team chose the Interchain Stack in the first place is because of IBC and CosmWasm having this direct access to the Cosmos SDK modules and being able to use those powerful IBC features really helped us push out this interoperable product and prove that IBC is more than just token transfers and can be used for true interoperability and controlling actions from your chain on other foreign networks without the end user realizing the complexity of all that.”

When building StreamSwap, Sistla found:

“There was no other VM that was this effective and was compatible with the Cosmos stack, the Cosmos SDK, IBC, and so on and so forth… [We chose CosmWasm] First for the framework itself and then the ability to utilize the Interchain Stack with protocols like Abstract and the various bridges that are available out there connecting to or supporting something like general message processing.”

As a novel lending solution, Nolus requires a decentralized exchange and with CosmWasm being “so tightly connected” to the Interchain Stack, IBC, and Interchain Accounts, Nolus can tap into the deeper liquidity of the larger DEXs like Osmosis or Astroport rather having to deploy its own DEX with thin liquidity. Metodi says, “With this direct access to liquidity elsewhere it helps the overall user experience as well. So users need to pay less in fees to open a position that goes to a deeper liquidity pool.”

Griffin adds, “The composability with IBC and the different relayers and things like that and the native integrations with Cosmos chains and zones… those are some of the benefits of a lot of this stuff and building more complex contracts and use cases.”

Wrapping It Up

We’re thrilled to hear from interchain teams leveraging CosmWasm and the Interchain Stack to grow their projects and expand the interchain ecosystem. You can stay up to date with Archway, Abstract, Nolus, and StreamSwap by following them on their socials. All four of these inspiring projects have exciting features coming up and plenty of dApps to experiment with. Let them know what you think! Be sure to tune into the next Interchain Jam session on Thursday, October 3 at 2 PM UTC with THORChain.

Source : Medium - Oct 1, 2024