Yesterday over on bridge.terra.money, platform for bridging between terra chain with other chains, new chains were added to the platform. I got overly excited since I have experience of doing arbitrage, initial coins/tokens onto a different blockchain typically yields a few percentage base points when swapped on the new chain. This is due in part of supply and demand. But my post today is not to focus on what I did but what I could not do.
My Funds Locked
It all started with the opportunity to move funds from Cosmos chain onto Terra chain. I immediately went to transfer ATOM over. The transaction got confirmed but I could not see any funds in my Terra chain wallet. In desperation I went on Cosmos blockchain transaction site to track down my transaction. That is when I learned what IBC was all about.
Over on mapofzones.com users can see all the transactions that are bridging between blockchains. Each chain is built on top of the Cosmos Ecosystem allowing it to provide a pathway to transfer native tokens of the chain onto a different chain. This is what is known as Inter-Blockchain Communication or IBC for short.
Currently there are 41 chains operating on Cosmos and 916 channels between the chains. Each channel is a landing spot, aka ports, for the destination of transferred tokens. Any token/s native to the two chains and able to transfer between each of the ports through IBC. In the case of my incident I was using Cosmos and Terra. The port to Terra is channel 299.
Imagine how many chains there would be for every one of those chains bridging to another cosmos chain? For instance Cosmos alone would need 40 active channels as it currently stands to cover all 40 other active chains. Of course on the other end each have their own channels to which makes at minimum 80 channels. To find the proper channels between chains use:
https://www.mintscan.io/cosmos/relayers
A database listed every blockchain and their IBC channels to other blockchains. Honestly the site needs to do better with its search through IBCs as it updates continuously so difficult to find the correct channel unless you have fast internet or know what the channel is.
Example of Cosmos to Osmos:
It seems the channels can change to over time but in any case users do not have to see these channels when they transfer their funds from one chain to another through their Keplr wallets because the protocols where they make the transfers will identify the channels for them.
In my situation I made the transfer in my Keplr wallet but could not find my ATOM on terra chain. Luckily I tracked down my cosmos transaction again with the use of mintscan.io
In the protocol I was using there were developers on hand to help track down the transaction with the info I provided and although it took a few hours they were able to get my funds back. Apparently the issue between Cosmos to Terra at the time got overwhelmed hence multiple transactions were stuck. Cosmos developers were able to fix the transfers and repay in full to all the users who had funds stuck.
Conclusions
Everyday there are thousands of transactions between chains. With the use of IBC we can see how many transactions to which chain. List above has Osmosis being the highest in transfers which is no surprise as it is the top DEX on Cosmos. A lot of the most popular tokens used on Cosmos could be traded through Osmosis.
Terra is listed 6th on the list. To be clear this is transactions between IBC chains. Within the chains itself there are swaps and trades also happening with itself. Those are not counted. The IBC transaction occurs when its two different chains bridging the tokens. This is an actual bridge of a native token from one chain on to another chain. It all works only of the original blockchain is built on top of the Cosmos ecosystem.
None of what I write is financial advice. It is for entertainment purposes only. Thanks for reading!
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