Welcome to the first post in a series on building a general understanding of bridging solutions, particularly what the Polymer from Polymer Labs is bringing to the Cosmos ecosystem and beyond.

In this post, we will focus on unwrapping the meaning of each of the big names from the title. We aim to be easy to follow by most of our readers, with as few technicalities as possible. At least for the first season, it will go deeper sometime later. :)

What is a bridge?

You use a bridge when you want to cross on the other side of the river. In blockchain terminology, a bridge is a solution that enables transferring messages (tokens, data, etc.) between blockchains that cannot communicate with each other.

There are many bridging technologies out there and many to come. It is an active space of research and a field of great innovations. With the holy grail of creating one, an ultimate connector for all blockchains…

One Bridge to connect them all, One Bridge to find them,One Bridge to bring them all, and in the wallet have them…

What is IBC?

The Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) is a protocol that enables transferring arbitrary data between arbitrary state machines. In other words, it describes how to construct a message, send it from one blockchain, and receive it on another blockchain. In real life, we could compare the IBC to the terms of service of a courier company. We know how to address the package, where to deliver it, and when and how it will be delivered. This type of regulation is what IBC brings to the blockchain space.

Having regulations is good, but its implementation is what brings real value, which leads us to the standard IBC implementation from Cosmos and its newest extension from Polymer.

What is Cosmos?

Cosmos project is an ecosystem of solutions built around implementing the IBC standard, with a goal to create the Internet of Blockchains. Where sovereign, decentralized blockchains are going to exchange assets and data freely. The core contributions of the Cosmos Project, among others, are the Cosmos SDK, which is a framework for building IBC compatible blockchains, and the Cosmos Hub, the economic center of Cosmos to which all other blockchains can connect to using IBC standards, benefit from the sharing economy, and form the Internet of Blockchains.

Using our comparison to shipping companies, the Cosmos would be a large conglomerate of courier companies with the biggest and the most connected sorting facility and distribution center. Enabling all shipping companies to exchange packages between them freely.

What is Polymer?

Polymer Labs is a new player in the Cosmos ecosystem to solve one of the fundamental problems of the standard IBC specification. The IBC protocol is designed to work only with IBC-enabled blockchains. This means that many well-established blockchain projects, like Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain, will not benefit from the interoperability with IBC-enabled chains.

This is the problem that Polymer is trying to solve with an extension to the IBC protocol called IBC Rollup. The Polymer will integrate many non-IBC-compatible blockchains, using their Rollup extension to the IBC protocol, and enable cross-chain communication, either between non-IBC-compatible protocols or non-IBC-to-IBC-enabled chains.

Going back to our package shipping analogy, we can think of Polymer as another courier company that facilitates relaying packages between the conglomerate of courier companies (Cosmos) and national post offices (Ethereum).

We hope that we were able to present the core ideas of the IBC, Cosmos, and Polymer. And now, you better understand these projects’ breakthroughs in the blockchain world. In the following posts, we will gradually go into more detail to better understand the inner workings of IBC, Cosmos, and Polymer.