Agoric Orchestration: Towards A More Unified Interchain
Over the past several years, the interchain community has accomplished a tremendous effort to build an impressive inventory of assets and services that are interoperable with each other. However, the challenge we face today is that with so many options, the same landscape has become increasingly difficult for developers to program.
To solve this, Agoric recently announced Orchestration, a set of capabilities for coordinating multi-chain assets and services in the growing async world to produce user-friendly applications.
Connecting the Multi-Chain Dots
Transport technologies like the Inter Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) or Axelar’s General Messaging Passing (GMP) have made great strides in tearing down the barriers between chains. Even so, building multi-chain applications (like Sommelier or Skip) remains extremely hard. Creating seamless multi-chain user experiences requires the programming power to connect the services on either side of the transport layer to ensure a user activity continues. And while the synchronous nature of other chains has been a benefit in the past, limitations arise when building multi-chain applications.
For example, Axelar’s GMP is useful for sending messages across chains that need to perform actions once they reach the other side: a user can swap from ETH on Ethereum into OSMO on Osmosis by constructing a transaction across Axelar that sends ETH on Ethereum -> Axelar -> Osmosis -> Swap to OSMO on Osmosis.
However, if they want that action to continue further, e.g. to stake that OSMO after purchase, the user must sign a new transaction because the contract logic cannot flow through the IBC memo fields that are currently being used.
This is where Orchestration comes in!
An Agoric contract can mediate these flows, get the acknowledgment that actions have completed, and start the next action. The multi-chain staking example may be simple, but it accurately captures how limited current cross-chain actions are. Orchestration completely opens up the interchain design space to seamlessly unified experiences.
The Interchain is the Natural Home for Multi-Chain Applications
Beneath the surface of the interchain is the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), an open source protocol that facilitates sending messages across blockchains akin to the internet’s TCP/IP protocol that connects independent networks worldwide. This standardization of communication facilitates not just the transfer of value in the form of tokens but also the seamless exchange of data between connected autonomous blockchains.
Building on the foundation laid by IBC, modules like Interchain Accounts (ICA) and Interchain Queries (ICQ) represent significant advances in blockchain interoperability. By allowing entities on one blockchain to control an account on another, ICA opens up new possibilities for managing assets and interacting with smart contracts across different chains. Combined with ICQ pulling account and transaction data, these features simplify cross-chain operations, enabling new levels of interaction previously unattainable without significant developer work. The real trick, though, is connecting those simplified operations together to create a unified experience in an application.
Orchestration is a Smoother Path to Multi-Chain Apps
Orchestration is the process of coordinating the intricate, asynchronous interactions between IBC modules, and Agoric provides a suite of tools and services for developers to bring it all together. The platform has several key features that make building multi-chain applications easier, notably the combination of asynchronous/multi-block execution by default and on-chain timers with native interoperability through IBC and Axelar.
Agoric smart contracts and forthcoming APIs can transparently incorporate resources and services from other chains. They can make a request over IBC to another chain, await the result, and react to it; for example, placing a remote trade and transferring the assets when the trade completes. The result is an application where the complexities of navigating a multi-chain process are abstracted away from the user.
By reducing the technical challenges of connecting IBC modules, Agoric enables developers to focus on solving the hard problems people face every day. This environment nurtures the development of applications that are not only functional but also align with the best practices of user experience design, making the interchain home to technologies that are the most approachable.
The Orchestra Begins to Play
The synergy between Agoric and IBC is transformative, opening up new opportunities for cross-chain interaction that serves as both the infrastructure and the vehicle for navigating the interconnected blockchain landscape. This dual functionality not only improves liquidity by allowing assets to move freely across chains, but also provides a unified user experience, making interactions across multiple blockchains as effortless as if they were one.
With IBC adoption rapidly growing, extending to Polkadot and Avalanche with more ecosystems coming, there are untapped opportunities just waiting to be discovered. Now that developing intricate applications that leverage the strengths and services of multiple blockchains is within reach, the potential for innovation is vast.
Onboarding the Next 10,000 Interchain Developers
As the interchain continues to grow, Orchestration can play a pivotal role in accelerating its evolution. Empowering developers with the tools to build seamless multi-chain applications will unify the interchain in a way that makes delightful user experiences easier to build than previously possible.
By making the interchain accessible, understandable, and easy to use, Agoric Orchestration is not just facilitating the onboarding of new developers, but is also driving the user adoption of web3 technologies. Through this lens of simplification and user experience, the future of the interchain looks not only interconnected but also inclusive, marking a significant step forward in the democratization of the digital world.
Read more about Agoric Orchestration on their blog and catch them at events like Chain Abstraction Day and more during ETHDenver!
