Over a decade since its inception, blockchain is gaining traction through an expanding array of use cases across industries from finance to agriculture and gaming. As more blockchains emerge, competition increases, resulting in many siloed blockchains with different ecosystems, algorithms and consensus models that cannot exchange information with each other.
The inability for one blockchain to communicate with another opposes the fundamental goal of decentralization that blockchain was originally intended to achieve. Furthermore, the mass adoption of blockchain – especially in sensitive industries like healthcare – depends on blockchain interoperability, or the ability to seamlessly exchange data between blockchains.
Jeffrey Hu is Research Director of IRISnet (IRIS Hub), an interchain service hub designed to support a new wave of distributed applications by enabling cross-chain interoperability through a unified service model. He said blockchain is regarded as the next-generation Internet of Value (IoV), but as more blockchain projects emerge, isolated information and asset islands are becoming a bigger issue.
Built with Cosmos-SDK, IRIS Hub supports token interchain transfer as well as trustworthy data consumption and computation invocation across heterogeneous systems (public blockchains, consortium blockchains and legacy systems). Because different blockchains run on different underlying technologies, Hu said interchain technology is key to achieving the necessary data transfer and value circulation among blockchains as well as between blockchains and the real world off-chain.
IRISnet accomplished the latter by integrating leading decentralized oracle network Chainlink and adding a Chainlink oracle module to IRIS Hub. This allows developers to build decentralized applications that span across multiple blockchains while incorporating secure and reliable data feeds from trusted off-chain sources.
“Many Cosmos-SDK-based chains don’t support smart contracts right now, so the IRISnet team developed an “oracle” module to make Chainlink easily accessible on IRIS Hub,” Hu said. “Developers can build next-generation decentralized applications that span across multiple blockchains and incorporate secure and reliable data feeds from trusted off-chain sources; other networks based on Cosmos-SDK can also leverage the oracle module or connect to IRIS Hub by IBC to access Chainlink’s reliable data service.”
The recent mainnet integration of Chainlink oracles on BSN via IRITA Hub allows BSN blockchains to request and receive external off-chain data from Chainlink oracles. “Chainlink oracle services can be used in a variety of blockchain environments via IRITA Hub,” Hu said. “Enterprises and developers from the BSN ecosystem in China and around the world can easily access trusted data at any time with the support of IRITA Hub, Chainlink, and SNZ nodes as a means of securely connecting their applications with the traditional systems currently powering modern economies.”
Hu sees a future where all public and consortium blockchains can be fully connected or associated through the infrastructure and shared vision of Chainlink and IRISnet. “I am very excited to see the integrations with Chainlink, both on IRISnet and other enterprise-related networks like BSN and IRITA Hub. I think Chainlink and IRISnet share a similar idea of bringing off-chain worlds to crypto, by providing off-chain data and integrating legacy systems’ services respectively.”
To learn more about IRISnet, check out their website, Twitter, Telegram, Medium and Discord.
Read more about Chainlink’s latest integrations here.