Cosmos and the Interchain Foundation are contributing the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol, or IBC, to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust, giving the cross-chain messaging standard a new governance home while keeping its code free and open source.

The Nov. 9 announcement is confirmed by LFDT's project listing, which classifies IBC as an incubating project. A technical steering committee made up of maintainers will oversee development, initially drawing contributors from Cosmos Labs, Datachain and OpenZeppelin.

For chains and applications already using IBC, the change concerns stewardship rather than continued access. “IBC will remain free and open source, as always,” Cosmos said in its announcement thread. It said existing chains, apps and services would continue communicating and transferring assets over the public network as they do today.

Loading post from X…

View post on X

IBC lets independent ledgers exchange assets and data. As described in the technical explanation published by LFDT, relayers carry messages and supporting proofs between chains; the receiving chain checks those proofs. Organizations using IBC continue to operate their own infrastructure.

A Map of Zones report recorded $45.68 billion in IBC transfers from October 2021 through September 2026. It observed 229 chains sending or receiving IBC traffic during 2025. Those figures cover observable public-network activity, not private ledgers.

The Cosmos Labs release identifies Google Cloud as a supporter of the contribution, alongside individuals from organizations including Wells Fargo, Injective Labs, OpenZeppelin and Cardano Foundation.

Cosmos Keeps a Central Technical Role

The project's initial committee roster lists seven maintainers: five from Cosmos Labs and one each from Datachain and OpenZeppelin. Cosmos Labs remains a primary maintainer and says it will continue committing engineering resources and shaping the roadmap with other maintainers.

Under the published governance rules, maintainers hold day-to-day authority and code-merge rights. Specification changes require a public architecture decision proposal. Proposals proceed if no maintainer objects within five working days; unresolved objections go to a committee vote. New maintainers gain their role, and a vote on the committee, through majority committee approval after sustained contributions.

The release policy provides for component-specific upgrades rather than treating every release as a change to the entire system. Breaking changes require a major-version increase, while onchain contracts are released only after deliberate, reviewed changes rather than on a fixed schedule.

Cosmos says LFDT will hold the IBC trademark. The contribution guidelines specify Apache 2.0 for code, Community Specification License 1.0 for specifications and CC BY 4.0 for documentation. The protocol's code was already public and freely licensed before the contribution; developers retain the ability to use it, fork it and build on it.