Agoric Launches Testnet: Smart Contracts that Interoperate across Blockchains with Cosmos

You can also read our press release covered by Crypto Ninjas here

Agoric launched its testnet at Zcon1, the annual privacy conference hosted by the Zcash foundation. Developers will be building on the testnet at the upcoming Outlier Ventures Diffusion and SF Blockchain Week hackathons.

The Agoric founding team includes Mark S. Miller and Dean Tribble, who both have 30+ years of groundbreaking leadership in the smart contracts space. The team recently raised $4 million from notable global investors.

Agoric envisions the framework as revolutionary for the future of global economic cooperation. As the blockchain ecosystem evolves, the ability to rapidly program safe smart contracts will become increasingly important. Agoric is at the forefront of developing a unique solution to this problem. The Agoric testnet builds on Tendermint consensus and the Cosmos SDK, to create a platform that includes:

  • Inter-chain communications protocol — a precursor protocol to upcoming Inter-Blockchain Communications protocol (IBC). IBC will provide true interoperability across multiple blockchains, thus expanding the market available to millions of current and future smart contracts developers worldwide.

  • Electronic Rights Transfer Protocol (ERTP) — a simple set of object APIs for expressing, transacting on, and transferring a great variety of digital rights​ among users and smart contracts.

  • Digital assets created in JavaScript — a major step towards making smart contracts accessible to mainstream developers.

  • Cosmos-SDK Integration — access to Cosmos modules and features from JavaScript, such as the native ledger and staking architecture.

Agoric CEO Dean Tribble says: “We are really excited to have an end-to-end implementation the Agoric stack available to developers. We combine best-of-breed consensus from Cosmos, initial version of our secure runtime, and our in-progress smart contract framework so developers can start to build. It’s a huge step on the road to enabling developers to transform the global economy.”

At the Berlin Cosmos Hackathon in June, private projects related to the Agoric testnet were two of the winners:

1) Agoric implemented a new, improved integration with Cosmos SDK. To show the full stack, the team demonstrated a simple “pixel” marketplace that uses the Agoric ERTP. It provides the ability to create digital assets that can color, buy, and sell pixels, and create further abstractions. This marketplace is an important illustration of how developers can manipulate electronic access rights and adapt assets for their needs using the Agoric framework.

2) Aaron Davis of MetaMask, together with Agoric, created and demonstrated a prototype tool that analyzes JavaScript projects and applies Agoric SES automatically to lock down third party libraries. This will be able to systematically eliminate crucial vulnerabilities in JavaScript components such as MetaMask, js-tendermint, web3.js, etc. This solution prevents exploits such as the event-stream breach, and demonstrates one of the ways that Agoric secures and simplifies programming smart contracts.

Since the first deployment, the Agoric team has updated the testnet with enhancements to the contract framework, performance, provisioning, and scaling. They will continually be enhancing the functionality of the testnet, including the developer-ready version of IBC and interop with other Cosmos Hub and other participating chains. Agoric will be increasing developer access, and welcome interested developers to participate in its evolution.

Interested parties can apply here to join the testnet, or reach out to the Agoric team via email ([email protected]) or the Testnet channel on Wire.

Updated: