According to The Block, StarkWare, the development company of the Ethereum second layer network Starknet, is collaborating with Informal Systems, the development company of the Cosmos network, to integrate Cosmos' Inter Chain Communication Protocol (IBC) into Starknet, allowing Starknet to connect with any IBC compatible chain, including all chains within the Cosmos ecosystem and other compatible chains outside the system.

Cosmos and Starknet currently operate on different code bases. Starknet is a permissionless decentralized ZK Rollup that operates as a Layer 2 network on Ethereum, using STARK proofs to ensure high throughput and low transaction costs while maintaining the security of the main network. Cosmos is an ecosystem composed of multiple chains developed using the Cosmos SDK, which use Tendermint consensus mechanism and communicate with each other through the IBC protocol.

StarkWare explained that the focus of this collaboration with Informal Systems is to explore Tendermint consensus algorithm and IBC protocol to achieve better decentralization of Starknet and expand its interoperability.

Over the past year, Starkware has been committed to several research and development projects, such as introducing zero knowledge proof (ZK) scaling solutions into the Bitcoin ecosystem, the "ZKThreads" framework for fractal scaling, and parallel transaction execution.