(The Block) Injective, Eclipse to bring Solana applications to the Cosmos ecosystem

By Vishal Chawla

Cosmos-based blockchain Injective and development company Eclipse are launching Cascade, an environment that Solana applications can port to in order to access a wider crypto ecosystem.

It works like this: A Solana application can be deployed on Cascade, which is a Layer 2 network on top of Injective. Once it's there, other blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem will be able to interact with the application. This means that many more applications and blockchains will be able to use the application.

This is important because Solana applications are written in Rust, a programming language not used by many blockchains. As such, Solana applications are largely limited to its ecosystem only. By porting these applications onto Cascade — which is compatible with Rust — developers can use the same code and access a much wider crypto audience.

"This will not only empower Solana developers to deploy their dApps on Injective, but it will also create more opportunities for users to experience the best Web3 dApps in one integrated network," said Injective Labs CEO Eric Chen.

The Cascade rollup is compatible with Rust because it is designed to work with the SeaLevel Virtual Machine (SVM), a computing environment that enables developers to deploy Rust-based Solana apps on other blockchains. It's this integration that allows Solana smart contracts to run natively on Injective, despite their differing technical architectures.

Once on Cascade, applications will be able to access the wider Cosmos ecosystem through the IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol. This is an infrastructure layer that lets anyone send tokens and messages between Cosmos-based blockchains.

Using optimistic rollups technology

Cascade will rely on optimistic rollups, a scaling technique typically used by blockchain networks to aggregate multiple transactions into a single transaction, reducing the number of transactions that need to be processed on-chain. The reason for relying on rollups in this case is not to achieve scalability but rather ensure that the interoperability between the differing technical architectures remains secure.

With Cascade, Rust developers will be able to transfer their code from Solana to Cascade and run it on the Cosmos ecosystem. After each specific period, bundles of transactions can then be settled back to Solana using rollups for added security.

To initiate this project, Injective and Eclipse have started a private testnet, granting selected Solana developers exclusive access. These developers, proficient in Solana tools and the Rust language, can write and deploy their applications in the Cosmos ecosystem via Eclipse without learning Cosmos-specific tooling.

"The SVM environment will drive a tremendous amount of developer activity, and we are excited to bring it into the Cosmos ecosystem for the first time alongside Injective," said Neel Somani, founder of Eclipse Labs, on the launch of Cascade.

Eclipse Labs had recently revealed plans to deploy a similar rollup-based blockchain called Polygon SVM letting Solana developers to deploy on Polygon, a popular Ethereum sidechain.

Eclipse is not the only project working on expanding Solana apps to other blockchains. Nitro, another blockchain project, is developing a network to deploy and execute Solana apps on Sei, a blockchain set to launch soon on Cosmos.

This article originally appeared on The Block.

About Injective

Injective is a lightning fast interoperable layer one blockchain optimized for building the premier Web3 finance applications. Injective provides developers with powerful plug-and-play modules for creating unmatched dApps. INJ is the native asset that powers Injective and its rapidly growing ecosystem. Injective is incubated by Binance and is backed by prominent investors such as Jump Crypto, Pantera and Mark Cuban.