Be My Guest: Welcoming Interoperability into IBC-Incompatible Blockchains

The rise of cryptocurrencies has led to the creation of numerous isolated blockchains. A limitation of the space is the absence of seamless interoperability, which has hindered users’ ability to interact across different chains. To tackle this challenge, the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol has emerged as one possible trustless solution. Unfortunately, some blockchains (for example Solana, NEAR, and TRON) do not meet IBC’s technical criteria, preventing their integration with the wider IBC ecosystem. This paper introduces the concept of a guest blockchain which runs on top of an unsupported blockchain and provides all the features necessary for IBC integration. We demonstrate our approach by deploying it on top of Solana which is currently live in the main network and enables IBC-based communication with the Solana blockchain with performance comparable to native IBC-blockchains.