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Safrochain IBC overview

Safrochain is built on Cosmos SDK 0.50 with the ibc-go module enabled, which means every Safrochain validator is also an IBC participant from genesis. Out of the box you get:

  • ICS-20 fungible token transfers: send SAF to any IBC-enabled chain and receive any IBC token in return (denominated as ibc/<hash>).
  • ICS-27 interchain accounts (ICA): controllers on other chains can open accounts on Safrochain and submit txs as if they were native.
  • ICS-29 fee middleware: relayer incentivisation built into the chain.
  • ICS-721 NFT transfers: interchain NFT moves once a counterparty wires it up.

Today the chain is in the testnet phase, so channels listed on Channels are placeholders. They open in lockstep with mainnet launch (Q3 2026).

Why a chain operator runs a relayer​

IBC is permissionless: anyone can run a relayer between two chains. In practice the foundation runs at least one Hermes relayer per priority counterparty so that:

  • Token transfers in/out of Safrochain don't depend on third-party uptime
  • The foundation can pay relayer fees in SAF via the ibcfee middleware
  • Channel handshake bugs and timeout issues get caught fast (alert pipeline)

Independent operators are very welcome to relay too; the more redundancy, the healthier the channel.

Relayer choices​

RelayerLanguageStatusRecommended for
Hermes (ibc-relayer-cli)Rustmaturefoundation default, see Hermes setup
go-relayer (rly)GomatureCosmos-native operators familiar with Go tooling
hermes-rs (lite)Rustnewembedded / single-channel use-cases

We document the Hermes flow in detail because that is what the foundation runs. The rly flow follows the same chain-config + start-up pattern.

Address format on counterparties​

When you send SAF from Safrochain to another chain over channel-0, your asset arrives as

ibc/<sha256-of-channel-0-and-usaf>

The destination explorer typically resolves this to "SAF (Safrochain)" using its assetlist. To compute it yourself:

echo -n "transfer/channel-0/usaf" | shasum -a 256
# <64 hex chars>. IBC denom is "ibc/<that hash uppercased>"

Fees​

ICS-29 fee middleware is enabled. A relayer can attach recv_fee, ack_fee, and timeout_fee to each packet and be paid in usaf from a fee escrow on the source chain. This is what keeps the channel reliable without anyone running a relayer "out of charity".

Health monitoring​

Hermes ships a Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoint (defaults to http://localhost:3001/metrics). Useful series to graph or alert on:

  • ibc_relayer_packets_relayed_total (5 m / 1 h rate per channel)
  • pending acknowledgements per channel
  • relayer wallet balance per chain (alert when below ~5 SAF / equivalent on the counterparty chain)
  • channel handshake failures

Where to next​

  • Hermes setup: full config template, systemd unit, health checks.
  • Channels: canonical channel registry (opens at mainnet).
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