Overview

Identifier

Each channel has a connection-id and channel-id, uniquely identifying the channel on that specific chain. Note that these identifiers are not globally unique, such that two chains can both have channels with IDs (10, 2). This does not mean that, since the IDs are the same, these channels are connected to each other.

Status

A channel goes through different states referred to as status: INIT, TRY, ACK, and CONFIRM. Unless you are opening channels yourself, you only need to concern yourself with the CONFIRM state, which means the channel can now relay messages and assets.

version

Channels serve different protocol types, indicated by their version. These can be fully custom, although most of the time they will be one of the enshrined types (such as ucs03-zkgm-1). In other cases, they can be fully custom, like

{
  "version": "ics27-1",
  "controller_connection_id": "connection-0",
  "host_connection_id": "connection-28",
  "address": "union1k8c7ks99ltx3gu4rejhm9jxj0cu4ukpg3s2dcqfwawr7d5k3xh0qzl9eag",
  "encoding": "proto3",
  "tx_type": "sdk_multi_msg"
}

Which was created by the ICA module. Custom versions should only be used if you created the channel or have a deep understanding of the protocol.

Channels Table

This table provides live information on current channels.