In the era of chain explosion, why can chain abstraction give birth to killer applications?

1. Regarding chain abstraction, Particle Network defines it as: a user experience that is free from interacting with multiple chains.

This definition is actually very concise and clear, and directly clarifies the ultimate result that chain abstraction wants to achieve.

The three most painful problems users encounter when using blockchain applications are: different chains require different wallets, the Gas tokens on each chain are different, and how to transfer assets across chains.

Chain abstraction is to extract the common and essential parts from different chains, so that users do not need to understand the characteristics of the underlying different chains, or even perceive the existence of various chains. They only need to use the product to complete their own intentions.

2. Why has the narrative of chain abstraction suddenly attracted market attention at this stage?

The biggest reason is the explosion in the number of chains.

In the last cycle, that is, during the bull market of 2020-2021, several well-known public chains in the market, including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, and Cardano, have already existed and are relatively mature, and no new public chains have emerged.

However, in this cycle, starting from 2023, the number of new chains began to surge. There are two core driving forces: one is that existing public chains expand through Layer2, and the other is that leading applications gain autonomy and value narrative by launching application chains.

In order to solve the performance problems of Ethereum, various types of Layer2 (second-layer networks) have emerged in the Ethereum ecosystem, and there will be Layer3 (third-layer network) in the future. This is like building an overpass on the original main road in a city, forming a three-dimensional network, which greatly alleviates traffic pressure.

Based on the data collected by L2Beat, the number of Ethereum's Layer2 has reached 11. Add to that the many L2s that have not yet been launched, and this number will only increase.

Another trend is that when an application develops to a certain scale, it is often motivated to issue its own chain in order to seek more freedom and project narrative, which is the so-called application chain (dApp Chain), such as the leading decentralized derivatives trading application dYdX, the decentralized social platform Friend.Tech and the leading decentralized trading platform Uniswap.

3. What is the relationship between chain abstraction and modularity?

The market’s previous focus was on modularity, because based on the needs of chain development, corresponding solutions were needed.

This is why modular narratives became popular half a year ago, and a series of leading projects emerged, including the data availability layer Celestia, the settlement layer Dymension, and the RaaS (Rollup as a Service) chain platform AltLayer.

The essence of modularity is division of labor and cooperation. A complete system can be divided into different replaceable modules. Different modules are independent, secure and scalable. At the same time, different modules can be combined together to realize the operation of the entire system.

Modularity greatly reduces the cost of building a chain, and a new chain can be easily assembled.

As the number of chains expanded and exploded, people discovered that there were too many chains and too many infrastructure projects, which directly damaged the user experience.

Therefore, the narrative at the infrastructure layer is no longer sexy, but begins to focus on the user experience at the application layer.

As a result, the industry's focus has shifted from modularization to chain abstraction, which is actually the maturity and progress of the market.

To summarize the relationship and difference between modularization and chain abstraction:

• Modularity is driving the maturity of the infrastructure layer, while chain abstraction is promoting progress in the application layer.
• Modularity solves the problem of chain issuance, while chain abstraction solves the problem of chain usage.

4. Before the emergence of chain abstraction, how did products on the market solve the multi-chain problem ?

In order to solve the multi-chain experience problem, before the emergence of chain abstraction, the solution adopted by application layer products was to aggregate multiple chains themselves, and even try to smooth out the differences between different chains in product design, or prevent users from perceiving the differences between chains, thereby improving the user experience.

The most typical product is OKX Web3 Wallet, in which users can manage their digital assets, directly exchange tokens, cross-chain, trade NFTs, purchase financial products on different chains, and so on.

However, OKX Wallet has a team of several hundred people and is backed by the resources of the OKX exchange, so it can polish out such a good user experience.

However, most projects and products have an urgent need for a more universal technology, middleware or architecture that can directly eliminate the differences between different chains and help their products directly improve user experience.

In other words, there needs to be an intermediate layer between the application layer and the blockchain layer. Many underlying blockchain features are abstracted, and then a common service is provided for more blockchain applications. This is chain abstraction.

Looking back at the OKX wallet solution, as a multi-chain wallet, the OKX wallet simply aggregates a large number of chains and different cross-chain bridges, allowing users to use multiple chains very conveniently.

However, the chain abstraction solution directly solves the most fundamental problem, which is what the OKX wallet did not do: it allows users to completely ignore the chain, no need to switch chains, no need to have Gas on different chains, and no need to perform cross-chain operations.

5. Summary

Only when we understand the problems that chain abstraction is intended to solve, the background in which chain abstraction emerges, and the comparison between chain abstraction and other solutions, can we have a clearer understanding of chain abstraction itself.

At this point, let’s go back to Particle’s definition of chain abstraction mentioned at the beginning of this article: a user experience that is free from interacting with multiple chains.

Looking at this definition again, we should now be able to more clearly understand the values and goals behind this concept.

As chain abstraction concepts and technologies mature, this will drive the Crypto industry towards a more user-friendly, developer-friendly, and highly interoperable direction, and give birth to truly killer applications that ordinary people can use.