Common Misconceptions about Chain Abstraction

Author: HelloLydia¹³ Source: X, @HelloLydia13

1. Only the tail chain and application need chain abstraction, not the head

The strong will always be strong, and the weak will always be weak. In the future, there will only be 1-2 chains with traffic, and the other chains will die, so chain abstraction is unnecessary.

2. Chain abstraction also abstracts risks, which will bring security issues

Chain abstraction makes users unaware of the underlying chain interaction logic, and users may interact with unsafe dApps.

Third, chain abstraction does not fundamentally solve the fragmentation problem

In the final analysis, chain abstraction only unifies the liquidity experience from the user side, and does not completely change the fragmentation of the underlying blockchain.

Let's discuss them one by one.

First, only the tail chain and application need chain abstraction, not the head

We demonstrate the error of this concept from two perspectives:

• The current situation is not "only the head chain and application have traffic".

• The future cannot be built on a single chain, nor will it be "only the head chain and applications have traffic".

The current multi-chain ecosystem is not "only the head chain and applications have traffic, so chain abstraction is not needed".

One ​​thing that needs to be made clear is that the social media traffic perception of C-end users is not equal to the actual operation of the chain.

1) The real volume of the Base chain, which is in the limelight, began in March, and it has only been 8 months since then. Judging from the number of blobs submitted to Ethereum, Base's advantage is not overwhelming.

2) From the perspective of TVL, some L2s that are not currently obvious to C-end users, such as Arbitrum, Mantle, etc., have accumulated a large amount of TVL, and chain abstraction can truly utilize this part of the accumulated liquidity.

3) From the perspective of monthly active users, Solana is far ahead. There are 9 public chains with more than 5 million monthly active users. TON and Aptos have both surpassed Ethereum.

4) From the perspective of fees, the top 5 are Ethereum, Tron, Bitcoin, Solana and BNB. Even Polygon, Blast, TON, and Starknet, which are outside the top 10, can generate $20-30 million in fee income a year. It is unreasonable to think that these chains have "no traffic".

Facing the fragmented multi-chain situation, there are two "de-fragmentation" ideas:

• One ​​believes that multi-chain is the future, chain abstraction helps solve the fragmentation problem, allowing users to move smoothly between multiple chains.

• One ​​believes that single chain is the future, the current small fragments will perish in the future, and resources should be concentrated on developing a strong L1.

The future of a single chain is obviously untenable.

1) The expansion of any single chain cannot be infinite. If you have confidence in the future of Web3, you will not be naive to think that the entire Web3 can be built on a state machine.

2) There is no perfect chain. It is impossible for the blockchain triangle to always make trade-offs. The advantages of different chains are relative to the scenario.

3) Relying on a single chain = concentration risk. If something goes wrong, the entire ecosystem may be seriously affected.

4) A single, centralized ecosystem is a stifle of innovation and a departure from the spirit of decentralization.

In the future, it is impossible that "only the head chain and applications have traffic, so chain abstraction is not needed."

1) An increasingly diverse L2 ecosystem: Currently, L2 Beat has included more than 100 L2s, and more than 80 are waiting to be launched. Unichain, Movement, etc. will also debut. We cannot predict whether the positions of the top three L2s will be the same as today in a year.

2) The rise of new EVM L1: Emerging parallel EVM L1s, such as Monad and Sei, have received widespread attention and capital favor due to their scalability advantages. Berachain has also attracted a large number of community members.

3) The non-EVM ecosystem is active: EVM-compatible L2 projects such as Sonic have appeared on Solana. Sui and Aptos of the Move language are favored for their technological innovation, and the ecosystem has begun to take shape.

4) The threshold for Appchain deployment continues to decrease: @AndreCronjeTech once wrote that the complexity of L2/Appchain construction has been underestimated, and @ItsAlwaysZonny and @0xkatz in the comment area deployed an andrechain in just over ten minutes, and said that the monthly operating cost is only one thousand US dollars.

In summary, we are facing an irreversible multi-chain future, and the arrival of chain abstraction is not subject to any personal will.

Second, chain abstraction abstracts risks and brings security issues

The answer to this question includes three key points:

• Under the transaction logic of chain abstraction, users have the right to know the underlying interaction logic of each transaction.

• The starting point of chain abstraction is not to interfere with the user's decision on what dApp to interact with, but to make the user's decision more subtle and more efficient.

• There are many solutions to help users decide whether to trust dApp.

First, chain abstraction does not deprive users of the right to know, or cover up the underlying interaction. Users can check the details of each transaction at any time.

Secondly, chain abstraction will not increase the user's willingness and frequency of interaction with so-called unsafe dApps for no reason.

One ​​fact is: when a user plans to use a dApp, it is assumed that "the dApp will choose a trustworthy chain and generate trustworthy interactions."

It is the user's trust that drives them to make decisions to interact with dApps. Chain abstraction does not interfere with user decisions, but only improves the efficiency of interaction after the user makes a decision.

Therefore, the core of the interaction security issue is how users make decisions, not how to execute them after the decision. At present, there are many solutions to help users think and decide whether to trust a certain dApp, and the risk control layer of the chain abstraction solution is one of them.

Third, chain abstraction does not fundamentally solve the fragmentation problem

The question raised is similar to the monolithic chain chauvinism. To put it bluntly, this is not a problem of chain abstraction, but a fantasy of the questioner.

We define the solution to the fragmentation problem from the perspective of two audience groups.

For users, the most direct problem caused by fragmentation is: the need to manually bridge between multiple chains, the need to prepare different gas tokens, and the need to frequently manage balances between multiple chains.

Chain abstraction has solved this problem, allowing users to use any token balance of any chain to interact with any dApp, and the liquidity on any chain is equivalent in purchasing power.

For developers, there are two ways to solve the fragmentation problem:

1) Deploy smart contracts on the entire chain, but the fragmentation of the user-side experience still exists.

2) Deploy on only one chain, but can be accessed by users of any chain, and can seamlessly introduce the liquidity of other chains. This is the solution of chain abstraction.

So chain abstraction can already solve the fragmentation problem from both the user side and the developer side.

As for the so-called complete unification of the underlying blockchain liquidity, this is not feasible. There are fundamental differences in consensus mechanisms, data structures, and economic models between different blockchains. It is impossible to achieve atomic equivalence, otherwise it will still be back to the problem of building the entire Web3 on a single chain.