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

Author: Yue Xiaoyu Source: X, @yuexiaoyu111

1. For 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.  

When users use blockchain applications, the three most painful problems they encounter are: different chains require different wallets, different Gas tokens on each chain, and how to cross-chain assets.  

Chain abstraction is to extract the common and essential parts from different chains, so that users do not need to understand the characteristics of different underlying 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 abstract narrative of chains 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, such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, and Cardano, have long existed and are relatively mature, and no new public chains have appeared.  

However, in this cycle, starting from 2023, the number of new chains has begun to surge.  There are two core driving forces: one is that existing public chains are expanded through Layer2, and the other is that head applications obtain autonomy and value narratives by launching application chains.

In order to solve the performance problem of Ethereum, various Layer2 (second-layer network) have emerged in the Ethereum ecosystem, and there will be Layer3 (third-layer network) in the future. This is like building an elevated bridge 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, plus many L2s that have not yet been launched, this number will only be more.  

Another trend is that when an application develops to a certain scale, it often has the motivation 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 head decentralized derivatives trading application dYdX, the decentralized social platform Friend.Tech and the head decentralized trading platform Uniswap.  

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

The market’s previous focus was on modularization, because based on the need to launch a chain, a corresponding solution is needed.  

This is why the modular narrative became popular half a year ago, and a series of head projects such as Celestia, the data availability layer, Dymension, the settlement layer, and AltLayer, the RaaS (Rollup as a Service) chain launch platform, appeared.  

The essence of modularization 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 to realize the operation of the entire system.  

Modularization greatly reduces the cost of building a chain, and it is easy to assemble a new chain.  

With the expansion and explosion of the number of chains, people have found that there are too many chains and too many infrastructure projects, which directly damages the user experience.

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

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

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

• Modularization promotes the maturity of the infrastructure layer, while chain abstraction promotes the progress of the application layer.

• Modularization solves the problem of chain issuance, while chain abstraction solves the problem of chain usage.

4. Before the emergence of chain abstraction, how did the 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 the application layer products was to aggregate multiple chains by 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 chains, trade NFTs, purchase financial products on different chains, etc.  

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

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

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

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

But the chain abstraction solution directly solves the most fundamental problem, which is what the OKX wallet did not do: allowing users to really not pay attention to the chain at all, no need to switch chains, no need to have Gas on different chains, and no need to operate cross-chain.

5. Summary

Only when we understand the problems that chain abstraction is going to solve, the background of chain abstraction, 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 realize the value and goals behind this concept.  

As the concept and technology of chain abstraction mature, this will drive the Crypto industry towards a more user-friendly, developer-friendly and highly interoperable direction, and give birth to killer applications that can truly be used by ordinary people.