Chain abstraction: prism in the multi-chain era

Author: 0XNATALIE, Source: Author's Blog

As a key entrance to the Crypto/Web3 ecosystem, wallets have always been the focus of competition among entrepreneurial teams. In addition to wallet products that support new public chains, there are also many teams hoping to completely improve the MetaMask experience (such as Rabby). While the wallet team is still focusing on account abstraction, the narrative of higher-dimensional chain abstraction has gradually attracted the attention of the community.

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin not long ago wrote an article to discuss the concept of chain abstraction and expressed NEAR's vision in realizing chain abstraction. In addition, projects such as ZetaChain, the modular L1 Particle Network, and the full-chain ledger Cycle Network that were launched on the main network last month are all exploring the realization of chain abstraction.

Why is chain abstraction important?

Think about a question, why is the product user experience and the number of users of Web3 far lower than that of Web2? One of the important reasons is that users of many projects now need to understand various principles and concepts, and everyone has seen the rapid development of Web3. New narratives and new concepts are emerging one after another. Even Web3 veteran players will have the problem that "hot spots change too fast and it is too troublesome to learn." "a feeling of.

To give a simple example, the cross-chain bridge protocol first requires users to understand that the assets between them cannot be interoperable, so such a bridge protocol is needed to realize the transfer of assets between different chains. Secondly, users must understand that if they want to To transfer assets from Ethereum to Solana, you need to pay ETH as a gas fee, not SOL. I just want to use 100 USDT on Ethereum to buy NFT in the Solana ecosystem. Why is it so troublesome?

In contrast, Web2 products are almost all packaged, and users do not need to know the principles or who is working with whom behind them. According to the logic of Web2 product experience, if I want to buy NFT in the Solana ecosystem, I just need to log in to my wallet on the NFT project interface and buy it directly with 100 USDT in my wallet. In the end, I only need to know how much money is left in my wallet and whether the NFT has arrived. That's it.

Chain abstraction abstracts the differences and complexities between different blockchains into a unified interface, allowing users and developers to seamlessly interact and operate on different chains. The ultimate goal It is to allow users to not perceive the existence of the chain, while at the same time enjoying the benefits of decentralization of the blockchain. Combined with the intention, the user experience will be smoother. Imagine that users only need to have enough assets, no matter what token is on which chain, they can trade however they want, and can set the time point and conditions of the transaction, while ensuring that the transaction is safe, private, and complete. Controlled by oneself.

Step-by-step implementation of chain abstraction< /strong>