Particle Network: Why Market Modularity Must Have “Chain Abstraction”

Source: Chain View

Many people think that chain abstraction is a concept concocted by VC, but it is not. I was deeply inspired by reading SevenX's article describing the future of chain abstraction. The complex environment of the current market, including high-performance layer1, parallel EVM, Layer2 RaaS, layer3 application chain, cross-chain and other tracks, makes modularization and chain abstraction two derivative twin narratives. In my opinion, "modularization" to a certain extent must have "chain abstraction". Next, let me explain my views:

1) Now the competition in the layer1 public chain layer is in deep water. In the last round, everyone tended to EVM, so many EVM-Compatible layer1 appeared. In this round, the inherent deficiencies of EVM were criticized, and some high-performance layer1 chains focusing on parallel transactions appeared, such as Solana, Sui, Aptos, etc., and some parallel EVM chains with completely reconstructed underlying architectures, such as Monad, Artela, etc.

2) Layer2 narrative is no longer dominated by pure EVM. BTC layer2 ecosystem has emerged, including EVM-compatible layer2 such as BSquare, and UTXO isomorphic binding type layer2 such as CKB; in addition, highly modular combination layer2 ecosystem has emerged, such as Celestia, a modular DA layer design, and Eclipse, which uses Solana VM as the execution layer.

The more these chains there are, the more involuted the competition is, and the more prominent the cross-chain interoperability problem between chains is, at least involving: multiple heterogeneities such as underlying language, account model, and contract standard.

For example, the differences between Move, Rust, and Solidity languages ​​make the learning cost of developers very high; the differences between different accounts and state models make it difficult for Ethereum's EOA account to be compatible with Bitcoin's UTXO model; the differences in smart contract standards between different chains, ERC20, ERC721 and other standards are difficult to handle in the Object-centric chain of the Move public chain; Relay repeaters face huge challenges in atomic communication interactions between different chains, and RPC is required to monitor the contract status on each chain in real time and coordinate execution in sequence. In addition, there are different consensus verification mechanisms (POW VS POS), different governance coordination mechanisms, different scalability capabilities, different credibility security bases, and so on.

The complex factors behind these chain-based approaches directly lead to many poor user experience issues:

1) Users have inconsistent account addresses in EVM and non-EVM full-chain environments;

2) Users have inconsistent signature specifications in controlling EOA addresses, smart contract addresses, and MPC management, and need to do signature aggregation;

3) Users require different gas fee standards in different chain environments, and there are challenges in gas conversion and friction;

4) Different chains have different liquidity depths, and users do not have a unified liquidity management environment;

Faced with these complex compatibility problems between various chains, the goal of chain abstraction is to hide these technical complexities behind the scenes, and show users a simple front-end UX interface. Everyone knows that @ParticleNtwrk launched BTC Connect to enable users to directly connect to the EVM environment through Unisat. In fact, this is only a small part of the chain abstraction project. In addition, what other behind-the-scenes technical integration operations of chain abstraction has Particle done?

1) Based on the Cosmos SDK, a modular L1 public chain underlying architecture is built. In this way, Particle can connect to the EVM environment, BTC UTXO environment, Solana high-concurrency environment, etc. Cosmos's IBC and relays provide the framework premise for its maximum connection to complex multi-layer1 environments;

2) The Keystore contract is built to realize the full-chain account abstraction. The contract manages the user's account and status information on various heterogeneous chains, including cross-chain message transmission such as address, public key, signature, etc.;

3) Use the decentralized Bundler service, that is, the intent Solver processing center, to receive the user's complex operation instructions and convert them into executable transactions on the chain, such as Paymaster's payment of Gas, Social Recovery, etc. to optimize the transaction experience, all of which are achieved through UserOps built on the intent layer;

4) Cross-chain communication and relayers are responsible for monitoring transactions and status updates on each chain and responding and processing them in order, providing a foundation for smooth interaction and unified liquidity experience across the entire chain;

5) In response to the problem of inconsistent Gas Tokens, Particle will also issue ecological tokens $PARTI in the future to unify Gas consumption on different chains and realize Gas abstraction. The key is that in addition to cross-chain asset settlement, Gas Token will also provide a dual-staking security model mechanism to ensure the trustworthy security of interactions on each chain.

Recently, MerlinChain TGE, which integrates Particle account abstraction and BTC Connect services, was launched. I noticed that there were some complaints about the poor AA experience in the market. In fact, it is not difficult to understand that the chain abstraction service subject provides a pluggable interface expansion service, and the signature algorithm optimization and adaptation of the interface itself (CDK) are also particularly critical. More than 60 chains such as Bearchain and opBNB have also integrated this service. Particle only provides a standardized chain abstraction service that can be directly integrated by cooperative projects. It is unrealistic to bear all the compatibility problems on its own.

The above

In my opinion, Particle is a typical modular layer1 public chain dedicated to solving the complex problems of chain abstraction. SevenX also cited different solutions such as @LightDotSo @NEARProtocol in the article. I will not interpret them one by one, but this kind of technical service is not difficult to understand.

The essence of chain abstraction is "connection integration" and "heterogeneous compatibility". The effort is behind the scenes, allowing project developers to quickly and cheaply integrate and apply mature extension services, so that users can perceive a seamless interactive experience.

In short, the future of the chain abstraction track is created by the complexity of the current cross-chain native environment. Now everyone is still immersed in the complexity and prosperity brought by modular combination. The irrational period may not be able to perceive the value of chain abstraction. When the vision of Mass Adoption is gradually realized and the competition between chains is involuted to the point where a big wave of elimination and reshuffle is needed, the value of the chain abstraction track will naturally emerge.