What is Chain Abstraction? Enhancing User Experience More Holistically than Account Abstraction
Chain Abstraction is a design concept that is more in line with usage scenarios. By integrating liquidity, on-chain accounts, and application interface processes, the ultimate goal is to allow users to focus on truly valuable DAPPs without leaving the interface for reasons such as gas fees and cross-chain transactions, maximizing user experience and commercial value. This article is adapted from a press release by Near.
Table of Contents
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DAPPs Today Cannot be Considered as APPs
Fragmented User Experience of DAPPs
Increasing Number of Blockchains Complicates User Experience
The Future Should Look Like: Chain Abstraction
Chain Abstraction Reduces Barriers to Use
Ideal Use Cases for Chain Abstraction
How to Achieve Chain Abstraction
Liquidity Integration (Cross-chain Mechanism Integration)
Account Integration (Ledger Integration)
User Experience Integration (Application-side Integration)
Chain Abstraction Allows Users to Focus on Applications
Most of today’s DAPPs are not actually APPs. Users need to leave the application to successfully complete Web3 services, such as jumping to a wallet window or using a cross-chain bridge for token deposits. The current design is not a true application, but rather a frontend.
This can explain why only a few million people in the world are using DAPPs. There is still much room for improvement if we want to see Web3 being adopted by the mainstream.
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The proliferation of blockchains and Rollups in recent years has led to a decline in the user and developer experience.
The modular and multi-chain ecosystem has made liquidity, applications, and users more fragmented, making the user experience very complex, and no mainstream user can grasp the entire ecosystem.
Fragmentation also disadvantages development teams, as on-chain projects need to comply with the specific technical stack design of each ecosystem network, and all developed applications can only have a small market due to network fragmentation.
Chain abstraction was first proposed by the Connext project. Its design allows DAPPs to execute the logic of any chain, and users no longer need to switch networks or sign transactions on different chains.
For the first time, users can interact with DAPPs from any supported chain using any token. The ultimate goal of chain abstraction is to allow users to focus more on using DAPPs.
Through chain abstraction, the blockchain industry can be adopted by the mainstream. It prevents the blockchain itself from becoming a barrier to user adoption and removes the concept of chains from the existing user map.
The core requirement of chain abstraction assumes that end users do not care about the underlying blockchain. They just want the application to work.
All processes are carried out within a single interface, and users do not need to know the operational logic behind the application. For example:
Alice opens an online store on her phone and sees a discount at her favorite clothing store. She orders a pair of spring shoes and earns a badge for reaching the purchase threshold, but she doesn’t know that it is an NFT on Polygon that she successfully redeemed.
Later, when Alice browses the store again, she notices that the new badge displays a discount for purchasing exclusive event tickets. She uses the application interface to connect to an external ticketing system and purchases two tickets, but she still doesn’t know that they are NFTs on Arbitrum, nor does she need to care about which network the purchased tokens come from.
Alice wants to send the tickets to her friend Bob. Bob sends his address to Alice and then opens his application to view the tickets, without needing to know the network or transaction fees involved in the sending process.
All interactions and transactions can be done within a single interface. There are no wallets, transaction fees, or cross-chain bridges; these are all embedded in the DAPP and handled on behalf of the user. Any cryptocurrency can be used to purchase tickets, and users do not need to worry about which network the tickets are on.
The core goal of chain abstraction is to integrate the increasingly fragmented modular design of Web3. Although this is most evident at the user experience layer, integration at the security layer, liquidity layer, and account layer is also possible, so it can be discussed in three levels.
Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology brings a new means of ledger security maintenance to the industry. In the past, decentralized networks were needed to reduce trust assumptions, and developers had to build DAPPs on congested decentralized networks or create their own decentralized networks. Now, even a single computer can ensure compliance with rules through simple proof mechanisms, and a chain can be launched with just a single server.
Based on this background, cross-settlement can be redesigned. As more chains integrate zero-knowledge proofs, more secure communication and cross-chain transactions can be achieved, enabling settlement on multiple other chains.
Zero-knowledge proofs allow assets to move safely between different chains, enabling liquidity to be aggregated across multiple networks and solving the problem of fragmented liquidity.
To achieve unified security, the underlying stack needs to do two things:
Data availability: Users can have a way to synchronize the latest transaction status even if the server is offline.
Decentralized sorter: Ensuring network resistance to censorship and asset security.
(Data availability does not store historical data? Data availability does not equal permanent availability)
After integrating the underlying liquidity, the next step is to unify identity and security. The ideal state is for users to have a single address on all possible chains and be able to freely transfer assets between networks.
From the user’s perspective, it should be a single account to manage assets and interact with applications on different chains.
To achieve account integration, it is necessary to integrate the ledgers, virtual machines, and cross-chain mechanisms in various blockchains (mentioned above).
The top layer is the unified application layer, which provides a way to interact with applications on various chains, ideally without users having to switch or leave a single interface.
This requires the development of unified Web3 application frontend tools. The Near project achieves this goal through NearJS, combining data indexing and decentralized frontends.
Currently, a quicker way to think about this is through wallet design. Ideally, a wallet can provide a way to browse all of Web3 without switching networks, dealing with gas fees, or cross-chain transactions. This requires wallet developers to invest resources in deep integration with many projects.
Existing users of the blockchain industry need to create wallets, register on exchanges, purchase fuel tokens for various networks, manage addresses and tokens between networks individually, greatly reducing the user experience.
It is expected that as account abstraction technology matures, users will have a lower probability of leaving the application, thereby improving user activity and conversion rates, successfully keeping the focus on valuable DAPPs rather than external systems or ecosystem transitions.
AA
Chain Abstraction
Connext
Near
Chain Abstraction
Further Reading
How Embedded Wallets Will Change Web3 User Experience and Industry Logic?
Istanbul ETHGlobal Hackathon Selected Project Compilation: Account Abstraction, Governance, ZK Privacy
