Title: "Why Chain Abstraction Is the Next Frontier for Web3"
Author: Illia Polosukhin
Translated by: Luccy, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: In the current development trend of Web3, chain abstraction has gradually become a topic of great concern. Since its establishment in 2018, the NEAR ecosystem has been working towards the vision of chain abstraction.
NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin discusses the concept of chain abstraction in this article and provides a detailed introduction to NEAR's technical stack, emphasizing the importance of chain abstraction in improving the usability, discoverability, and security of Web3. Illia Polosukhin points out that the NEAR technical stack has expanded to support comprehensive chain abstraction for cross-chain and various applications. The original article has been translated by BlockBeats as follows:
Most of today's dapps are not truly decentralized applications in practice. If users need to leave the application before using it, then it is actually just a front end rather than a real application. If users need to manually join and manage multiple accounts through a trading platform, deal with multiple gas fees and bridges, then have you really built an application? I don't think so—this may explain why only a few million people in the world are using dapps.
Because we believe in a more open and decentralized internet that supports everyone's sovereignty, which is more beneficial to the world as a whole, if we want to see wider adoption of Web3, we need to take action.
The prevailing concept in today's Web3 is modularity, which separates different functional layers of the blockchain, such as settlement, data availability, and execution, in order to improve scalability. L2, optimistic and ZK rollups, data availability layers, sidechains, and state channels are all examples of modular solutions.
The emergence of numerous blockchains and rollups has led to a decline in user and developer experience. The existence of modularity and numerous chains has led to more decentralized liquidity, applications, and users, creating a fairly complex situation for user experience, which is difficult for ordinary users to adapt to. The same is true for developers, who feel compelled to focus on specific technical stacks, while also limiting the audience for their applications. Now, when you build a dapp, by choosing a single chain, you are actually locking yourself into a niche market.
I want to propose a better vision for the entire Ethereum ecosystem and Web3: let's work together to drive mainstream adoption through chain abstraction. The idea is that blockchains must be abstracted from users so that they do not hinder user entry or participation. Since 2018, NEAR has been focused on this vision and has now become the network with the most users in Web3: with 12.4 million monthly active users and a total of 34 million users.
Here's how we integrate Web3 and attract billions of users through dapps.
What does this mean for users?
Let's imagine what using a dapp should be like: easily transacting between different networks, navigating between different experiences, all within a single interface. For example, Alice picks up her phone and opens KAIKAI from her lock screen. She orders a smoothie from a local merchant and discovers a discount at her favorite clothing store, Maison, so she orders a pair of spring shoes in the app. Alice realizes she has earned enough KAICHING rewards to get a badge at Maison, not knowing it's an NFT on Polygon, and redeems it in her account.
Later in the day, while browsing Maison on the KAIKAI app, she notices her new badge reveals a discounted ticket for an exclusive event at the store, featuring a DJ she likes. She purchases 2 tickets with KAICHING, still unaware that it's an NFT on Arbitrum. With a spare ticket, Alice invites her friend Bob and asks for his address.
Bob sends his NEAR address to Alice and opens his app to view the tickets. He sends some ETH to Alice as a thank-you for the invitation and checks his different cryptocurrencies in his account. With some time on the subway, he decides to buy some BTC and borrow USDC so he can mint a Fighting Dragon NFT on Magic Eden. His friend Charles texted him earlier, saying he wants to buy one so they can battle each other in the new game "Year of the Dragon" on NEAR, where their dragons can fight for each other's coins.
All these interactions and transactions can be done in a single interface in complete privacy. No wallets, no switching networks, and no transaction fees to deal with; they are all embedded directly in the exchange or purchase and represent the user's handling. Alice doesn't need to worry about which network the tickets are on, and Bob can easily purchase other cryptocurrencies with the one he wants. All of this is done within a single application. This is the level of seamlessness we should strive for as an ecosystem.
How do we achieve chain abstraction?
Everyone building applications in Web3 will benefit from being able to access such a wide potential user market as shown in this example—anyone using the application. Today, developers choose a network based on access to liquidity or specific rollups or chains, but in the future of chain abstraction, they can simply build using the best technology. Users will increase for the best experience.
Imagine if Gmail users couldn't send messages to Outlook addresses, it wouldn't make sense, and the same goes for Web3 addresses. The core assumption of chain abstraction is that end users don't care about the underlying blockchain. They just want the application to work. In fact, the blockchain is just the infrastructure from which value is derived in Web3: asset security free from seizure, economic opportunities, removal of intermediaries in transactions, global permissionless identity, data sources, entertainment experiences, and so on.
The core goal of chain abstraction is to integrate the increasingly fragmented modular landscape of Web3. While this will be most apparent at the user experience level, this integration benefits from innovation at the security level in terms of liquidity and accounts.
Zero-knowledge (ZK) introduces a fundamentally new ledger security approach. Previously, people needed to trust a decentralized set of validators, but now even a single computer can prove that a rule has been followed with a simple proof. This means that previously, developers were forced to build on a shared chain or spend significant resources to launch a new chain, but now they only need to start on their single server.
This new paradigm introduces the concept of cross-settlement: as more chains become fully provable with ZK, if a proof is published on another chain, it cannot be revoked without reconstructing the other chain. Through ZK proofs, transactions from one chain can also settle on multiple other chains. This provides mesh security, as all proofs are continuously aggregated, allowing assets to be moved securely between these chains.
To achieve unified security, two things are needed at the bottom of the stack: data availability, which provides a way for everyone to synchronize when the operator is offline, and a mechanism for decentralized ordering for applications without centralized operators.
The next layer is identity with unified security. Users can have an address on all possible chains and freely move assets between them. From the user's perspective, this should be a single account, where they can interact with applications on different chains, and assets can be automatically bridged or exchanged.
I call it "account aggregation." NEAR will launch the next version of FastAuth in March 2024, which will feature the ability to map NEAR addresses to EVM, Bitcoin, and other addresses. NEAR accounts can request signatures for transactions on another chain. This allows them to build multi-chain applications directly on NEAR as smart contracts.
The last layer is the unified experience layer, or the application layer (such as DapDap), which provides a way to interact with applications on various chains without the need for users to switch or leave a single interface. Decentralized front-ends can provide easily buildable components in a chain-abstracted manner. NEAR can achieve this through NearJS, combining data indexing and decentralized front-ends—V2 will also be launched in March 2024.
How does NEAR achieve chain abstraction?
Since its establishment in 2018, the NEAR ecosystem has been working towards the vision of chain abstraction, focusing on usability, flexible account models, and highly scalable blockchains to support mainstream applications with billions of users. Today, the technical stack has expanded to support comprehensive chain abstraction for cross-chain and various applications.
Scalable comprehensive blockchain, capable of growing to over 1 billion daily active accounts.
Secure aggregation technology stack, including NEAR DA, zkWASM (in collaboration with Polygon Labs), and fast finality provided by EigenLayer.
Account aggregation on top of this, enabling transactions on all chains using a single account.
Data layer supporting querying data from holistic, comprehensive, modular, private, and permissioned chains to predictable protocols.
Intent relayers, using this infrastructure to execute complex intents between chains.
Decentralized front-ends supporting multi-chain discovery and composability, forming a unified experience.
Super (app) wallet, user-friendly, and providing a way to browse all of Web3 without the need to switch networks or deal with gas tokens and bridges.
Importantly, these layers support builders from across Web3, including Ethereum, rollups, L2, and more chains that are transitioning towards the future of chain abstraction.
Summary
2024 is the year to hide the complexity of multi-chain infrastructure to provide a Web3 experience. Improving usability and discoverability, while addressing liquidity fragmentation and security trade-offs, should be the top priority for all Web3 builders.
Let's turn chain abstraction into a movement. The NEAR ecosystem invites builders from across Web3 to make full use of the solutions we provide and collaborate with us to build more chain abstraction solutions.
Special thanks to Zaki Manian for the discussions and comments that led to the publication of this article.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
