Chain abstraction: Solving the chaotic and complex multi-chain user experience

Original Title: Introducing Chain Abstraction

Written by: Arjun Bhuptani

Compiled by: MK, MarsBit

Web3 should have a more elegant multi-chain user experience.

The emergence of L2 networks (with L3 networks coming soon!) has made cheap and fast dApp interactions available to everyone in the space. However, it has also created an extremely confusing experience for users, as they must navigate cross-chain bridging, gas fees, and infrastructure across different chains.

To address this issue, we are introducing a powerful new design pattern and toolkit for applications that want to bring users in from anywhere: chain abstraction.

Poor Multi-Chain User Experience

Interacting with dApps across different chains today is difficult and time-consuming, even for seasoned cryptocurrency veterans.

Take a relatively simple task, such as providing liquidity to a lending pool on another chain. To complete this task, a user must:

1. Find the pool they want to lend in a money market dApp.
2. Completely leave the dApp to bridge funds to the chain where the pool is located (which may require swapping to a bridgeable asset first).
3. Figure out how to acquire gas on the target chain.
4. Finally, return to the original application to deposit the funds into the pool.

This process is clearly inadequate for any application looking to attract users beyond very specialized cryptocurrency enthusiasts. It is also an increasingly serious problem: as more L2 networks are launched, the user experience becomes more fragmented and frustrating.

At Connext, our mission is to make the multi-chain Web3 world accessible to a global audience. We achieve this by building public goods that help you—developers—keep users focused on what matters most.

Chain Abstraction, Powered by Connext

Chain abstraction, similar to account abstraction, is a pattern that improves the dApp user experience by minimizing users' attention to the chain they are on.

With chain abstraction, your dApp can execute logic on any chain. Users no longer need to switch networks, sign transactions on different chains, or pay gas fees on another chain. For the first time, users can seamlessly interact with your dApp on any supported chain using any token without leaving your user interface.

This pattern applies to almost any dApp user flow you can think of:

1. Deposit funds into a pool or vault from anywhere.
2. Participate in an LBP or airdrop from anywhere.
3. Pay for infrastructure or middleware from anywhere.
4. Purchase NFTs or POAPs from anywhere.
5. Stake ETH in an LST protocol from anywhere.

Toolkit for Linking Any dApp with Chain Abstraction

Building a fully chain-abstracted world takes time and coordination between wallets, applications, data providers, and infrastructure. However, any application today can take meaningful steps to significantly improve the user experience.

To assist developers, Connext has released the Chain Abstraction Toolkit: a simple set of smart contract modules and pre-built user interface components (coming soon!) that can abstract your dApp without requiring contract changes or audits.

We aim to support this pattern as much as possible. With the toolkit, developers can achieve seamless, chain-abstracted user flows in days (or even hours in the end).

How Does the Toolkit Work?

At the core of Connext is a single primitive, xcall, which allows contracts on one chain to interact with contracts on another chain, similar to the lower-level CALL in Solidity.

The chain abstraction toolkit wraps simple logic around xcall, using the tokens required to swap on local DEXs and aggregators on the given chain, and interacts with the target function you specify. This means you only need to:

Write a simple adapter for the function you want to abstract.

Deploy the module to the chains you want to support.

Call the above from your user interface.

Why Choose Connext?

There are several simple reasons why you should use Connext to abstract your dApp.

Security: Connext is protected by battle-tested standard bridges that have already secured every chain, rather than relying on third-party validators.

Flexibility: The toolkit works with every chain we currently support and will support in the future, allowing access to any asset by leveraging DEXs and aggregators on each chain.

Efficiency and Composability: By integrating at the smart contract level, you retain composability and ensure your users get the best pricing for cross-chain transactions (including positive slippage!).

Ready to Explore Chain Abstraction?

You can start in the following ways:

Check out the chain abstraction landing page for more information.

Join the waitlist to get access to the full chain abstraction toolkit.

Explore the documentation to build it from scratch.