Web3 natives and newcomers are drowning in 100s of wallets, holding tokens on 100s of chains. It’s getting worse as many more L1s, L2s, and L3s emerge ad infinitum. Interacting across the walled gardens of fragmentation land is a big hassle — swap, bridge, refill gas, and whatnot.
Arcana’s Chain Abstraction protocol promises to solve this problem. It enables truly seamless multi-chain experiences, powered by a modular L1. Users can spend any token on any chain, without bridging, using one wallet with a unified balance. For example, USDC on Arbitrum chain spent on an Optimism-powered App. There are endless options in this expanding ecosystem.
Source: Arcana Network on X/Twitter
After Arcana Auth and the Gasless SDK, the Chain Abstraction protocol is the third key milestone in Arcana Network’s journey to make the Web3 stack invisible and easy-to-use for everyone. Users can already join the waitlist for Chain Abstraction (Private Beta).
What the demos revealed
Arcana gave users the first glimpse of their Chain Abstraction protocol via a demo on Aave. It showed the Arcana Wallet which works as a browser extension, aggregating users’ balances across multiple assets and also their assets across chains.
By connecting this wallet to a platform like Aave, the user can supply this entire aggregated balance. Upon clicking ‘Supply’, a popup appears where users can input the desired amount they want to supply. As the demo shows, they can supply 28 USDC to Arbitrum, despite having only about 27 USDC on that chain. Once done, the user gets an intent screen and within seconds of clicking ‘Confirm’ they get the required liquidity and the transaction is submitted on Aave.
Spend Across Chains Without Bridging – Arcana’s Chain Abstraction Demo on Aave
In the second demo on Uniswap, Arcana’s CEO Mayur Relekar demonstrated the process using mainnet assets on Arbitrum. He could swap USDC for ETH on Optimism using assets from the Arbitrum chain. More importantly, Mayur could execute the swap in a single click, despite not having enough ETH to pay for gas on OP. The Chain Abstraction protocol supplied the liquidity needed under the hood and enabled a transaction that would fail elsewhere or require the user to bridge two assets.
Arcana’s Chain Abstraction Demo on Uniswap
Likewise, Arcana did a third demo on Polymarket after integrating the Polygon POS chain. It’s worth noting that Polymarket only supports USDC from Polygon and Ethereum. Mayur — the user in this case — however, had all his USDC on Arbitrum and OP. Yet, he could easily deposit the desired USDC on Polymarket as the Chain Abstraction protocol handled liquidity provisions in the background.
Arcana’s Chain Abstraction Demo on Polymarket | Any Token, Any Chain, 1 Click
In all the three demos, it was clear that the protocol has a 10-15 second confirmation time, be it for testnet (Sepolia) assets or on the mainnet. Moreover, users don’t face any extra hassle, like forks, integrations, asset lockups, smart contract wallets, etc. It is indeed a one-click process, as the demos illustrated.
Reducing friction, increasing accessibility
To ensure optimal accessibility and a super low entry barrier, Arcana’s protocol supports regular Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs). Thus unlike on other platforms, users don’t need to create and fund a new Smart Contract Wallet (SCW).
This eliminates major friction points like migration costs, high gas fees, and vendor lock-in. That too, not just for users but also devs as they no longer have to build and maintain multiple codebases for their app’s cross-chain instances.
Besides seamlessness, liveness and resilience are the other top priorities for Arcana. Thus the protocol uses two liquidity sources for optimal finality. Solvers provide cross-chain liquidity for a minimal fee, so users experience near-instant intent settlement. Vaults, on the other hand, ensure fast and low-cost intent fulfillment by pooling liquidity across chains.
Since Solvers play a critical role in keeping Arcana’s Chain Abstraction functional and decentralized, the network rewards them with a small but dedicated fee on all transactions. For clarity, Solvers are similar to liquidity providers.
Source: Overview of Arcana’s Modular L1 infra from the Chain Abstraction announcement
Arcana has also achieved a wide distribution and compatibility network for the Chain Abstraction protocol. Technically, this is mainly due to its account-level implementation that supports every type of chain, app, or wallet.
Plus Arcana has a long list of partners and collaborators, as mentioned above: Polygon, Solana, Near, Bitlayer, Linea, and many, many others. Users will be able to enjoy Chain Abstraction on all these platforms and protocols, experiencing a truly multi-chain world.
Why now and what’s next?
Over 15 million daily Unique Active Wallets (dUAWs) interacted with dApps in July, 2024, setting a new record. Meanwhile, new sectors like AI dApps are increasing their market dominance, further expanding the scope for adoption and activity.
But this booming ecosystem still lags severely in terms of user/dev experience and capital efficiency. These are major obstacles to long-term adoption, which explains the industry’s volatile and uncertain nature, despite over a decade of focused innovations.
While most users/devs have hands-on knowledge of the bad UX, Everclear’s data shows the extent of capital inefficiency. Over 80% of daily DeFi volumes can be netted out, ensuring at least 5x savings on gas fees, etc. for end-users.
It’s clearly high time to solve these issues and that’s what Arcana is focused on doing. They will roll out the Testnet in Q3 and Mainnet in Q4 2024, along with the full suite of Chain Abstraction tools.
The initial product list includes a wallet with unified balances in-built and dev-friendly SDKs for building gasless and cross-chain wallets, as well as apps with native Chain Abstraction compatibility.
More partnerships and collabs are also lined-up, as the team will duly announce via social media and other official channels.
Last but not least, early adopters will receive special incentives and benefits, so now is also the right time to join the Chain Abstraction (Private Beta) waitlist. It’s happening.
Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/__trashed-2/