Connext is Connecting the Multichain with Chain Abstraction

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Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty pro­to­col Con­next has intro­duced chain abstrac­tion with the goal of sim­pli­fy­ing the layer‑2 experience.

Sim­i­lar to how account abstrac­tion is designed to sim­pli­fy the end-user expe­ri­ence with wal­lets, chain abstrac­tion is designed to enable users to inter­act with mul­ti­ple decen­tral­ized appli­ca­tions (dapps) on dif­fer­ent chains with­out ever need­ing to leave the user interface.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly when inter­act­ing with lay­er-2s, users may need to bridge their funds to chain A if they want to use a spe­cif­ic liq­uid­i­ty pool on chain A, but they only have tokens avail­able on chain B.

This makes for a com­pli­cat­ed user expe­ri­ence and can often deter new users from want­i­ng to trans­act in the space, as they will need to nav­i­gate the process of bridg­ing, pay­ing gas and deposit­ing funds across dif­fer­ent networks.

Many dif­fer­ent pro­to­cols are work­ing on resolv­ing this issue, includ­ing Chain­link, Lay­erZe­ro and Worm­hole, to name a few. All of these pro­to­cols focus on cross-chain mes­sag­ing, which enables smart con­tracts to com­mu­ni­cate with each other. 

Most of these pro­to­cols fall under the three most com­mon bridges that exist today:

  • Native
  • Exter­nal­ly verified
  • Opti­mistic

Native bridges are com­plete­ly trust­less, Max Lomus­cio, mar­ket­ing lead at Con­next Labs, told Block­works. Trans­ac­tions on native bridges are ful­ly ver­i­fied by one blockchain, but they often only work in one direction. 

Anoth­er type of bridge — exter­nal­ly ver­i­fied — uses exter­nal par­ties to ver­i­fy trans­ac­tions and relies on trust. 

This includes the likes of Chain­link and Lay­erZe­ro. On Chain­link, for exam­ple, users must trust that the ora­cle is accu­rate. With Lay­erZe­ro, there is a 2/2 mul­ti­sig, where two par­ties are respon­si­ble for all token bridging.

“The prob­lem is that there is noth­ing to pre­vent these par­ties from col­lud­ing if they want­ed to,” Lomus­cio said.

Opti­mistic bridges are a third type. Sim­i­lar to how rollups oper­ate, trans­ac­tions that pass through opti­mistic bridges must be quar­an­tined for 30 min­utes before they are valid. 

Lomus­cio notes that “any watch­er can sub­mit a fraud-proof and slash the trans­ac­tion, so you only need one good actor to keep in the space watch­ing the trans­ac­tions to keep the sys­tem secure.”

Con­next claims that what it intro­duces with chain abstrac­tion is com­plete­ly trust­less and fast.

“Con­next plugs into native bridges to move the data using the most secure path. On top of it, we have an opti­mistic sys­tem so that we can short­en the time to move mes­sages from rollups that would oth­er­wise require sev­en days,” Lomu­si­co said. 

There is also a liq­uid­i­ty and exe­cu­tion lay­er — Lomu­si­co explains, “where liq­uid­i­ty providers front cash to users imme­di­ate­ly then wait for the 30 minute refund on the opti­mistic layer.”

The Con­next toolk­it has been audit­ed and is avail­able to devel­op­ers on Ethereum, BSC, Arbi­trum, Poly­gon, Opti­mism and Gno­sis to use, Lomus­cio said. 

To use the toolk­it, dapps on these plat­forms will have to import it into their own archi­tec­ture, Lomus­cio notes. 

“It doesn’t require any change to their smart con­tracts although we rec­om­mend to cus­tomize their UI to make it seam­less for their dapp,” he said.

Oth­er chains that will be able to deploy the toolk­it in the near future include Lin­ea, Scroll, zkSync, Base and Poly­gon zkEVM, just to name a few.

“The idea is that with hun­dreds or thou­sands of [lay­er-2s] and [lay­er-3s] that will launch on the mar­ket in the com­ing years, the expe­ri­ence of users will be com­plete­ly frag­ment­ed and dis­rupt­ed,” Lomu­si­co said. “The only way for dapps to enable a seam­less expe­ri­ence is to abstract the con­cept of chains and the under­ly­ing tech stack in general.”

This is sim­i­lar to what exists in the inter­net world today, where users are unaware of which serv­er or stor­age sys­tem web­sites are run­ning on, Lomu­si­co noted.

Dapps that have already adopt­ed the chain abstrac­tion con­cept today are bet­ting plat­form Prode and liq­ui­dat­ing boot­strap­ping pro­to­col Fjord. Oth­er dapps inte­grat­ing the Con­next toolk­it still large­ly remain on test­net, with main­net launch­es planned for the com­ing weeks.


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