This article clarifies chain abstraction, interoperability, full chain, and track core projects

Original author: Riyue Xiaochu, crypto KOL

We have heard many names related to cross-chain: cross-chain bridge, chain interoperability, full chain, account abstraction, chain abstraction, intention transaction, etc. It sounds very confusing.

One phenomenon we can all observe is that there are more and more public chains. Previously, the goal of new public chains was to increase TPS and reduce GAS fees, and adopt different technical directions, such as Solana, Aptos, Conflux, major Layer 2, etc. But now, the purpose of new public chains has changed, and they are more for the development of their own ecology, such as the ecological Layer 2 launched by Treasure, Aveo public chain, Loot public chain, etc., or they want to use their own users and resources to create a successful public chain, such as Base, Blast, etc.

In this bull market, there will definitely be more and more public chains. So the demand for cross-chain will also surge. In fact, there is no need to be afraid of this. It is developing step by step.

**Cross-chain bridges emerged in the bull market of 21 years, and their main function is cross-chain assets. **The situation at that time After the Defi explosion in ETH, public chains such as BSC, Avalanche, and Fantom appeared and exploded one after another. Therefore, there was a demand for cross-chain assets. Famous projects at that time included Multichain (formerly Anyswap) and celer bridge.

Public chains are like islands. With the increase of public chains and the rise of non-EVM systems, isolated islands have been formed and fragmented. Therefore, cross-chain assets alone cannot meet the needs of the multi-chain era.

The first thing to solve is the wallet problem. For each public chain, a wallet must be configured. It is easy to configure for EVM. It will take a little more time to find a hundred or eighty chains, but each non-EVM chain needs a wallet, and no one can be missing. The experience is more than bad. Therefore, abstract accounts appeared. Abstract accounts are wallets that can handle all public chains, such as the OK wallet that has a good reputation recently. In essence, an abstract account is a contract account. It can also use social accounts to retrieve lost accounts and use gas tokens in a unified way.

After solving the problem of wallet fragmentation on each chain, we also need to solve the problem of Dapp fragmentation on each chain. Then, the most basic demand is cross-chain information transmission. We hope to read the status of chain B on chain A, read the information of chain A on chain B, or the status of chain A and chain B at the same time. This is the interoperability of the chain. When information can be transmitted across chains, many things can be done, such as full-chain lending, cross-chain voting governance, etc. For Dex and Defi protocols, the benefits are greater. The liquidity on different chains is no longer fragmented, and can be used uniformly to achieve liquidity aggregation.

Imagine that with cross-chain assets, cross-chain information transmission, and abstract wallets, when we operate on the chain, we don’t need to know what chain is behind it. For example, if we want to mortgage the USDT in the wallet to borrow ETH, we don’t need to care whether the USDT is on the BNB chain or the Arbtrum chain. We can use it to mortgage the loan agreement and pay gas in a unified way. And we don’t need to care which chain the loaned ETH comes from. Dapp will make the agreement based on liquidity. This is chain abstraction.

**The cross-chain protocols launched in this cycle are basically chain abstraction protocols. They all have functions such as cross-chain information transmission and cross-chain assets. The difference between them is that the implementation methods and technologies used are different. So let’s focus on the differences below. **

In this field, the leading companies are LayerZero, Wormhole, and Axelar.

1）Axelar @axelarnetwork

The biggest advantage of Axelar is the full-chain deployment. Axelar proposed the concept of interchain, in which all Web3 applications will have a unified development environment that will accommodate different logics on multiple chains and support users from multiple chains. In short, Dapps developed on Axelar can be deployed on all public chains it supports. Axelar also supports the most public chains among the three.

2) LayerZero @LayerZero_Labs

LayerZero should be a household name. Its feature is lightweight cross-chain information transmission, so it chooses to use oracles and relay networks to complete data transmission. LayerZero simplifies the process of cross-chain information interaction. It is not responsible for information verification itself, but the security is guaranteed by both parties across the chain. Therefore, in terms of efficiency, LayerZero is higher.

3）Wormhole @wormhole

Wormhole originated from the cross-chain bridge established by the Ethereum and Solana networks. It consists of on-chain components and off-chain components. The on-chain components mainly include the emitter, Wormhole core contract and transaction log. The off-chain components mainly consist of 19 guardian nodes and a message transmission network. Thanks to Solana’s powerful ecosystem, Wormhole has the highest cross-chain amount.

Recommended reading:

Comparison of the three giants, excerpted from the First Class Research Report.

In addition to the leaders, there are several very important members in this track, and there is hope that they will become giants in the future.

4) ZetaChain @zetablockchain

Although ZetaChain also provides cross-chain information transmission, it mainly focuses on full-chain smart contracts, using ZetaChain to create truly interoperable decentralized applications that can span multiple chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. This is very similar to Axelar, and it also uses Cosmos SDK. And in terms of full-chain deployment, ZetaChain has more advantages than Axelar. However, due to resources and popularity, ZetaChain’s ecology is slightly inferior to the three giants.

Axelar’s structure is more similar to Zeta, but there are also obvious differences. Like ZetaChain, Axelar is also developed based on the Cosmos SDK. The difference is that it does not directly host the EVM, so it does not support the same full-chain smart contracts as Zeta. Therefore, Axelar’s target market is cross-chain messaging, which is similar to LayerZero.

Recommended reading: ZetaChain: Multi-chain and cross-chain communication usher in a new competitive landscape

5) Polyhedra @PolyhedraZK

The core highlight of Polyhedra is zk zero-knowledge proof, which has the fastest zero-knowledge proof (ZK) algorithm. Its core product, zkBridge, guarantees strong security without adding additional trust assumptions. With concise proofs, it not only guarantees correctness but also significantly reduces on-chain verification costs. It speeds workloads orders of magnitude faster than existing solutions. LayerZero now uses zkBridge as the default decentralized verification network (DVN) for many paths. Poyhedra supports 25 public chains.

Recommended reading:

6) Particle Network @ParticleNtwrk

Particle Network positions itself as Layer 1 in the module that provides chain abstraction. Users can manage accounts and liquidity on different chains in a unified interface without downloading various wallets and conducting complex cross-chain transactions. Particle Network was originally a mainstream provider of wallet abstraction services. Particle has recently upgraded to wallet abstraction, chain abstraction, liquidity abstraction, gas abstraction and other functions. Therefore, in the chain abstraction track, its strength is still the abstract wallet.

Under the rule of giants, Particle has aimed its focus in new directions, such as BTC layer 2, GameFi’s abstract wallet, SocaiFi’s smart wallet, etc. Particle laid the foundation for the 4 billion TVL of Bitcoin layer 2 network Merlin.

Recommended reading: 211/status/1770459228253339985

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