Source: Mint Ventures

Moderator: Alex, Research Partner at Mint Ventures

Guest: Lydia, former researcher at Mint Ventures, currently a researcher at Particle Network

Hello everyone, welcome to WEB3 Mint To Be initiated by Mint Ventures. Here, we continue to ask questions and think deeply, clarify facts, explore reality, and find consensus in the WEB3 world. We clarify the logic behind hot topics, provide insights that penetrate the events themselves, and introduce multiple perspectives.

This episode is the fourth episode of the "Current Status and Future of Web3 Track" podcast series. Let's talk about chain abstraction. In the previous three episodes, we talked about Crypto AI, Defi, and Hyperliquid. In the subsequent series of programs, we will also invite corresponding guests to talk about MEME, public chains, Depin, games & social, Payfi, and Web3 policy-related topics.

Disclaimer: The content discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of the institutions where the guests work, and the projects mentioned do not constitute any investment advice.

Alex: This podcast has invited our former colleague Lydia. She is currently a researcher in the crypto industry and a member of a well-known chain abstraction project. She has also participated in our program on AI topics before. Let Lydia say hello to us first.

Lydia: Hello everyone, my name is Lydia. I’m currently a researcher at Particle Network and I’m also responsible for community building in the Chinese-speaking area.

The concept of chain abstraction and the problems it tries to solve

Alex: Let's start today's official topic. First of all, the concept of chain abstraction. Many people, including myself, feel that this concept sounds very abstract when they first come into contact with it. At the beginning, I also read a few articles and felt confused after reading them. If you want to explain chain abstraction to a beginner of Web3 in very simple language, what would you say? What problem does the concept of chain abstraction want to solve?

Lydia: You said that you felt confused after reading a few articles. I felt the same way at the beginning. For this reason, I rolled up my sleeves and wrote a research report on chain abstraction. I think it may be mainly because chain abstraction is still a track dominated by Western discourse, which leads to many project parties translating some very mechanical technical documents or directly translating PR drafts when promoting content in other language areas. This is really not easy to understand. I am currently a researcher, and I am also doing a localization of Western learning. In Particle Network, our official definition of chain abstraction is actually very simple, called "a user experience that is free from manual interaction with multiple chains." It may still sound a little academic, so I usually say what it is based on the identity of the person opposite me. If it is a user of a centralized exchange, I will tell him that chain abstraction allows you to play on the chain like in a centralized exchange. If it is a player on the chain, especially in this cycle, who may not even download from the exchange, but directly download a Phantom wallet to start playing on the chain, I will tell him that chain abstraction means that you no longer need to manually bridge and manage Gas, and you can just play with the whole chain as one chain. If it is a developer, I will say that chain abstraction can make your application accessible to users on multiple chains. You only need to deploy on one chain, but you can gain access to users on other chains such as SOL and Base.

Then I just mentioned what problem chain abstraction wants to solve. I think everyone may have a vague consensus. Chain abstraction transactions solve the problem very straightforwardly, and it is also something that everyone basically faces every day. But if you want to admit this problem, you must first recognize a premise, which is the trend of multi-chain. We are now seeing more and more general Layer1, Layer2, AppChain, and AppRollup bursting out. According to statistics, more than 100 new chains will emerge in the first half of 2024, and the number of chains in the entire blockchain world should be more than a thousand. Of course, this multi-chain trend is not 100% accepted by everyone. Some fans of large monomer chains are likely not to buy it, and there will even be panic and FUD emotions. In response to this, our response is generally very simple. Multi-chain is definitely an inevitable trend. You can't build the entire Web3 on a state machine. If you think Web3 has at least the same potential as the Internet. If we recognize the trend of multi-chain, we will naturally realize a problem, that is, the separation of liquidity between multiple chains is real, harmful, and must be solved. An example of liquidity fragmentation on the user side is the most direct feeling of each of us interacting on the chain every day. It seems that each new chain needs a new wallet. The bridge from chain to chain sometimes takes 20 minutes or even longer. Then when you are in a hurry to trade, even if the bridge is connected, there is no Gas. It is difficult to manage the entire multi-chain because your assets are scattered and Gas needs to be prepared separately. Gas is transferred back and forth between them, and you have to prepare Gas for Gas transfer, which makes it difficult to manage assets. My own experience is that whenever I interact with a new chain, I always leave some dust assets on the wallet of that chain. And the trouble is that sometimes I really forget the assets on that chain, and sometimes I can't find that wallet. If it is for the developer side, we will see a more far-reaching harm, that is, we are seeing a phenomenon of them reinventing the wheel on multiple chains, a bit like the different chain versions of MEME, or the uppercase and lowercase versions on different chains. All public chains are based on TVL. Their liquidity is very rigid and fragmented. The infrastructure is repeatedly built over and over again, and the models used are all from many years ago. Overall, it looks very old and redundant. In fact, we think that, taking Polymarket as an example, many public chains want to build their own prediction market after Polymarket came out. But if you understand the significance and purpose of the birth of the prediction market, it is to maximize the wisdom of the majority of people. So if you want to improve the accuracy of Polymarket, it is best to have only one Polymarket that can be accessed by users of multiple chains and aggregate the liquidity of multiple people, rather than re-making a small Polymarket on each subdivided Layer2 or AppChain. The meaning of chain abstraction here is to allow users to travel between multiple chains without feeling, and then allow developers to build truly innovative applications with pmf.

Alex: I roughly understand. The ultimate goal is to simplify the high threshold and inconvenience for users and developers to use and develop products in such a multi-chain environment. What are the specific ideas for solving this problem at the product level for the current mainstream chain abstraction products on the market?

Lydia: Chain abstraction is not a technology, but a user experience and product concept. So when we talk about the chain abstraction track, our idea is that all Web3 applications are worth doing in a chain abstraction way. So when you talk about its product concept, it depends on what product it is. For example, chain abstraction plus prediction market, chain abstraction plus NFTfi, chain abstraction plus perp dex, etc.

Alex: For example, there are two simple scenarios. A user now only has a SOL wallet and wants to buy a MEME on Base instantly. This is a transaction scenario. For example, in your Particle Network, in terms of product logic, how do you implement this function?

Lydia: That's UniversalX. Particle Network's current product line mainly consists of two parts. One is Universal Accounts, which is the infrastructure built for developers that we just talked about. The C-end application is UniversalX, which we also launched in December and has just been updated. I just wrote an article yesterday to introduce the brain of UniversalX, which is the infrastructure of Universal Accounts. It completely solves what you are talking about. Its operating logic is that we have rebuilt a unified liquidity and unified GAS system. We will generate a set of AA addresses for users on the entire chain, and then this AA address is managed by the unified address generated for you on Particle Network. When a user initiates a transaction on a chain, we will first have a bundler to package the user's transaction and upload it to Particle Network. The layer1 of Particle Network will coordinate between the chains, and the most important role that can be driven by coordination is LP. The LP here plays the role of a basic intermediary token for transport between multiple chains. For example, if I want to use ETH to buy a MEME on Solana on Base, the ETH on Base may first be converted into an intermediary token, such as USDC, and then the LP is a bit like the Solver work in the Solver network. It moves USDC between multiple chains, in our example, between Base and Solana. After the USDC is moved from Base to Solana, it is swapped into the Solana MEME that the user wants to buy, and then the user will receive this asset on Solana. All of this is running underneath. What the user can feel is that he approves a transaction, and then somehow his ETH on Base magically buys the MEME on Solana.

Alex: I understand. You just mentioned that one of the problems that developers are facing is that after developing an application, if there are multiple chains, the common practice is to deploy the same thing on another chain, with users from different chains and funds from different chains. If you use your chain abstraction solution, how do you reduce the number of developers deploying multiple chains in your products, or the current problems they have?

Lydia: For products, you can use our Universal Accounts SDK. After using this, it is equivalent to equipping users with a chain-abstract identity and account system. After users log in with Universal Accounts, assets from other chains can be seamlessly used to interact with the DApp I am currently developing. For example, my DApp is an AppChain developed by myself, and there are not many assets on it. If Universal Accounts is used, it doesn’t matter if the user’s assets are all concentrated in ETH on Base or SOL on Solana. They can interact with my DApp without having to re-bridge to my AppChain. So for developers, they will not set any liquidity thresholds in front of users to acquire users.

Alex: To achieve this goal, is it a prerequisite that the users that developers face must have Universal Accounts?

Lydia: No, you can just integrate it into your product.

Alex: That means users are unaware of Universal Accounts when using the product.

Lydia: Yes, it depends on how you log in. If the user already has Universal Accounts, it would be best if there is a balance in it. If not, we at Particle have been working on social login and wallet middleware for a long time. We can allow users to generate one in the simplest way, and then transfer some funds from anywhere to interact with DApps on any chain.

Market size and valuation of chain abstraction

Alex: We just asked Lydia to talk about her understanding of the definition of chain abstraction, and how the chain abstraction product can achieve C-end user experience optimization and simplification in some specific projects, including the simplification of developers' development work, and better acquisition of users, and talked about some product designs. As you said, chain abstraction is actually a development concept in the Web3 world, or a product concept, it is not a specific product or track. If we want to evaluate the market size of chain abstraction, how big is this market size and its value in your opinion? For example, if we say that traditional finance may be a market of tens of trillions, then we think that DeFi will be a market of hundreds of billions in the short term at least. How much is the market size corresponding to the concept of chain abstraction, and is there any way to estimate it?

Lydia: In my opinion, I think it is not particularly meaningful to value a big concept like chain abstraction. It should be done according to the scenario. In the example I just gave, chain abstraction can be connected with scenarios such as prediction market, DeFi, Perp dex, and NFTfi. I believe that there will be many products to explore these directions in the future, and it is very likely that everyone will gradually find that chain abstraction has become an industry standard. If you make a non-abstract product, everyone will be surprised and ask why you do this. Let's take a scenario as an example, chain abstraction plus trading, which we think is the most likely to explode first among all scenarios. This is because from a cross-cycle perspective, it seems that every powerful narrative has made a huge push for the trader scenario, either trading assets or trading efficiency. After all, even AI is now hyping DeFai, which shows that the trading scenario is a narrative and driving force for the longevity of Web3. This is why after we built the chain abstraction infrastructure of Universal Accounts, we launched the first application based on this to do on-chain trading. As for the chain abstraction trading products represented by UniversalX, they actually have a lot of buffs. They have a new narrative of chain abstraction, modular Layer1, the title of the next generation of trading products, and the positioning of on-chain trading portals. We can think of the last one that broke out of the existing concept of CX centralized exchange and grabbed a piece of the pie, which was Hyper. When the market value exceeded 10 billion, everyone was shocked. Now it is more than 20 billion, and it has been in the top 30 for so long. If you think about it, it seems like an on-chain trading portal that leads a new paradigm, with such a large market value, it may be worth so much, which is much better than a ghost town Layer1 that has been abandoned for a long time.

Intention vs. Chain Abstraction

Alex: I understand. Actually, the question I asked just now is a question we need to ask when we evaluate a specific project, that is, how much value the market problem it solves is. The size of this market often determines how high the valuation of the project can be. One idea you just mentioned is that chain abstraction itself is a kind of user experience optimization, and it may also extend a good user experience optimization product behind it, which may become an entry-level thing for many users to use, whether it is a multi-chain product or other experience. It may improve the experience of many conventional products, such as trading products. The user value brought by this may give it a higher valuation ceiling when it is implemented on the project. This seems to be a relatively different perspective.

In fact, as far as I can remember, before the concept of chain abstraction appeared, in the first half of 2023, there was a concept called intent, which is the concept of "intention". At that time, it was also proposed by the Western head capital paradigm. They wrote an article called Intent-Based Architecture and Their Risks, which is the infrastructure of chain abstraction and their corresponding risks. At that time, we looked at the concept of intent, and we later looked at the concept of chain abstraction. It seems that there are many correlations. In your understanding, what is the relationship between chain abstraction and intent?

Lydia: This is indeed a common question, probably because both concepts sound a bit abstract at first glance. The simple answer to this question is that intent is a specific technology that supports chain abstraction. We just said that chain abstraction is not a technology, it is a concept and user experience, then intent is a specific technology that supports chain abstraction. The role of this technology is to drive complex cross-chain workflows and complete asset movement, which is the role of LP that I just mentioned when I explained our product. It borrows the architecture of intent. Let's take a look at what intent is from the beginning. The English word intent itself refers to what you plan to do. This is obviously an all-encompassing concept that basically encompasses the entire Web2 product design, because basically all mobile Internet products are directly serving user intent. In Web3, intent is not an all-encompassing usage, and there is no way to use it. It basically refers to a very specific and low-dimensional technical concept, that is, to transfer assets based on the Solver network, especially in cross-chain scenarios. Chain abstraction is a comprehensive and holistic concept. There are many projects that work on it from different perspectives, including accounts, middleware, and cross-chain communication protocols. Intention is one of them. Around intention, there are solver networks and clearing layers, but they all serve the purpose of making cross-chain asset transfers more efficient. In fact, intention, account abstraction, and interoperability protocols are listed as the three basic technologies of chain abstraction.

Alex: I see. Intent is actually a smaller module under the big concept of chain abstraction. Is that right?

Lydia: Yes.

Chain abstraction subordinate project classification

Alex: According to your description, we can see that there are many types of projects under Chain Abstraction that solve various specific problems. From a complete perspective, what categories do you think the projects under Chain Abstraction can be divided into? What problems do they solve respectively, and how are they connected to each other?

Lydia: I divide it into five layers: application layer, account layer, middleware layer, blockchain layer, and cross-chain communication layer. The application layer is the most intuitive. It is the chain abstraction we have repeatedly talked about, plus the ToC application explored in various scenarios, such as UniversalX of chain abstraction plus transactions. The account layer just mentioned a point, which is to provide users with a unified identity and a unified balance between multiple chains. Representatives are NEAR's account abstraction and Particle Network's Universal Accounts. Then the middleware layer includes various chain abstraction as a service providers built for developers, such as Socket, Aggregate, and Everclear (formerly Context). Particle Network's Universal Accounts has built a system of unified liquidity and unified Gas, which will also be open to external developers in the future. The following is the blockchain layer, which mainly includes some blockchain protocols that are first committed to promoting interconnection within the ecosystem, such as Polygon's AggLayer and OP's Stack. Then there is the cross-chain communication layer, including some well-known cross-chain communication protocols, such as Wormhole and Axelar, which facilitate communication between different blockchains. The entire presentation relationship is that these five layers support each other layer by layer. The bottom layer may be the blockchain layer and the cross-chain communication layer, which constitute the underlying protocol. The middle layer and the account layer are facing developers, and the application layer is presented to C-end users.

Alex: I understand. If we divide it into five layers, there are actually some products that we are familiar with, and many of them have been running for many years. In your opinion, in the future, the products between these five layers may be more like "I am one or two projects, and most of the five layers are provided by me", or more like the current building block style, where each layer has a specialized project, and finally they can run well when combined together? Which one do you think is the more likely development direction?

Lydia: I think modularization will definitely continue in the future. I had a discussion with a netizen on Twitter before, that our industry has two types of liquidity and product architectures: horizontal and vertical. Let’s not talk about liquidity first. As for products, whether it is from the development of Web2 or Web3 over the years, we can feel that the functions of each layer are being split. Take the DeFi protocol as an example. It may be a large and comprehensive DeFi suite on the chain at the beginning. In one application, there are Swap, lending, Perp, and even NFTfi. But these functions will be gradually split, and then each layer will have a core product occupying an important ecological niche. So this is a transition from vertical to horizontal, and I also tend to think that the industry will develop in the direction of horizontal modularization.

Eye-catching chain abstract products

Alex: Among so many products or projects related to chain abstraction concepts, from the perspective of a practitioner, which products have impressed you the most? Can you give one or two examples? And in what scenarios did you use it or observe it, and found that it did a good job?

Lydia: In the five layers we just mentioned, the middleware and infrastructure layers, that is, blockchain and cross-chain communication, are relatively mature. But at the top application layer, that is, the products that our real C-end users can use are still relatively few. If you want to talk about what is really available, that is, not demos or demonstrations open to developers, there is only UniversalX. Unichain is also repeatedly releasing product demos, but they haven't made them yet. The only one that can be used now is UniversalX, and because only UniversalX restores the experience of centralized exchanges under a non-custodial premise, this experience, in our opinion, allows users to completely no longer need to consider DEX tokens, cross-chain issues, and can seamlessly buy and sell tokens of all chains. Why only UniversalX? Because there are some projects that may be cross-chain bridges, and they are now starting to pivot to cross-chain DEX, but their cross-chain DEX can only support the same chain, such as the exchange of ETH on Base with MEME tokens on Base, or the exchange of ETH on Base with ETH on Arbitrum. It cannot realize the exchange of ETH on Base with any MEME coin on Arbitrum. In our opinion, this actually fails to achieve the purpose of chain abstraction.

Let's talk about UniversalX. The use case of UniversalX is very direct, which is on-chain transactions. All my on-chain transactions are now completed through UniversalX. And I communicated with many users, and the general feedback is that this product is very smooth and easy to use. You may not go back to the primitive manual cross-chain era of slash-and-burn farming after using it. Its entire product design actually aggregates our understanding of the form of the next-generation on-chain trading platform, in a word, it is Fully-on-Chain Cex. Its features may include that the account must be completely non-custodial, the assets must be traded without permission, the liquidity experience is infinitely aligned with Cex, and it must be mobile-first. This basically aggregates our outlook on the next-generation trading products.

Alex: I see. You invited me to use UniversalX before, and I have opened one here, but I haven't officially started using it yet. The main reason is that I don't do short-term trading very often, so I may not be the core user group of this product. In addition, I may have two concerns. The first one is that you just mentioned that UniversalX is completely permissionless and non-custodial. But according to the product logic you mentioned earlier, there should be a Universal Account under UniversalX, which will control the accounts on all the chains it supports. So how can the official open an Account for you without custody, and then the Account can control the accounts of multiple chains, but you define it as non-custodial. How to achieve this? Compared with the general EOA account, is its non-custodial nature and level the same?

Lydia: The account it opens for you is not an EOA address, which means it does not create a new wallet for you. It is under your wallet, and your wallet has an AA address built in. This AA address does not have a private key, and is controlled by your EOA signature. That is, every transfer transaction between AA addresses is controlled by your own EOA wallet. We are completely unrelated to the EOA wallet, and we do not touch your private key throughout the process.

Alex: I understand. So this EOA wallet refers to the Universal Accounts, and this Account itself is the EOA wallet we understand?

Lydia: No, your EOA wallet is the Metamask, OKX, Rabby, etc. that you use. Universal Accounts is our abbreviation for the entire system, which includes not only the AA addresses deployed on each chain, but also a unified liquidity and unified Gas system in the middle. For users, after the release of the Universal Accounts SDK, their understanding of their Universal Accounts may be that it is a wallet-like existence, but there will be a set of infrastructure deployed by us underneath.

Alex: So is it understood like this? First, I have an EOA wallet that I use frequently. I link this EOA wallet with your Universal Accounts. After the link, I can initiate a signature transaction through my EOA wallet and mobilize all my AA wallets on the chain without private keys through your entire Universal Accounts system? So in theory, I only need to interact with your Universal Accounts through my EOA wallet. Is that right?

Lydia: You can understand it this way, that is, you use your EOA wallet to call the multi-chain assets in the Universal Accounts system.

Alex: And the entire Universal Accounts is designed to be permissionless and non-custodial, right?

Lydia: Yes.

The relationship between AI and chain abstraction

Alex: Actually, from last year to this year, I feel that there are not many major innovations in the Web3 industry. Perhaps a new primitive in this industry is Crypto AI, which is a relatively new thing we have seen this round. Then my understanding is that AI and chain abstraction are trying to help Web3 users get a better user experience, lower financial thresholds, and make complex products simpler. In your opinion, is the intersection of AI and Crypto, this improvement and chain abstraction for the current improvement of Web3 a cooperative relationship or a competitive relationship with different routes?

Lydia: In our definition, we say that chain abstraction is a user experience that allows users to avoid manual interaction, but the role of chain abstraction is far more than just UX improvement. There is another more profound meaning, which may not be generally realized by most people, that is, liquidity. Chain abstraction fundamentally transforms the TVL model of our traditional industry, that is, the fixed, asynchronous, and non-real-time model that requires assets to be transferred to a specific chain in advance, into a model where assets can be used anytime, anywhere and have the same purchasing power on any chain. Basically, it makes liquidity flow again, and liquidity is the lifeblood of innovation in our industry. Under the framework of chain abstraction, the survival of the fittest and the speed of metabolism among public chains will undoubtedly accelerate, and there is only one standard, that is, whether there are excellent applications. It is precisely because public chains can no longer occupy the mountain and build a set of duplicate things, and new chains do not need to spend a lot of market budgets to obtain or retain TVL in advance, but can focus on more specific businesses such as payment, games, transactions, creator economy, etc. from the beginning. This will help chains and applications think about PMF earlier and faster. As for AI, the DeFai solution we see now, even if it can all be implemented, is also focused on the very specific link of automated execution. And if AI is to execute, you have to have an identity and account system on the chain. Recently, multi-chain AI like Griffain has begun to attract people, and it is also difficult to imagine that your AI is equipped with a separate wallet transaction system on each chain. So in the end you will find that AI is still inseparable from account and chain abstraction, and the problems that chain abstraction needs to solve, in my understanding, can have a much more profound impact on the industry than the current AI, that is, DeFai.

Challenges of Chain Abstraction

Alex: And it sounds like the two are more of a relationship between different modules. If the chain abstraction service and its service standards are finally popularized, there is a high probability that AI will enter more and more of our various products, and it is also designed based on this product architecture. But we see that the concept of chain abstraction has been developed for about a year or so, or even longer after the intention came out last year, but it seems that the speed of popularization is not particularly fast. As you just said, your Universal Accounts interact with various chains through AA accounts, but it seems that many projects do not fully support AA accounts. What are the main challenges or obstacles to the development of chain abstraction projects at present, and what is the current solution in the industry?

Lydia: I can’t say much about other projects. They may have various concerns, such as different views from Ethereum’s route design. Because Particle is also a recognized leader in chain abstraction, and I have joined for more than three months, I will give an example of the actual challenges I encountered in my work after joining. I think it may be more representative. In the final analysis, I think it is user education. After all, chain abstraction is a new narrative, and Particle is a pioneer in this narrative. These two things directly frame us in the position of opening up the market and educating users. This may be something that any innovation must face. We know it is difficult, but we are not afraid to do it, because history may remember your name in the end. So why is user education difficult? It is because the volume on the chain is very fast, and user education has not caught up. Although it seems that there are only people on the chain now, if you really communicate with them, you will find that most users have very little knowledge of the basic knowledge of blockchain. He may not even be able to use a wallet properly, and at most he knows that I use robots to charge this and that. Although UniversalX has achieved extreme simplicity in product logic, users still need to understand self-custody. Self-custody is our bottom line. There is work to be done on this alone. When UniversalX was first launched, I worked as a customer service representative for various wallets for a long time. I had to repeatedly tell users why they encountered this problem. It was a problem with their wallets or even a network problem, not a product problem. To solve this problem, you first click this in your wallet, then click that. Then some of their wallets do not support Chinese. I have to tell them what they mean and how to solve this problem in the wallet. So there is no shortcut to user education. Fortunately, we are a relatively long-term team. We are willing to solve this problem and spend time on it. We have indeed spent a lot of energy and effort.

Alex: I understand. Your judgment is that the reason why chain abstraction products are not yet very popular is that both your members and the chain abstraction project itself are still in the early stage of user education. But in fact, you can see that this year there are still many products that were previously unknown and just popped up this year, but the user usage has become very large in a very short period of time. The more typical ones are many products in the TG Bot field, including MoonShot, which people use to trade MEME. They may not have been famous before, but they just popped up in this cycle. So chain abstraction products, such as UniversalX you just mentioned, actually have a certain similarity with them, at least they are all trading scenarios. How do you understand this gap in user growth?

Lydia: Whether it is Moonshot or TG Bot, especially TG Bot, the whole thing is still about self-custody and custody. The basic knowledge of users in our industry is relatively scarce, but they are eager to make money on transactions, so at this historical stage, they chose the form of the custody Bot product. But for example, for some stablecoin projects, everyone knows that it will definitely explode, it is just a matter of time, and it is only a matter of time for TG Bot to have problems, but it has not happened to everyone. People who have been in the industry for several cycles may know the importance of asset security and know that cold wallets should be used to isolate assets, but those who are new to this cycle may have only used TG Bot. Some Bots have not been stolen so far, so they do not have this awareness yet. The route we chose is not to do this from the beginning, because we feel that as time goes by, the issue of security will only be mentioned over and over again, and the alarm bell will ring. In the end, users will find that if there is a product that has the same execution speed as TG Bot, or is even faster, we have been able to do this, and we have full control over it ourselves without the need for hosting. In this case, my main money will be spent on this, and this is the product that I will focus on in the future.

Predictions for chain abstraction

Alex: I understand. Of course, TG Bot and many similar products have had many security incidents in this cycle, including the previous Banana Gun and DEXX, which was very popular in the Chinese-speaking area a while ago. They were stolen and users suffered relatively large losses. But it still does not prevent many people from using centralized custodial trading products. Of course, it may be that the security risks and lessons generated by this incident are still not enough, resulting in everyone, especially new users, not paying enough attention to self-custody. So if you were asked to make two or three predictions about the development of chain abstraction in the next one to two years, what would you predict?

Lydia: To say it is a prophecy is actually my hope. Because we have known each other for a long time, in fact, if you transform from a rational investor to a member of a startup team, you will inevitably be affected by the general and hopeless optimism of other colleagues or the startup team. The sentence I say most often now, which may be brainwashing myself and my peers, is to believe in the "power of belief". If you hold this concept in investment, you will definitely lose money a long time ago, but it seems okay for entrepreneurship. So what do I believe? I believe that UniversalX will become a phenomenal and recognized next-generation trading product. Then I believe that the potential of the chain abstraction plus trading scenario will explode between 2025 and 2026. I believe that all DApps in the future will be built in a chain abstract way, and will usher in a higher ceiling and embrace better innovation. Anyway, believe in the "power of belief".

Alex: Okay, today we invited Lydia to talk about this topic. She mentioned a lot of products of Particle Network where she is currently working, the typical one is UniversalX. But I want to say that we did not contact any commercial sponsors this time, and we are just here to talk about this matter itself. Because there are not many mature products of chain abstraction, and Lydia's own project is this Particle Network, so she will use more examples of this project. Let me make a statement here, whether it is the projects or products mentioned today, they do not constitute investment advice. OK, then our communication on the product category of chain abstraction today ends here, thank you Lydia.

Lydia: Thank you everyone, bye bye.