As an rising variety of layer-2 chains compete at this time for person consideration and liquidity, developer efforts are ramping up round “chain abstraction,” a broad time period used to explain a seamless cross-chain person expertise throughout all chains.
Totally applied chain abstraction remains to be years away, although we now have an early glimpse into what a chain-abstracted person expertise seems to be like.
In partnership with Everclear (beforehand Connext), Renzo protocol sought to convey native restaking to 6 supported layer-2s: Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Base, Mode, Blast and Linea. Renzo is the third-largest liquid restaking protocol, with $1.2 billion in whole worth locked (TVL) at this time.
Learn extra: What was behind the run on Renzo’s liquid restaked ETH?
The aim was to let Renzo customers restake from any of the aforementioned layer-2s to obtain ezETH, thereby skirting the burden of bridging onto Ethereum mainnet and its excessive fuel charges. In brief, Renzo sought to fulfill customers the place they’re, all the level of “chain abstraction.”
The initiative despatched Renzo’s TVL from $614 million on the finish of February to over $1 billion three months later, in response to a case research shared with Blockworks. The expansion got here regardless of a significant depeg of Renzo’s LRT.
Renzo’s cumulative TVL throughout six layer-2s over time
Furthermore, Renzo benefited from a tenfold improve in distinctive EOAs (pockets addresses), whereas seeing an estimated 90% discount in fuel charges.
Renzo’s variety of distinctive EOAs per chain over time
The initiative additionally allowed layer-2 chains to retain liquidity inside their very own ecosystems.
From a person’s perspective, advanced bridging was abstracted away. ETH could possibly be conveniently restaked from the chosen layer-2 to obtain Renzo’s liquid restaking token ezETH.
From Renzo’s perspective, ETH staked by customers on any of the layer-2 chains had been batched and bridged to Ethereum mainnet on Everclear’s “Clearing Layer” — a settlement liquidity layer the place third-party “solvers” compete to course of customers’ transactions.
Different gamers similar to Socket Community are growing related intent-based interoperability options to sort out chain abstraction.
Socket’s modular order move auctions market — or MOFA — employs an identical market-based mannequin the place execution brokers (transmitters) compete to course of the correct to execute customers’ transactions.
Socket co-founder Vaibhav Chellani mentioned: “It’s completely as much as MOFA transmitters as to how they are going to execute customers’ transactions. They may use any alternative of bridge, and even fund it from their private pockets.”
Whereas there are dozens of gamers competing to create the perfect chain abstraction interoperability resolution, Chellani harassed that almost all of those efforts are purely synergistic to Socket. “We see shared sequencers, Polygon’s AggLayer or Optimism’s Superchain as pipes that we leverage from MOFA to do cross-chain settlement.”
Purposes’ go-to-market methods are now not confined by the prices and engineering challenges of a number of cross-chain deployment.
However, the goal market of layer-2s expands past the silos of their very own ecosystem, all whereas retaining composability.
These efforts present an early look into what chain abstraction in its finish state might seem like, underneath totally different incentives.
