Chain Abstraction has become a hot topic in the blockchain space (>600% mindshare growth in the past 9 months, according to Kaito), and the recent release of the Chain Abstraction Market Map by The Rollup has fueled even more excitement. For the first time, we have a widely recognized framework representing how different projects fit into the Chain Abstraction ecosystem. This map brings much-needed clarity, helping everyone—from developers to users—understand how different components interact.

Like the early modular stack narratives, Chain Abstraction is still defining its place, but it’s already showing promise in unifying the blockchain experience. This article will dive deep into the Chain Abstraction stack, examining each layer's role and its contribution to the ecosystem. By the end, readers will have a clear and inspiring overview, sparking new ideas and potential collaborations within this evolving field.
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The Importance of Chain Abstraction

In a multi-chain world, users and developers are constantly navigating a rapidly expanding ecosystem of new blockchains, each with its own set of rules, functionalities, and isolated environments. This massive upsurge of independent, app-specific chains has led to fragmentation and isolation, making it challenging to achieve interoperability and creating a disjointed user experience. As a result, developers face increased complexity in building cross-chain applications, while users are burdened with navigating a maze of incompatible protocols and interfaces. These issues hinder blockchain technology—particularly in crypto—from reaching its full potential. 
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Chain Abstraction aims to address these challenges by going beyond just reducing complexity; it unifies fragmented ecosystems by abstracting away the underlying chain-specific differences, enabling smooth communication and operation across diverse networks. This approach allows developers to build scalable applications without being bogged down by the intricacies of multiple chains while users enjoy a cohesive experience that feels interconnected rather than isolated. Essentially, Chain Abstraction transforms the vision of a "one-chain feel" into a reality in a multi-chain world.
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To truly understand its impact and potential, breaking down the Chain Abstraction stack layer by layer is essential. In the next sections, we'll explore how these layers function and work together to create a seamless and efficient blockchain environment.

Permissions & Orchestrations Layer

The Permissions & Orchestrations layer is at the top of the Chain Abstraction stack, handling how users and developers interact with multiple blockchains. It addresses one of the key challenges in today’s multi-chain ecosystem: managing the complexity of permissions, account handling, and the orchestration of tasks across different chains. By abstracting these technical complexities within application experiences for users and chain-specific infrastructure for developers, this layer aims to provide a seamless experience regardless of the underlying chain, akin to what we have come to expect from Web2 applications. 

Simply put, users leverage a single account across all chains, while developers can deploy in a single location and orchestrate complex multi-chain workflows with only a few lines of code.

Account Abstraction: Formal Definition

Traditionally, users have managed private keys directly, which poses significant security risks if those keys are lost or compromised. Account Abstraction (AA) addresses these concerns, alongside various other points of friction, by enabling more user-friendly account management solutions. These solutions use smart contract wallets, or “smart accounts,” to abstract away the complexities of managing keys, paying gas, validating transactions, and more. Beyond simplifying key management, AA significantly enhances the overall user experience; it streamlines gas management, removes the need for frequent transaction pop-ups, and offers intrinsic flexibility at the account level.

AA has evolved as a response to the rigidity of traditional blockchain accounts (Externally Owned Accounts), particularly in the Ethereum ecosystem. The introduction of the ERC-4337 standard, a significant development within the Ethereum community, allows for the creation of smart contract wallets to execute complex operations, such as paying gas fees with ERC20 tokens or batching multiple transactions into a single operation.

Key Components

• Smart Contract Accounts: Contracts that act as user accounts. These hold the same foundational responsibilities as Externally Owned Accounts (with the exception of signing), such as holding and spending funds, although with the added flexibility of being a contract. This allows these accounts to be intrinsically programmable (enabling many of the aforementioned properties).

• UserOperations: Transactions within the ERC-4337 standard that originate from a smart contract account, capable of outsourcing gas payments, being batched together within a single ledger entry, etc.

• Intent-based transactions: Transactions in which users express their desired outcomes rather than detailing every step required to achieve them. The system interprets these intents and automatically executes the necessary actions, simplifying user interactions by making the underlying on-chain processes invisible to the user.

Applications

• Sponsoring Gas Fees: dApps can pay gas fees on behalf of users, lowering the entry barrier for new users who may not have the necessary tokens.

• Batching Transactions: Multiple transactions can be bundled into one, reducing the complexity and cost of executing multiple blockchain operations.

• Wallet-less Web3 Logins: Users can interact with dApps without needing a cryptocurrency wallet, using alternative authentication methods like social media accounts, email, or passkeys.

• Popup-less Transactions: Using session keys, smart contract accounts can execute transactions without the need to generate signatures from an underlying signer/EOA manually; instead, this can be temporarily outsourced to an application.

Key Examples

Kontos

Kontos implements an innovative two-layer account abstraction model that simplifies user interactions across multiple blockchain networks. It uses a refined version of the ERC-4337 standard to create a seamless, user-friendly experience.

Key Features of Kontos Omnichain AA:

1. Unified Omnichain Account: One Kontos account manages multiple chain-specific smart contract accounts.
2. Social Recovery: A single recovery process secures access across all connected chains.
3. Universal Gas Abstraction: Users can pay gas fees using any supported token, regardless of the target chain.

Its use cases include:

• Omnichain Trading: Kontos enables users to buy, sell, or swap tokens across different chains effortlessly. For example, a user could trade USDT held on Ethereum for assets on BNB Chain without manually bridging assets or switching networks.
• Bridge Abstraction: Users can seamlessly select the asset they want to bridge and the target chain, enabling them to utilize assets from different chains and create cross-chain combinations without worrying about underlying technical complexities.

Other Examples

Safe and Avocado Wallet are among the more popular smart contract wallets, natively leveraging ERC-4337. Safe alone has driven the deployment of over 10,000,000 smart accounts, driving considerable usage given the challenge (with ERC-4337 primarily) of transitioning away from EOAs. Additionally, providers like Particle Network have been a common choice for onboarding users into smart contract wallets using social logins–further reducing the barrier-to-entry.

Wallet Abstraction: Formal Definition

Managing assets across multiple blockchains is often complex and frustrating. Users must manually bridge and swap tokens, a time-consuming and error-prone process. Wallet Abstraction, or account-level chain abstraction, simplifies this by aggregating token balances from various chains into a single user interface. This eliminates the need for manual interventions, makes managing your assets much simpler, and prevents mistakes.

Key Examples

NEAR Protocol

NEAR’s Chain Signatures, now live on mainnet, exemplify Wallet Abstraction.

Dozens of teams leverage their technology to manage assets and execute transactions across multiple networks, like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and more, without juggling multiple wallets or manually signing transactions on each chain.

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With Chain Signatures, developers can:

• Build apps using a NEAR account to interact with (almost) any chain.
• Unlock bridgeless Omnichain DeFi.
• Launch Omnichain tokens with issuance on multiple chains.

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Particle Network

In addition to NEAR’s Chain Signatures, Particle Network’s Universal Accounts also stand as a flagship example of Wallet Abstraction.

Universal Accounts, based on ERC-4337 account abstraction, simply give users a single address and balance usable across any application, regardless of its underlying chain. Essentially, users can have balances spread across 4-5 different blockchains, although from their perspective, these assets are usable as if they were on a single chain; eliminating the need to bridge or cognitively manage where assets are located.

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Commerce Automation: Formal Definition

Blockchain transactions involve multiple complex steps, such as token conversion, cross-chain transfers, and payment settlements. Commerce Automation platforms simplify these steps, boosting transaction speed, efficiency, and reliability by automating on-ramps, token swaps, mult-chain transactions, and recurring payments.

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Key Example

Halliday

Halliday’s Commerce Automation Network enables developers to bring commerce to their modular chains through a unified interface. Their Commerce Automation Network utilizes solver networks to coordinate and execute complex economic workflows, simplifying user transactions.

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Some of its use cases include:

• On and Off-Ramps: Apps and services can accept payments from anywhere around the globe and convert them into desired tokens for blockchain settlement.

• One-Click Commerce Flows: Enable users to purchase NFTs or digital assets across multiple chains with a single click.

• Cross-Chain Swaps: Developers can offer users the ability to pay into a rollup using their existing balances across any EVM network.

• Pay with CEX Accounts: Enables devs to unlock user value on centralized exchanges through single-click automated workflows.

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Orchestration Services: Formal Definition

Orchestration services, also known as application-level chain abstraction protocols, automate and manage complex, cross-chain operations. They enable devs to build apps that can seamlessly execute tasks like token swaps, cross-chain bridging, and staking in various DeFi protocols without requiring user intervention at each step.

Key Examples

Agoric

Agoric has recently introduced their Orchestration API, a powerful tool that empowers devs to build apps capable of orchestrating liquidity and other operations seamlessly across all of Web3. 

Its use cases include:

• Cross-Chain Liquidity Management: Devs can leverage Agoric’s Orchestration API to manage liquidity across multiple blockchains, ensuring users can access the best rates and opportunities on dApps.

• Inter-Chain Staking and Transfers: The API enables complex operations like inter-chain staking and multi-hop transfers, automatically handling the necessary steps.

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Developers can leverage Agoric’s Orchestration’s API to accelerate their dApp’s multi-chain journey by applying for their Orchestration Early Access Program here.

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Klaster

Klaster has launched its SDK, allowing developers to write complex Web3 flows across multiple blockchains and orchestrate all services needed for chain abstraction flow through their interface. It helps them by allowing the wrapping and executing of complex cross-chain transaction bundles with a single user signature and handing them over to be executed via their PEN (public execution network) of nodes across supported blockchains.

Its use cases include:

1. Cross-chain DeFi operations: Enables users to perform actions like lending, borrowing, or yield farming across multiple chains in a single transaction, automatically securing the best rates from all chains.
   
   
2. Chain-agnostic wallet management: Offer users a unified interface to manage assets and conduct transactions across different chains without the need to switch networks.
   
   
3. One-Click Checkout Flow: Mint an NFT on one chain (e.g., Zora) using assets from another chain (e.g., Optimism), without needing gas on Zora.

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Developers can start building chain-abstracted dApps with the Klaster SDK and access the tutorial here. For additional support and debugging assistance, contact their team to join the builders' group.

Challenges and Future Directions

While the Permissions & Orchestrations layer is making blockchain interactions easier, there are a few key challenges to consider for future directions:

• Integration: Bringing together different blockchains and protocols smoothly is still a work in progress. Although many permission-level solutions utilize an intent-based approach that doesn't strictly require standardized communication, the diverse implementations across different projects can still create friction. The lack of alignment in how chains interact with intents can complicate integration, leading to inefficiencies and potential fragmentation. Achieving smooth integration will require more collaboration among projects within the Chain Abstraction stack and ongoing efforts to establish universal standards and ensure that the proliferation of competing solutions within this layer doesn’t introduce additional fragmentation.

• Security: With more functionalities being abstracted, ensuring the security of these systems becomes crucial. Building resilient and secure infrastructure that can prevent attacks is essential to maintain trust and reliability in these solutions. For this layer, these security risks often present themselves through key management (if applicable) and preventing issues like double spending (with solver-based liquidity fronting).

• Scalability: As usage grows, these systems need to handle increased demand without slowing down. Scalability is about making sure that as more users and applications come on board, the system can still operate quickly and efficiently. Developing scalable infrastructure that can accommodate this growth will be crucial to the success of the Permissions & Orchestrations layer.

Orderflow Sources and Auctions

In a fragmented ecosystem, liquidity is often scattered across different chains, leading to higher costs, slippage, and delays. Protocols from Orderflow Sources and Auctions are designed to address these inefficiencies by employing various strategies. These include using the intent-based design, on-chain pools, aggregation, and mechanisms involving the burning and minting of tokens. Ultimately, these protocols aim to ensure the best possible outcomes for users.

Key Components

Orderflow Sources

Orderflow Sources are platforms that collect and organize transaction orders from users before they are processed on the blockchain. 

Orderflow Auctions

Orderflow Auctions involve different DEXs, bridges, and/or solvers bidding to process these transaction orders. This competitive bidding ensures that the transactions are executed at the best possible outcome for users, minimizing costs and transfer times.

While there have been ongoing advancements in orderflow auction marketplace designs and their underlying execution platforms, one of the most notable new developments has been the rise of intent applications. These protocols have gained significant popularity and attention over the past year.

Intent Applications

Intent Applications manage the entire lifecycle of a transaction intent. They integrate with Orderflow Sources and Auctions, ensuring that transactions are processed efficiently by leveraging the best solvers available. These protocols streamline the handling of intents from creation through to execution, optimizing outcomes and reducing complexities for users.

How Transactions Are Processed by Intent Applications

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1. Intent Creation: Users start by submitting a transaction request, known as an intent. This could be for swapping tokens, transferring assets, or making trades. The intent includes details such as the assets involved, desired outcomes (e.g., swapping ETH for DAI), and specific conditions (e.g., minimum acceptable price).

2. Collection and Aggregation: The submitted intent is sent to an intent application, which collects similar intents from various users. Some intent applications also batch these intents to improve execution efficiency as they’re able to process transactions in bulk.

3. Auction Preparation: The batched intents are set up for an auction where solvers can bid to execute them. The intent application ensures that the orders are ready for competitive bidding, which is crucial for obtaining the best execution terms.

4. Bidding and Intent Execution: Solvers, which are entities specialized in executing transactions, enter the auction and bid to process the intents. Each solver proposes a solution, detailing how they will execute the transactions and what costs or benefits are involved (e.g., best price execution, minimal slippage). The solver with the winning bid executes the transactions. They front their own capital to process the transaction, ensuring that users' intents are fulfilled efficiently.

5. Transaction Settlement: The intent application settles funds back to the solver on the source chain.

6. Value Distribution (User Receives Outcome): Any additional value captured during the process, such as reduced MEV, can be distributed back to the users. This minimizes their costs and enhances the overall transaction outcomes. Users receive the results of their original intent, whether it’s a completed token swap, asset transfer, or another transaction.

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Key Examples

Across

Across is a leading bridge that distinguishes itself through its intent-based design. Known for its quick execution of cross-chain orders, Across leverages a network of relayers (solvers) that compete in a speed-based auction to fulfill user orders. In collaboration with Uniswap, Across is spearheading the development of ERC-7683, a standard for cross-chain intents. This initiative aims to onboard more solvers, creating greater competition within the solver layer. Ultimately, this increased competition will lead to improved intent execution times, better price rates, and an enhanced overall user experience across the ecosystem.

CowSwap

CoW Swap protects users from MEV attacks and optimizes transactions by utilizing is CoW AMM. This feature, now integrated on Balancer, allows solvers to rebalance pools, helping liquidity providers avoid Loss-Versus-Rebalancing (LVR). 

Stargate

Stargate is one of the leading bridging protocols built on top of LayerZero. The recent launch of Stargate V2 has introduced several features, including transaction batching (Bus) and bridging-as-a-service for chains using Hydra. Hydra enables new chains to integrate with Stargate by using Hydra-wrapped assets (OFTs), expanding its reach without requiring individual pool deployment. These new features collectively improve the overall execution quality and efficiency of user orders.

Socket Protocol

Socket Protocol enables devs to compose with every protocol, user, and asset across 300+ chains and rollups through Modular Order Flow Auctions (MOFA). MOFA is designed to create and fulfill chain-abstracted bundles, giving users a higher-level abstraction of block space across L1s, L2s, and L3s, with powerful control over execution outcomes.

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LI.FI

LI.FI collects orderflow from 250+ integrated apps, wallets, and DeFi protocols, capturing value at the intent expression layer (swaps, cross-chain transfers, zaps). With recent additions like native Bitcoin support via THORChain, Solana integration, and continuous EVM chain expansion, LI.FI allows applications to allow any kind of asset exchange across these ecosystem by tapping into LI.FI's marketplace of intent executors (DEXs, DEX aggregators, bridges, and solvers), optimizing transaction execution for best rates and fastest times.

deBridge Finance

deBridge is building DeFi’s Internet of Liquidity, a unified network for seamless, real-time liquidity movement across chains. They’ve also recently unveiled a bold new look, reflecting their commitment to efficiency, safety, and global connectivity in DeFi.

Pros and Cons of the Current System

Pros: Efficiency and Fairer Value Capture

• Efficiency: Orderflow Auctions ensure transactions follow the most efficient paths, securing better prices and faster execution.

• Batch Processing: Grouping transactions reduces network congestion, lowers fees, and speeds up confirmation times.

• MEV Mitigation: Competitive bidding minimizes the chances of MEV exploitation, fostering a more transparent and fair market environment.

• Better Returns: Users can capture more value from optimized transactions rather than losing it to intermediaries.

Cons: Solver Challenges

• Solver Rebalancing: Solvers often need to rebalance their liquidity across different chains, which can be costly and inefficient. This rebalancing requires integration with multiple liquidity sources like bridges, CEXs, and OTC desks, increasing operational complexity.

• Profitability Constraints: The fees associated with integrating various liquidity sources increase costs for solvers, squeezing their profit margins and making it harder to operate profitably.

• Cost Barriers: Participating in auctions can be expensive, potentially limiting involvement to well-funded solvers and reducing competition.

• Market Concentration: There's a risk that a few large solvers could dominate the market, leading to centralization and less competitive pricing.

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Developing more efficient rebalancing strategies, ensuring diverse solver participation, and simplifying integration with various liquidity sources will be key to enhancing the scalability and effectiveness of this layer. By refining these systems, the Chain Abstraction stack can continue to provide efficient, cost-effective, and scalable transaction solutions across fragmented blockchain ecosystems. The Clearing Layer solves this.

Solvers and Solver Networks

Who are Solvers?

Solvers are service providers that fulfill intents. They are specialized off-chain entities capable of fulfilling specific types of intents, often tailored to particular routes between chains. For example, one solver might specialize in moving assets to Berachain or Monad, while another might specialize in optimizing trades on Arbitrum. If you’re not familiar with how solvers execute intents already, check out our guide on the lifecycle of intent processing here.

Key Examples

Wintermute

Wintermute is a global algorithmic trading firm and leading DeFi liquidity provider on over 50 exchanges and trading platforms. As a solver, Wintermute optimizes trade execution across multiple chains, ensuring efficient, seamless transactions and robust market liquidity through high-frequency trading and cross-chain operations.

Amber Group

Amber Group is a global leader in digital asset management, driving over $1T in cumulative trade volume and optimizing cross-chain liquidity and trade execution for intent protocols as a solver.

With deep market insights and a commitment to security, Amber Group has built a proven track record in navigating liquidity challenges across multiple chains. Their focus on innovation positions them to address scalability demands and drive growth within the DeFi ecosystem through collaborative efforts and industry-wide initiatives.

The Power of Solver Networks

• Infrastructure and Coordination: Solver Networks provide the infrastructure that allows multiple solvers to interact and coordinate effectively. They distribute the workload across various solvers and promote healthy competition among them to deliver the best pricing to users.

• Democratization of Access: Solver Networks lower the barrier to entry for independent solvers, allowing them to compete on a level playing field. This democratization is crucial for fostering innovation and ensuring that no single entity dominates the market.

Key Examples

Khalani Network

Khalani is transforming solver development by modeling intents as proof of obligations that solvers must meet. With built-in collaborative solving, Khalani empowers developers to create complex, cross-chain protocols without worrying about routing or execution, streamlining the entire process for smarter, more efficient outcomes. Learn more about Khalani's approach here.

Enso Finance

Enso is the world’s first intent engine, revolutionizing how developers interact with smart contracts across Rollups, AppChains, & blockchains. By abstracting all interactions, Enso enables a seamless, intent-centric experience—connecting all of crypto in one unified platform for optimal execution.

The Collaboration Between Solvers, Intent Applications, and Solver Networks

Intents and Solvers

Intents are essentially the jobs that solvers bid to execute. The better the solver at matching the needs of an intent (e.g., minimizing slippage, optimizing routes), the more likely they are to win the auction and execute the transaction.

Role of Intent Applications in Coordination

Intent applications (auction providers), like Anoma, manage the entire lifecycle of an intent. They handle everything from aggregating intents and setting up auctions to selecting the winning solver and overseeing execution. They also ensure transactions are optimized for the best outcomes.

Solver Networks as the Backbone

While solvers execute transactions, solver networks enable solvers to collaborate, share resources, and maintain the decentralized nature of the ecosystem. Without them, the process would be less efficient and prone to bottlenecks.

The Challenges Solvers Face

To better understand the landscape, the Everclear team spoke with key solvers, including Amber Group, to uncover the major challenges they encounter in their operations. Their insights reveal that despite technological advancements, the existing infrastructure still presents significant hurdles.

Rebalancing and Liquidity Management

One of the biggest challenges for solvers is managing liquidity across multiple chains. Solvers often need to use their own funds to fulfill cross-chain intents, settling on one chain while demand and profitability lie on another. This creates a complex and costly cycle of rebalancing funds to where they are needed most. The rebalancing process is further complicated by the need to connect with various bridges, CEXs, OTC desks, and other liquidity sources, each adding fees and operational costs.

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Amber Group highlighted that existing bridge infrastructure often suffers from high fees, slow transaction speeds, and limited capacity, making efficient rebalancing difficult. The result is an isolated and inefficient system where each solver operates independently, leading to increased costs and reduced profitability. There is a clear need for more integrated and automated solutions to manage liquidity flows effectively.

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Economic Pressures and Profitability

Solvers operate in a highly competitive environment where transaction fees, rebalancing expenses, and integration costs significantly impact their margins. Amber Group noted that many solvers are caught in a balancing act: they must lower costs to remain competitive, but doing so often squeezes their profit margins to unsustainable levels. The constant need to rebalance liquidity between chains is a significant drain on resources, making it challenging to achieve long-term profitability.

Centralization Risks

The solver landscape is also at risk of becoming centralized, with a few dominant players controlling the majority of cross-chain transactions. This centralization is driven by economies of scale and network effects that favor larger, more established solvers. Smaller solvers struggle to compete due to the high barriers to entry and the capital-intensive nature of managing liquidity. Amber Group emphasized that without more inclusive and accessible solutions, the market risks losing its decentralized ethos, stifling innovation and diversity.

The Need for a Coordinated Solution

The challenges highlighted by Amber Group point to a broader systemic issue: the current approach to rebalancing is fragmented, costly, and inefficient. Solvers are forced to navigate a patchwork of liquidity sources and infrastructure that fails to meet their needs. There is a pressing demand for a more coordinated, scalable approach that can address the core rebalancing problem and enable solvers to operate more efficiently.

The Clearing Layer

The Clearing Layer is a critical component of the Chain Abstraction stack, designed to tackle solvers' rebalancing problems. Everclear, the first Clearing Layer, has launched its mainnet beta, introducing a scalable approach to liquidity management. Everclear coordinates the global settlement of liquidity between chains, considerably reducing rebalancing costs for solvers, intent-based bridges, and other participants in the ecosystem. This allows solvers to maintain optimal asset distribution across chains with minimal overhead.

Key Functions

Netting

Netting is the process of offsetting cross-chain transactions to minimize the need for actual asset movement (think Visa). On any given day, 80% of daily crosschain capital flows are nettable within 24 hours—for every $1 that enters a chain, on average, $0.80 flows back out. By netting these flows, the Clearing Layer significantly reduces the volume of crosschain transactions, considerably lowering rebalancing costs for solvers. This reduction in costs not only benefits large solvers but also enables independent solvers to participate in the ecosystem, leveling the playing field.

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Programmable Settlement

Everclear introduces programmable settlement through a peer-to-peer clearance model specifically tailored for solvers. Unlike users, who have specific and one-dimensional preferences (e.g., a particular destination chain or asset), solvers operate with a broader and more complex set of preferences. They may want to rebalance across multiple chains, hold various assets, or adjust rebalancing frequency based on costs, current inventory, or future order flow predictions. This flexibility allows for efficient peer-to-peer rebalancing, optimizing liquidity management, and reducing costs. Everclear’s programmable settlement enables solvers to select the most cost-effective routes, aligning with market conditions and strategic goals.

Permissionless Liquidity and Chain Expansion

One of the challenges for new chains is connecting with other blockchains efficiently. Everclear’s Clearing Layer offers automatic connectivity, enabling integrators (intent applications, bridges, dApps, CEXs, etc.) to support new chains immediately upon deployment. Leveraging Hyperlane with an Eigenlayer ISM, Everclear ensures that integrators utilizing intent-based models can seamlessly rebalance funds across these new chains. By doing so, Everclear helps new chains gain traction quickly, reducing the fragmentation that typically challenges emerging networks.

Impact on the Ecosystem

For Solvers

The Clearing Layer cuts rebalancing costs significantly, allowing solvers to concentrate on executing transaction intents instead of juggling liquidity across chains. This boosts scalability, enabling solvers to handle more transactions and support a broader range of assets to meet the growing demand for crosschain interactions. Lower operational costs level the playing field, allowing smaller solvers to compete with larger ones.

For the Orderflow Sources and Auctions Layer

With solvers freed from frequent rebalancing duties, the Orderflow Sources and Auctions layer becomes more efficient. Transactions are executed faster, with lower fees and less slippage, improving the overall performance of intent applications. As solvers support more chains and assets, intent applications can expand their reach and meet users wherever they are.

For the Permissions and Orchestration Layer

By simplifying rebalancing, the Clearing Layer enhances the developer experience. Developers can focus on creating sophisticated, chain-abstracted apps without dealing with underlying complexities. This leads to users enjoying seamless interaction with Web3 apps as developers can provide intuitive solutions that hide blockchain complexities, delivering a Web2-like experience.

The Clearing Layer is key to unlocking Chain Abstraction's full potential. It streamlines the entire stack by fixing solvers' rebalancing issues, making Web3 more efficient and tackling fragmentation head-on.

Settlement and Infrastructure Layer

The Settlement and Infrastructure layer sits at the base of the Chain Abstraction stack, ensuring secure, fast, and reliable transaction finality across multiple blockchains. This layer addresses the need for certainty and speed in cross-chain transactions, playing a critical role in enabling seamless and efficient interactions within the blockchain ecosystem. By providing robust infrastructure, it supports the scalability and security required for dApps today.

Transport Layer: Formal Definition

Transport layers are like the Internet's TCP/IP protocol—they securely and reliably transmit data, messages, and transactions between different blockchains.

Key Components

1. Light Clients: Blockchain components that use zero-knowledge proofs to verify the state of one chain on another, enabling secure crosschain communication without relying on intermediaries.

2. Connections: Link light clients across blockchains to enable communication.
   
   
3. Channels: Act as conduits that connect specific modules or applications on different chains.
   
   
4. Relayers: Entities responsible for transmitting messages between blockchains, ensuring that data is delivered securely.

Applications

1. Crosschain Asset Transfers: The transport layer supports bridges and intent applications by handling secure communication and data transfer between chains. While bridges verify message accuracy, the transport layer ensures reliable and secure transfers.
   
   
2. Enhanced Security and Finality: By utilizing transport protocols like LayerZero and Hyperlane, Fast Finality protocols can quickly achieve transaction finality across chains, preventing fraud and maintaining the integrity of crosschain transactions.

Key Example

Hyperlane

Hyperlane is a modular transport layer that allows apps to plug into any verification model. Everclear, for instance, uses Hyperlane to transfer solver credit data (chain deposits) and leverages their AVS to tap into EigenLayer’s restaked ETH security.

In Hyperlane, the transport layer's security and communication rely on several key components working together:

• Mailbox Smart Contracts handle sending and receiving interchain messages between blockchains.

• Validators sign messages, ensuring they are valid before being transmitted across chains.

• Relayers are responsible for delivering these signed messages between chains.

• Interchain Security Modules (ISMs) play a critical role in verifying that the messages delivered were actually sent from the origin chain.

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Fast Finality: Formal Definition

Fast Finality ensures that transactions are confirmed and settled quickly, making them irreversible and immutable shortly after they are recorded. This quick confirmation is essential for minimizing risks like slippage and preventing issues such as front-running and other forms of market manipulation.

Applications

1. High-Frequency Trading (HFT): Ensures near-instant confirmation of trades, minimizing risks like slippage.
   
   
2. Lending and Borrowing: Secures quick and accurate processing of loans, repayments and collateral.
   
   
3. Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs): Prevents front-running and other types of market manipulation by ensuring rapid trade execution.
   
   
4. GameFi: Provides a seamless gaming experience on-chain.

Interdependence within the Settlement and Infrastructure Layer

Fast Finality relies heavily on efficient Transport Layers for swift data transmission across networks. Without them, transaction speed and security could be compromised. Additionally, Fast Finality protocols enhance Rollup Clusters' efficiency by ensuring rapid confirmation of transactions within these clusters.

Key Example

Nuffle Labs

Nuffle Labs provides a fast settlement layer leveraging EigenLayer cryptoeconomic security to allow users and developers on one L2 to access information from another quickly. They also utilize NEAR Protocol's sharded architecture to deliver a high-throughput, low-cost modular data availability layer for rollups.

Rollup Clusters: Formal Definition

Rollup clusters consist of groups of blockchains or rollups that communicate using trust-minimized methods like validity proofs, fraud proofs, or direct transaction validation. These clusters rely on shared consensus rules and compatible execution environments, such as the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for Ethereum rollups, allowing them to validate state transitions without needing third-party validators.

Data Availability (DA)

DA is key to the security and efficiency of rollup clusters, ensuring that all data needed for validating transactions and maintaining state is both accessible and verifiable.

Celestia's DA Layer, powered by Data Availability Sampling (DAS), exemplifies this by allowing nodes to verify data availability efficiently without centralization risks. This trust-minimized approach offers:

• Data Integrity: Ensures transaction data is available and not withheld, minimizing fraud risk.

• Cost Efficiency: Reduces data availability costs by up to 95%, allowing developers to build complex, fully on-chain applications without high fees.

• Direct Verification: Provides users and validators with the ability to verify the DA layer using proofs, enhancing network security and reliability.

Applications

1. Scalability: By enabling multiple chains to work together in a cluster, the system can handle a larger volume of transactions while maintaining a secure environment.

2. Enhanced Security: By relying on trust-minimized methods for communication within clusters, these systems can prevent many of the vulnerabilities associated with traditional crosschain bridges, such as the risk of validators colluding to steal funds.

Key Examples

Orbit Chain

Arbitrum's Orbit Chain supports rollups like Everclear, boosting interoperability and scalability across chains. With features like fast withdrawals and Chain Clusters, the Orbit Chain reduces crosschain communication latency, making nearly instant, secure transactions possible.

Optimism’s Superchain

Optimism’s Superchain interoperability is designed to allow secure state reading and message passing between blockchains within the Superchain without needing to route through the Ethereum L1. This setup enhances the transfer of assets and communication between Layer 2 (L2) chains, improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Its key features include:

1. Secure message passing.
2. Low latency and scalability.
3. Permissionless chain set.

Learn more here.

How the Settlement & Infrastructure Layer Impacts Other Layers

We previously discussed how Everclear, the first Clearing Layer, optimizes transaction flows by netting crosschain transfers and reducing rebalancing costs for solvers. Once these transactions are optimized, the Settlement and Infrastructure Layer ensures they are finalized securely and efficiently:

• Transport Layer: Hyperlane provides Everclear with efficient pathways for moving netted transactions across chains, reducing reliance on slower bridges.

• Fast Finality: This component confirms netted transactions quickly, minimizing risks associated with delays and ensuring that transactions are irreversible in near real-time.

• Rollup Cluster: Arbitrum’s Orbit Chain enables simultaneous batching and processing of multiple transactions, allowing the Clearing Layer to manage large volumes effectively and ensure swift, secure transaction completion.

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These components amplify the Clearing Layer's benefits, creating a positive ripple effect throughout the Chain Abstraction stack.

Final Thoughts

The HTTP of Web3

We're at a pivotal moment in the evolution of Chain Abstraction, much like the transition the internet underwent with the introduction of HTTP. Before HTTP, the internet was a tangle of direct connections that only a few could navigate. HTTP abstracted these complexities, making the internet accessible and intuitive. Similarly, Chain Abstraction removes the need for users to understand or interact with the technical details of different blockchains. As this technology matures, we can expect the adoption of dApps to increase, with interactions becoming as straightforward as using a web browser. This shift will not only make Web3 accessible and mainstream-ready but also drive innovation, creating new possibilities for developers and users alike.

A Unified View of the Chain Abstraction Stack

The Chain Abstraction Market Map isn’t just a visual representation; it's a crucial tool for understanding the ecosystem. By categorizing and structuring the various components, it helps everyone see how these pieces fit together and where opportunities lie. This clarity is essential as it reduces the confusion that often surrounds new technological spaces, allowing developers, investors, and users to see the bigger picture and the role they can play in it. The map essentially serves as a guide, simplifying the complexity of the Chain Abstraction landscape.

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Acknowledgments

This deep dive into the Chain Abstraction stack was co-written by Everclear and Particle Network, with invaluable contributions from a diverse group of projects actively shaping this ecosystem. We extend our heartfelt thanks to LI.FI, Kontos, Halliday, Klaster, Khalani Network, Amber Group, Nuffle Labs, Hyperlane, and Optimism for their insights, feedback, and collaboration.

About Everclear

Everclear is the first Clearing Layer designed to coordinate the global settlement of liquidity between chains, solving fragmentation for modular blockchains. Our platform coordinates market actors and integrates various settlement mechanisms to reduce the cost and complexity of rebalancing liquidity for solvers. This enables seamless liquidity and permissionless chain expansion, significantly enhancing the efficiency of the Ethereum ecosystem.

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