Chain abstraction: The billion-level users of the crypto ecosystem come from here

Source: Mint Ventures

Host: 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. Clarify the logic behind hot topics for everyone, provide insights that penetrate the events themselves, and introduce multiple perspectives.

This episode is the fourth episode of the "Current Status and Future of the Web3 Track" series of podcasts. Let's talk about chain abstraction. In the previous three episodes, we talked about Crypto AI, Defi, and Hyperliquid respectively. 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 are located, and the projects mentioned do not constitute any investment advice.

Alex: This podcast 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, I am Lydia, currently a researcher at Particle Network, and I am 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 what chain abstraction is 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 job of localizing 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 a chain, especially in this cycle, who may not even download from an 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 entire 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 from 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 problems very straightforwardly, and they are also basically faced by everyone every day. But if you want to admit this problem, you must first recognize a premise, which is the trend of multiple chains. We are now seeing more and more general Layer1, Layer2, AppChain, and AppRollup breaking 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 single chains are likely not to buy into it, and there may even be panic and FUD. 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 liquidity split between multiple chains is real, harmful, and must be solved. An example of liquidity split on the user side is the most direct feeling of each of us interacting on the chain every day, that is, each new chain seems to have a new wallet, and 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 must 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 even find that wallet. If it is for the developer side, we will see a more far-reaching harm, that is, we are seeing 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 solid and fragmented, the infrastructure is being built over and over again, and the models used are all many years ago, which 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 meaning and program 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 segmented Layer2 or AppChain. The significance of chain abstraction here is to allow users to move between multiple chains seamlessly, and then allow developers to build truly innovative applications with product/market fit.

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 chain abstraction products on the current mainstream 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 again 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, two simple scenarios, a user now only has a SOL wallet, he 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 is UniversalX. Particle Network's current product line is mainly two parts, one is Universal Accounts, which is a set of infrastructure built for developers that we just talked about. The C-end application is UniversalX, which we also launched in December and just updated. I just wrote an article yesterday to introduce the brain of UniversalX, that is, the Universal Accounts infrastructure, which 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 the Particle Network. The layer 1 of the 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 between multiple chains. For example, if I am on Base and I want to use ETH to buy a MEME on Solana, then the ETH on Base may first be converted into an intermediary token, such as USDC, and then this LP is a bit similar to the Solver work in the Solver network. It is between multiple chains, in our example, that is, between Base and Solana to transfer USDC. After this USDC is transferred 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. Just now you mentioned that one of the problems developers are facing now is that after developing an application, the common practice for multi-chain is to deploy the same thing on another chain, with users from different chains and funds from different chains. So if you use your chain abstraction solution, how do you reduce the multi-chain deployment of developers in your products, or their current problems?

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 developing now. 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 bridge to my AppChain. So for developers, they will not set any liquidity threshold in front of users to acquire users.

Alex: For the realization of this goal, is the prerequisite that the users faced by developers must have Universal Accounts?

Lydia: No, you can integrate it in your product.

Alex: It means that users are not aware of Universal Accounts when using the product.

Lydia: Yes, it depends on how you log in. If the user already has Universal Accounts, it is definitely best to have 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: Just now we 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 to better acquire 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 transaction, 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 transaction 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 transactions. 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 about 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 that an on-chain trading portal that leads a new paradigm has such a large market value. Maybe it is 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: Understand. In fact, the question I just asked is a question that we need to ask when we value a specific project, that is, how much value it solves in the market. 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, whether it is a multi-chain product or other experience. It may improve many conventional products now, such as the experience of trading products. This kind of user value brought by it may give it a higher valuation ceiling when it is implemented in the project. This seems to be a different perspective.

In fact, in my impression, before the concept of chain abstraction appeared, in the first half of 23, 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. I feel 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 these two 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, so 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 LP role I mentioned when I just 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 directly serve user intent. In Web3, intent is not an all-encompassing usage, 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 do it from different entry points, some do accounts, some do middleware, cross-chain communication protocols, etc. Intent is one of them. Under the intention, there are solver networks and clearing layers, but they all serve the purpose of more efficient cross-chain asset transfer. In fact, intention, account abstraction, and interoperability protocol are listed as the three basic technologies of chain abstraction.

Alex: I see. Intention is actually a relatively small module under the concept of chain abstraction. Is that right?

Lydia: Yes.

Classification of projects under chain abstraction

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 and how are they connected?

Lydia: I roughly divide them 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 ToC application explored by chain abstraction and various scenarios that we have repeatedly talked about, such as UniversalX with chain abstraction and transactions. The account layer, which I just mentioned, provides users with a unified identity and a unified balance across multiple chains. Representatives include 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 builds a unified liquidity and unified Gas system, which will be open to external developers in the future. Below 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 familiar cross-chain communication protocols, such as Wormhole and Axelar, which promote communication between different blockchains. The overall presentation relationship is that these five layers support each other layer by layer. The bottom may be the blockchain layer and the cross-chain communication layer, which constitute the underlying protocol. In the middle is the middleware layer and the account layer facing developers, and above is the application layer 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 form more of "I am one or two projects, and most of these five layers are provided by me", or more of the current building block style, where each layer has a specialty project, and finally they can run well when combined together? Which one do you think is the more likely development direction?

Lydia: I think the future will definitely be modular. I had a discussion with a netizen on Twitter before, that is, our industry has two types of liquidity and product architectures, horizontal and vertical. Let's not talk about liquidity first. In terms of 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 believe that the industry will develop in the direction of horizontal modularization.

Dazzling chain abstraction products

Alex: Among so many products or projects related to chain abstraction concepts, from the perspective of a practitioner, what products have impressed you so much? Can you give one or two examples? And in what scenario 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 indeed relatively few. If you want to say that what is truly available is not like the demo or demonstration open to developers, there is actually 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 is there only UniversalX? Because there are some projects that may 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. And this actually fails to achieve the purpose of chain abstraction in our opinion.

Let's talk about UniversalX. The use scenario of UniversalX is very direct, that is, on-chain transactions. All my on-chain transactions are now completed through UniversalX. And I communicated with many users, and everyone generally gave feedback that this product is very smooth and easy to use. You may not go back to the original manual cross-chain era after using it. Its entire product design actually aggregates our understanding of the next generation of on-chain trading platforms. 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 licensed and traded, the liquidity experience is infinitely aligned with Cex, and it must be mobile-first. This basically aggregates our foresight of the next generation of trading products.

Alex: I see. You invited me to use UniversalX before, and I also opened it 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 license-free and non-custodial. But according to the product logic you mentioned earlier, there should be a Universal Accounts under UniversalX, which will control the accounts on all the chains it supports. So how do you achieve that in the case of no custody, the official opens an Account for you, and then the Account can control the accounts of multiple chains, but you define it as no custody, how do you achieve this? Compared with the general EOA account, is its no custody nature and level the same?

Lydia: The account it opens for you is not an EOA address, that is, it does not set up 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 signed and controlled by your EOA. That is, every transfer transaction between AA addresses is controlled by your own EOA wallet. And we are completely unrelated to the EOA wallet, and we do not touch your private key throughout the process.

Alex: Understood. So this EOA wallet refers to this 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 yourself. Universal Accounts is our abbreviation for the entire system. It includes not only the AA addresses deployed on each chain, but also a unified liquidity and unified Gas system in the middle. For users, their understanding of their Universal Accounts after the release of the Universal Accounts SDK 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 that first, I have an EOA wallet that I use frequently, and I associate this EOA wallet with your Universal Accounts. After the association, I can initiate a signed transaction through my EOA wallet and mobilize all my AA wallets without private keys on all chains 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: It can be understood that you use your EOA wallet to call the multi-chain assets in the Universal Accounts system.

Alex: Then the entire Universal Accounts is a permissionless and non-custodial system in your design, 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, the intersection of AI and Crypto, this improvement and chain abstraction for the current improvement of Web3, is the relationship between the two a cooperative relationship or a competitive relationship of different routes?

Lydia: In our definition, we say that chain abstraction is a user experience that can save users from 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, which is a fixed, asynchronous, 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 speed of survival of the fittest and 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 as the king to build a set of duplicate things, and new chains do not need to spend a lot of market budget to obtain or do everything possible to retain TVL in advance, but can focus on more specific businesses such as payment, games, transactions, creator economy, etc. from the beginning. This is conducive to both chains and applications to think about PMF earlier and faster. As for AI, the DeFai solution we see now, even if it can all be implemented, is also concentrated in the very specific link of automated execution. If AI is to execute, you need an identity and account system on the chain. Recently, multi-chain AI like Griffain has started to attract people. It is hard to imagine that your AI will be equipped with a separate wallet transaction system on each chain. So in the end, you will find that AI still cannot do without accounts and chain abstraction, and the problems that chain abstraction needs to solve, in my understanding, can have a much deeper impact on the industry than the current AI, that is, DeFai.

Challenges faced by 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, it is likely 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, and it may even be 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 interacts with each chain 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 solution in the industry?

Lydia: I can't say about other projects. Maybe they have various concerns, such as different views from some route designs of Ethereum. Because Particle is also a recognized leader in chain abstraction, and I have just joined for more than three months, so I will give an example of the actual challenges I encountered in my work after joining, which I think 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 this, 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 people all over the chain now, if you really communicate with them, you will find that most users have very little understanding of the basic knowledge of blockchain. He may not even be able to use a wallet properly. At most, he knows that I can use a robot to charge this and that. Although UniversalX has made its product logic extremely simple, it still requires users to understand the concept of self-custody. Self-custody is the bottom line we insist on. There is something to do just for this. 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 the problem you encountered was a problem with your wallet 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 the 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 emerged in this cycle. Then chain abstraction products, such as UniversalX you just mentioned, are actually similar to them to a certain extent, at least they are all trading scenarios. How to understand this gap in user growth?

Lydia: Whether it is Moonshot or TG Bot, especially TG Bot, the whole thing is still 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. Just like TG Bot, it is only a matter of time, 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. However, 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 was not to do this from the beginning, because we felt that as time goes by, the issue of security will only be mentioned again and again, and the alarm bell will ring. In the end, users will still find that if there is a product that is no different from TG Bot in terms of execution speed, or even faster, which we have been able to do, and we still have full control over it without custody, then my main money in the future will be placed on this, and this is the product I should focus on in the future.

Prediction of chain abstraction

Alex: 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 once very popular in the Chinese-speaking area a while ago, which have been stolen, and users have also suffered relatively large losses. But it still does not prevent many people from using centralized custody trading products. Of course, it may be that the security risks and lessons generated by this incident are still not enough, which leads to people, especially new users, not paying enough attention to self-custody. So if you are asked to make two or three predictions about the development of chain abstraction in the next one to two years, what might you predict?

Lydia: Saying it is a prediction 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 entrepreneurial teams. The sentence I say most often now may be brainwashing myself and my peers, that is, 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 at present. 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 abstraction way, and will usher in a higher ceiling and embrace greater 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, a typical example is UniversalX. But I have to say that we did not contact any commercial sponsorship this time, and we are simply talking about this matter itself. Because there are indeed 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.