We’ve seen a lot of growth in what I like to call the open web in 2023, despite the sluggish market for much of the year. Zero-knowledge (ZK) technology made great strides, the layer 2 and rollup-driven stack took hold, and new primitives were launched that attracted a lot of attention.
This post is part of CoinDesk “Crypto2024” predictions package. Illia Polosukhin is the CEO of the NEAR Foundation.
These trends all laid the foundation for what will be the most important evolution for Web3 in 2024: chain abstraction.
The crypto industry is entering an era of chain abstraction, where blockchains and other infrastructure will become increasingly invisible to users and, to some extent, developers.
Also see: The barrier to mainstream crypto adoption is not UX | Opinion
Developers care about distribution, access to users and liquidity and speed of launch, but also the security and reliability of the infrastructure they use. Ultimately, most end users (at least those using applications with mainstream potential) don’t care about the infrastructure an app is built on.
Users just want to get value and great experiences, quickly, easily and ideally for free. Hardly anyone thinks or cares whether a web page runs on Google, Amazon or something else, we just want it to work.
Zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) introduces a fundamentally new approach to ledger security. Instead of having to rely on a decentralized set of validators, developments in ZK cryptography now allow even a single computer to prove that the rules were followed with a simple proof.
This means the difference between building on a shared chain with billions of dollars to secure it (or spending enormous resources to launch a new one) and setting up a single server. In other words, security doesn’t have to be the deciding factor for developers when choosing infrastructure; Recent developments allow transactions and value from one chain to move to another (with some technical caveats).
This increasingly uniform security across networks has major implications for app builders, as it changes the set of decisions they make when deciding where to build. If you can prove what you did with a ZK certificate, it matters less where you built it. Unifying security also means the ability to tap into liquidity from any network and at any layer.
For both users and developers, the defragmentation of liquidity and security will lead to greater flexibility. Likewise, removing the burden of these choices from users makes the open web more like today’s internet, a single-platform experience where you can easily move from app to app without having to manage dozens of wallets and accounts .
The other major key to smoothing the user experience is account aggregation, or eliminating the need to manage accounts for each L1 and L2, which are increasingly becoming silos for apps and communities. For example, NEAR is working on multichain, non-custodial accounts that enable cross-chain transactions.
Developers should generally maintain the idea of account. abstraction in mind, to provide a unified experience across all Web3 apps.
Also see: Ethereum upgrade can make it harder to lose all your crypto
Combined with decentralized front ends, which provide developers with a new programmable environment for building apps that span blockchains and keep the blockchain details hidden from users, this is a powerful new paradigm to unlock a new era of smoother user experiences, better than what is available on Web2.
NEAR is not alone in believing that a unified, cross-chain ecosystem is possible. We are also working with Eigen Labs on a fast finality layer for Ethereum rollups, and working with Polygon on a zkWASM prover and other initiatives. We clearly see that adoption of the open web starts at users’ access points to Web3.
Chain abstraction means the end of maximalism. Of course technology matters and many of us in Web3 care about the many innovations and choices that differentiate our different approaches. But most people care about experiences and products, not infrastructure.
As crypto marches towards the mainstream, there will be many blockchains, rollups and various infrastructure providers running any number and type of applications – but hopefully users won’t need to manage or even know about the technical layers.
The open web will be a better web, so let’s focus on delivering better experiences to users rather than the cult thinking surrounding a specific blockchain.