Original author: Kinji Steimetz, Messari analyst

Original translation: Luffy, Foresight News

In my latest Messari report, I extensively explore the development trend of chain abstraction. This tweet will briefly outline the core content of the report.

The cryptocurrency industry has always been obsessed with debating the ultimate development of infrastructure and applications. While these predictions and analyses are often exciting, they overlook a key factor of success: timing. Building or investing with a long-term perspective means betting that the future scenario will unfold exactly as predicted. In short, the ultimate follow means that you are building for future needs rather than current needs.

Chain abstraction has fallen into this 'endgame' narrative:

• Users want a better Cross-Chain Interaction experience (current requirement)
• Users want to aggregate Liquidity (current demand)
• Users want the protocol to decide which chain to use (future requirement)
• Users want the protocol to determine which application to use (future requirement)

The first two points have been explained very thoroughly, so I will focus on the latter two points, and why I believe we are far from reaching the stage where users hope the protocol will decide which chain and application to use. This also aligns with my recent thoughts on the abstraction of blockchain (2-3 years).

Users prefer specific Blockchain

Currently, 90% of Decentralized Finance activities are concentrated on 7 Blockchains, with Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Arbitrum accounting for 75%. This indicates that users have a clear preference for specific Blockchains. This concentration is largely due to the limited deployment of Cross-Chain InteractionTokens: users choose Blockchains based on where the Tokens are available. As Tokens are mostly specific to a chain, there is no need for chain abstraction to determine which chain to use.

To make cross-chain adoption and success possible, we need more Cross-Chain InteractionTokens deployed, enabling solvers to determine which chain provides the best option.

Users prefer specific applications

Although the deployment of a limited Cross-Chain InteractionToken to some extent explains the concentration of on-chain activities, it cannot fully explain the dominant position of certain applications.

The reason for this is that most products in the market are very similar, and the options for on-chain operations are limited.

Users typically choose the largest protocol. Unless we see more diverse and differentiated applications, users have no reason to outsource their decisions to protocols. If this diversity increases, users may need to do more research to find the right applications.

Chainabstraction's Recent Outlook

In my opinion, there may be several possible development directions for chain abstraction in the next two to three years:

1、Cross-Chain Interaction bridges and Cross-Chain Interaction message delivery

With more and more applications integrating Cross-Chain Interaction messaging, the rise of Cross-Chain Interaction bridges will slow down, and the demand for users to transfer assets between chains will also decrease.

2. Intent-based applications

Intent-based applications can still function normally as long as the service prices are competitive. Due to limited application diversity, solvers will compete more on speed and price rather than handling complex multi-protocol operations. Users already know which applications they want, so application decisions do not require solvers.

3. Message delivery becomes a commodity

Due to the relatively small number of major ecosystems, inter-chain messaging protocols may become commoditized, leading to competition in terms of price and security, which limits their ability to establish strong network effects.