Blockchain technology
When renowned Danish technology consultant Jakob Nielsen published “The 10 Second Rule,” a suggested window for how long web developers have to keep users focused on a specific task, the internet was still in its infancy. Similar to a child’s capabilities, it wasn’t particularly good at doing anything.
During this era, the web suffered from simple visual design due to a lack of tools and resources, limited technology and bandwidth, rudimentary programming languages like early HTML and CSS, and a lack of standardized protocols and APIs. This limitation led to a fragmented and often unpleasant user experience, making it challenging for newcomers to navigate early websites.
Three decades later, web3 is experiencing similar growing pains. Although rapidly advancing, it remains in its early stages as a user and developer-friendly technology. Like web1, today’s web3 users face challenges navigating a growing maze of different chains. This adds an unwanted level of stress and complexity to growing sectors like DeFi, where users must manage segregated balances, handle multiple gas tokens and complex fee calculations, and navigate wallets for simple tasks.
Just as the proliferation of open standards, cross-browser compatibility, and the standardization of protocols and technologies eventually unified the early web, a similar evolution is necessary for web3 to provide a more seamless and integrated user experience.
Enter omnichain infrastructure: a future for web3 that prioritizes both user and developer experience.
What is omnichain infrastructure?
Omnichain infrastructure is an approach for web3 development that connects blockchain networks into a cohesive and interoperable ecosystem. For users and developers, omnichain infrastructure offers an integrated and streamlined approach that builds on the concept of interoperability, which is the ability of different blockchain networks to communicate and share information with each other. Together, these two design elements make it easy for web3 users to bring their data (often meaning onchain assets) outside of the original system to different chains and their applications.
How does omnichain infrastructure work?
While omnichain infrastructure simplifies web3 interoperability and user experience, it relies on some of blockchain’s most powerful tools working seamlessly in the background. Some of the key features of omnichain infrastructure include:
- Seamless Cross-Chain Transactions: Developers can define and settle transactions across multiple blockchains, enhancing the efficiency and security of user interactions. This feature allows people to interact with multiple dApps across multiple chains without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
- Secure and Efficient Verifications: By integrating advanced technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proofs and state-of-the-art consensus mechanisms, omnichain infrastructure can ensure high performance, enhanced security, and cost efficiency.
- Simplified User Experience: By leveraging the Secp256r1 curve, a cryptography tool and web3 standard used for generating digital certificates and public-private key pairs, users can log in to web3 wallets without using private keys. This feature merges the potential of Account Abstracted wallets (sometimes called smart contract wallets) with passkey authentication to help users get omnichain in one simple, secure click.
- Developer Flexibility: Omnichain infrastructure promotes seamless compatibility across different computation engines, like Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which is tasked with compiling and executing smart contracts. Stronger compatibility makes it easier for developers to seamlessly deploy and interact with smart contracts from different chains.
What are some use cases of omnichain infrastructure?
True to the ethos of interoperability, omnichain infrastructure enables developers to create cross-chain applications that offer more opportunities to users who want to get the most out of different products and ecosystems. Think of it like the key to unlocking a multichain app store.
- Balance Abstraction with Yield: Omnichain infrastructure can consolidate a user’s balances across chains, ensuring cross-chain transaction settlements and verification onchain. This feature enables users to maximize returns without the complexity of navigating different ecosystems.
- Intent-Based Transactions: By offering a customized approach to onchain actions, omnichain infrastructure frameworks simplify infrastructure-level transactions between chains. This feature enables developers to facilitate intent-based transactions across blockchain — i.e., buying ETH on any chain, at a specific price, with minimal slippage (the difference between the expected price of a cryptocurrency trade and the actual price at which the order is executed).
- Gas Abstraction: No web3 user today wants to deal with paying gas, especially when it requires juggling multiple gas tokens. Omnichain infrastructure can simplify the user experience by allowing transaction batching and gas sponsorships, eliminating the need for users to bridge tokens between chains to complete multi-chain transactions.
It’s time for web3 to enter its omnichain era
Thirty years after his recommendation to web developers, Jakob Nielsen, often called “The Guru of Web Page Usability,” would likely advocate for a more interconnected, user-friendly future for web3. Similar to how many viewed the early Internet as strange and difficult to use, web3 today suffers from a lack of usability and cohesion that decades ago made it difficult for developers to keep people engaged online.
If we want to fulfill the mass adoption vision for web3, change is required on the infrastructure level, which can simplify the first environments and products new users encounter when heading onchain for the first time.
With omnichain, everything else will align seamlessly, enabling web3 to fully mature and thrive.