Omni Network: Pioneering the Future of Chain Abstraction

This guest post is by Chase Devens, who does marketing at Omni Network

App-specific rollups from the largest brands in crypto are here. Worldchain and Zora are live while Unichain, Soneium, and Abstract are all under development. This shift reflects a broader trend in the crypto space, with more apps launching their own L2s to gain greater control over the blockchain stack, introduce new products, or capture more value. While L2s are capturing an increasing share of transaction volumes and total value locked (TVL), they are also fragmenting users and liquidity across multiple blockchain ecosystems.

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Fragmentation poses an existential threat to Ethereum. As L2 adoption grows, both user and developer experiences suffer. Users must manually bridge assets across chains to access different apps, while developers face difficult trade-offs when choosing where to deploy their applications. If Ethereum is to become as accessible as the modern internet, we must overcome fragmentation.

Solving Fragmentation with Chain Abstraction

Chain abstraction offers a practical way to address fragmentation, aiming to simplify the multichain landscape for both users and developers. Historically, projects in this space have pursued three main approaches:

1. Shared Sequencers and Rollup Clusters
   Protocols like Optimism's Superchain, Polygon's Agglayer, and Espresso aim to connect networks through shared infrastructure, enabling composability for applications built on their platforms. However, this requires rollups and L1s to give up some control – sometimes to a competitor – and still limits applications to siloed ecosystems. Users also must still bridge assets to interact across different clusters.

2. Interoperability Protocols
   Another approach focuses on integrating interoperability protocols to link application instances across networks. Despite their promise, cross-chain applications face adoption challenges from developers due to the added complexity, risks, and development time involved.

3. Universal Account Protocols
   This user-centric approach provides a single account that manages user accounts across connected networks, with the protocol handling gas conversions and bridging behind the scenes. Protocols like Particle Network and OneBalance follow this model, but they require users to upgrade to a new wallet format, which may hinder adoption.

Each approach has its own trade-offs, highlighting the need for a solution that simplifies the experience for both users and developers while fitting seamlessly into existing workflows.

Omni Network: a New Approach to Chain Abstraction

Omni offers a practical approach to achieving the vision of chain abstraction, with a design that improves upon existing approaches at the user, network, and developer levels.

From a user’s perspective, Omni makes it possible to access an application on one rollup instantly, even if their funds are on another. It’s fully compatible with existing wallet providers, so users don’t need to download new software, upgrade their wallets, or change how they use their accounts. It just works.

At the network level, rollups don’t need to opt into Omni’s architecture for it to work. Any application, on any network, can be supported by Omni.

For developers, Omni allows applications to tap into users and liquidity across all supported networks with just a simple frontend upgrade, eliminating the need to modify smart contracts. This reduces the need for audits and significantly accelerates time to market.

Before diving into the technical architecture of how this is achieved, here is a video demonstrating how an application powered by Omni looks in practice:

This approach eliminates the need for users to:

• Switch networks within their wallet

• Wait for messages to be passed between rollups

• Ensure they have tokens to cover gas fees on the destination rollup

• Leave the application’s website to use a bridging protocol for moving funds

These are the main obstacles that prevent Ethereum from offering a seamless, unified experience for users. If widely adopted, this solution could allow Ethereum to rival the "monolithic" user experience of Solana, but with the added benefits of higher throughput and lower fees made possible by rollups. Now let’s dive into how Omni makes all of this possible behind the scenes.

Omni’s Technical Architecture

The Omni Network is a blockchain specifically designed to enable interoperability across the Ethereum rollup ecosystem. Unlike other interoperability networks like LayerZero and Wormhole, Omni features a solver coordination protocol that allows experienced market participants—such as market makers—to front capital for users whose funds are on a different rollup than the one hosting the application.

To end users, using applications powered by Omni feels almost instantaneous. This is because Omni uses a "pull" model, unlike competitors that rely on a "push" model, where messages move from rollup A to rollup B, taking up to 10 seconds. In Omni’s approach, solvers immediately provide liquidity on rollup B, enabling users to achieve their desired outcome without delay. This shifts the responsibility for managing cross-chain delays to solvers, ensuring a seamless user experience.

When a user submits a transaction, they are actually depositing funds into an escrow contract on the origin rollup. The escrow contract releases the funds only after receiving a cross-rollup message that confirms a designated solver has fulfilled the user's intent. To the user, it simply feels like a direct deposit into the desired application. This architecture removes the complexities typically associated with cross-rollup interactions.

Rebundling a Modular Ethereum

Omni’s approach holds great potential for the Ethereum ecosystem, especially in the face of growing competition from Solana. While the modular design movement, led by Celestia, has "unbundled" the crypto infrastructure stack, networks like Omni are now beginning to "rebundle" these modular components into a more cohesive and vastly improved user experience. Chain abstraction, though still a relatively new concept, is just starting to show its possibilities. It’s becoming clear that while rollups are a key part of the scaling solution, networks like Omni are the missing infrastructure Ethereum needs to stay competitive with Solana in the long run.

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