In the current blockchain ecosystem, the rise of the modular paradigm has brought significant advantages to both developers and users. However, this modular approach has also introduced new challenges, particularly in cross-chain interoperability, liquidity fragmentation, and user experience complexity. As the first modular Layer 2 solution, Mantle not only leverages the benefits of modularity but also deeply contemplates these emerging challenges. Through its innovative Chain Abstraction (ChA) design, Mantle is actively working to address these challenges by building a seamless cross-chain and multi-chain user experience.

Challenges in Modular Architecture

Systemic Friction from Component Proliferation

A prominent challenge in the modular ecosystem stems from the systemic friction caused by the rapid proliferation of foundational components. Different components (including various sequencer solutions, bridge protocols, and cross-chain communication mechanisms) typically operate independently, implementing their own governance mechanisms and tokenomics models, often with distinct native tokens. This decentralization trend has led to ecosystem fragmentation, creating additional burden for users who must maintain various tokens across multiple blockchain networks for transaction fees and cross-chain interactions. Meanwhile, developers face heightened challenges, requiring significant resources to ensure seamless interoperability between these components, further increasing the overall ecosystem complexity.

Ecosystem Fragmentation From Deployment Costs Reduction

Rapid advances in blockchain technology have significantly lowered the barriers to deploying independent chains, encouraging more projects to build their own chains or Rollups. However, this trend has led to severe fragmentation of assets and states, making it difficult for users to obtain a global view of their cross-chain assets on a single network.

• Asset and State Fragmentation

Users' assets and states are dispersed across multiple ecosystems, creating a fragmented digital asset landscape. For instance, a single user might hold ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum mainnet while participating in various DeFi protocols on different Rollups. This dispersion prevents users from obtaining a unified asset view, forcing them to frequently switch between platforms to understand their complete asset position.

• The Liquidity Fragmentation Challenge

Liquidity fragmentation has emerged as the most prominent challenge in the modular blockchain ecosystem. Abundant liquidity is crucial for DeFi applications like decentralized exchanges (DEX) and lending protocols, capable of creating a positive feedback loop.

This feedback mechanism manifests in several ways:

1. Trust Building Through Liquidity: Sufficient liquidity enhances user trust in DeFi protocols. For DEXs, deep liquidity pools reduce slippage and optimize pricing; for lending protocols, adequate liquidity better matches lending demands and reduces liquidation risks.

2. Enhanced User Experience: High-liquidity DEXs offer more competitive trading prices, protecting users from excessive slippage or fees. In lending protocols, abundant liquidity ensures quick access to financing and more flexible lending terms.

3. Positive Participation Loop: Superior trading experiences and secure lending environments encourage increased user participation, further enhancing protocol liquidity in a virtuous cycle.

4. Capital Attraction Effect: Robust liquidity attracts more investors and liquidity providers, expanding liquidity pools and enhancing overall protocol utility.

However, liquidity in the current cross-chain ecosystem remains fragmented, with different chains unable to effectively share liquidity resources. This not only reduces capital efficiency but also increases the costs and complexity of cross-chain asset transfers for users.

The Absence of Cross-Rollup Protocol Standards

In the current blockchain ecosystem, there is a notable absence of unified standards governing cross-Rollup protocols (In our previous articles, we attempted to discuss how to build a unified cross-Collup design). The fragmentation of cross-chain liquidity not only increases capital utilization costs but also forces users and protocol developers to rely on complex bridging solutions for cross-chain operations. These bridge protocols introduce significant security vulnerabilities and often become prime targets for malicious attacks. When bridge protocols are compromised, users' cross-chain assets face substantial risk of loss.

Recent years have witnessed multiple bridge protocol attacks, from Ronin to Wormhole, leading to growing user skepticism towards bridge-dependent solutions. While the industry has previously explored standardization designs and implementation possibilities for Cross-Rollup protocols, this protocol-level standardization process still requires considerable time for development and maturation.

In light of these challenges, Mantle has chosen to address the fragmentation issues in the current modular ecosystem from an application-layer perspective, introducing an innovative Chain Abstraction mechanism as a practical solution.

The Necessity of Chain Abstraction

The Essence of Chain Abstraction

Chain Abstraction (ChA), as a deep extension of modular thinking, aims to encapsulate the technical complexity of underlying blockchains, enabling seamless user interaction with multi-chain ecosystems. Through ChA, users are freed from understanding technical details such as transaction processing chains or fee payment methods. This abstraction design delivers a truly chain-agnostic experience, fundamentally simplifying operations and enhancing the entire ecosystem's usability.

The Significance of Intent Mechanism

• Definition and Role of Intent

"Intent" serves as a core element within the Chain Abstraction framework, transforming user objectives into executable instructions. Drawing from Anoma's definition, intent essentially represents a combination of user constraints and preferences. Under this mechanism, users need only express their ultimate goals, while the system automatically selects optimal execution paths without requiring users to understand implementation details.

• Technical Principles of Intent System

The intent system's design philosophy aligns closely with Rollup's core concept, employing an "off-chain execution, on-chain verification" model. This architecture enables the system to rapidly process user intents and compute optimal solutions in off-chain environments, while maintaining security and transparency through essential on-chain verification.

• User Experience Benefits

The intent system significantly enhances user experience by providing faster execution speeds and optimized pricing solutions. Users no longer need to focus on complex execution details, instead enjoying a more fluid and efficient blockchain interaction experience through simplified operational procedures and reduced cognitive burden.

Mantle's Vision for Chain Abstraction System

Mantle is committed to building a blockchain ecosystem that prioritizes user experience. In our envisioned future, users will need only one wallet and balance to operate seamlessly across any blockchain. This development path mirrors the evolution of decentralized exchanges (DEX) - from single DEX to DEX aggregators, and then to aggregator aggregation, with liquidity integration remaining the central theme. Through chain abstraction design, Mantle aims to resolve cross-chain liquidity fragmentation and achieve true liquidity unification.

Mantle's Chain Abstraction Design Philosophy

• ERC-7683 Standard Compatibility

Mantle plans to fully comply with the latest ERC-7683 cross-chain intent standard. Basically, ERC-7683 is a proposal aimed at standardizing cross-chain intents by providing a unified interface for cross-chain value transfer systems. By defining common order structures CrossChainOrder and settlement smart contract interfaces, ERC-7683 enables interoperability between different intent protocols and solvers.

We implemented the CrossChainOrder structure as follows:

We specify the origin chain ID and settlement contract address, which serve as guarantees for the submitter to complete transaction confirmation. The swapper is the user address initiating the intent transaction. To ensure the security of intent transactions, we set different deadlines and use nonces to prevent replay attacks, ensuring expired transactions become invalid. Finally, in the orderData, we configure the specific manifestation of user intent (such as destination chain and specified tokens to receive).

• Liquidity Integration Solution

Mantle innovatively designed a pluggable liquidity registry mechanism, achieving unified integration of on-chain and off-chain liquidity. This mechanism is open to all liquidity providers, including decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, and other liquidity providers, collectively building a cross-chain liquidity pool. This design not only improves liquidity utilization efficiency but also ensures users access optimal liquidity support on any chain.

• Overall Design

In Mantle, we introduced an off-chain module called "submitter" that acts as a contract caller between origin and destination chains in a multi-chain environment. When using the Mantle ChA system, users need to authorize certain assets to the Permit2 contract. After a user constructs a ERC7683-based transaction, the Mantle ChA system returns multiple solutions that meet the user's intent. Users can then select their preferred path based on their requirements (either lowest cost or fastest speed). The submitter constructs corresponding transactions on both the origin and destination chain sides, helping users complete their intended transactions.

Future Development Directions

Solver Module Innovation

Mantle's chain abstraction design innovatively introduces off-chain Solver modules, supporting both self-contained liquidity or pure routing solutions. This module functions like a shared mempool, achieving chain-agnostic transactions and atomicity. The Solver design enables Mantle to effectively aggregate cross-chain liquidity and provide optimal execution paths for users. Increased off-chain operations reduce user fees and significantly minimize MEV issues.

Rebalance Strategy Optimization

In blockchain and DeFi ecosystems, Rebalance serves as a crucial tool for asset management and system maintenance, essential for maintaining asset allocation, risk control, and yield optimization. Considering liquidity providers' asset allocation preferences, preventing unidirectional loss of preferred assets becomes a critical issue. Mantle is designing a multi-block internal matching system aimed at reducing unnecessary on-chain interactions and asset transfers. This innovation will not only lower user transaction costs but also significantly reduce liquidity providers' rebalancing needs.

Conclusion

Chain abstraction technology represents a pivotal direction in blockchain development. It not only effectively addresses the fragmentation issues in modular ecosystems but also creates a streamlined and efficient interaction experience for users and developers. Through comprehensive initiatives—including ERC-7683 standard compatibility, innovative off-chain Solver modules, and the construction of pluggable liquidity registry mechanisms—Mantle is systematically building a seamless, chain-agnostic blockchain ecosystem.

As chain abstraction systems mature, cross-chain operations will achieve unprecedented levels of security and fluidity, significantly enhancing user experience. As a pioneer in industry transformation, Mantle is committed to driving blockchain technology into a new era, charting a new course for the entire industry's development.