Exclusive interview with Particle Network: Chain abstraction is an inevitable product of the background of chain explosion. We are committed to solving the ultimate problem of Web3 UX

Reporter: Xiaobai Navigation Coderworld

Interviewee: Pengyu, CEO of Particle Network

introduction

On June 20, Particle Network officially announced the completion of a $15 million Series A financing round, led by Spartan Group and Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from SevenX Ventures, Morningstar Ventures, Flow Traders, HashKey Capital and other companies.

Currently, Particle Network is still in the first phase of the testnet, and it is said that about 1.3 million Universal Accounts have been registered. The second phase of its testnet is expected to be launched this week.The main network is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter of this year.

Different from the previous round, we found that this time, Particle Network seems to pay more attention to "Chain Abstraction” Description of positioning. Compared with two years ago,walletFor Particle, which started with abstraction, “chain abstraction” is like a new leap. Not long ago, Particle Network also launched People's LaunchpadAnd other new products.

With curiosity about the latest narrative of Particle and the logic and thinking behind the different products launched by the team over the past few years. In this issue, we will have an in-depth discussion with Particle Network CEO Pengyu. From the inside out,Understand the Particle Network team's own thinking on narrative, industry, and its own products and business logic.

Main points

• Since its inception, Particle's mission has always been to empower developers and solve the ultimate problem of Web3 UX. Our products are divided into:walletAbstraction, account abstraction, and chain abstraction.

• The user experience at different interaction layers is multiplication rather than addition, and UX problems in any link will have a global impact.

• The underlying logic of our product is:Horizontal full-chain ecology, vertical full life cycle, and has three product lines internally:Main channel products, growth product lines, and operational product lines.

• We are essentially acryptocurrency项目，而不是一个互联网公司，我们理解经营一个加密货币项目从来都不是只向某个单一群体做标准化的业务。

• We design from the perspective of the entire life cycle of users and developers, and technically each stage fully utilizes the technological accumulation brought by the products of the previous stage.

• Chain abstraction is not fabricated, but an inevitable product in the context of chain explosion.

• Our chain is positioned as a supporter, coordinator, and enabler, not a new chain that competes with other chains.Does not compete with other chains from the perspective of TVL or developers, nor does it exacerbate the fragmentation problem of user mobility.

• A good token is a meme with utility.

• The claim that the customer acquisition cost of Crypto projects is much lower than that of mobile Internet is incorrect, because forward debts also have costs, unless you default on paying them back.

• The entire Web3 technology evolution process is a continuous cycle of long-term unity and division. L2 The rise of blockchain and the popularity of modularization, the core of the long-term integration is chain abstraction.

• I think the problem with current infrastructure is not that there are too many of them, but that the overall penetration rate is too low; the problem with applications is not that there are too few of them, but that the direction is wrong.

Thinking behind it: Accumulate technical advantages and continuously iterate along the entire life cycle of users and developers

小白导航 coderworld：首先恭喜你们完成了新一轮融资，我发现你们这一轮融资貌似很注重“链抽象”这个方向，我们也有关注到很多的链抽象相关的报告都会覆盖 Particle 做研究和对比，但我们对你们印象深刻的更多的是作为一个钱包基础设施项目，能简单讲讲你们是怎么从钱包基础设施项目进入到链抽象领域的吗？

Pengyu：Particle's mission since its inception has always been to empower developers and solve Web3 UX problems. The product has three stages:Wallet abstraction, account abstraction, and chain abstraction.

• Wallet abstract: Reduce friction for users to enter the chain by providing developers with social login and wallet suites;

• Account Abstraction: Upgrade the underlying structure of users’ accounts on the chain to improve the efficiency of interaction with the chain;

• Chain Abstraction：Reduce the fragmented experience of accounts and liquidity caused by the multi-chain ecosystem.

They correspond to the entire life cycle of developers and users respectively: UX issues of entering the chain - single-chain interaction - multi-chain interaction.

Our understanding of UX optimization isUX optimization throughout the entire life cycle is meaningfulThe user experience at different interaction layers is multiplication rather than addition, and UX problems in any link will have a global impact.

Coderworld: The second question may be relatively direct. As you mentioned just now, you have actually gone through several product iterations. At the same time, you have launched People's Alliance and People's Launchpad, and the BTC ecosystem seems to be very popular. From an outsider's perspective, you may feel that you are not focused and are suspected of being driven by popularity. Can you share the underlying logic of your various products?

Pengyu: The underlying logic of our product is:Horizontal full-chain ecology, vertical full life cycle.

It’s not because we are not focused and are one-sidedly pursuing bigness and perfection, but because we are solving UX-related problems, which must be considered globally.

From the perspective of industry development,The trend of multi-chain and cross-chain is irreversibleUsers will have accounts and liquidity in different ecosystems. How to make the user experience unified and efficient across various chain ecosystems throughout the entire life cycle is the ultimate problem of Web3 UX.

To give an inaccurate example, in the Internet age, you can't say that accessing Japanese websites is fast, but accessing American websites is slow, right? At the same time, you can't let you play a game and register an account smoothly, but get stuck when recharging.

Based on this idea, let's go back to your question. We have three product lines internally:Main channel products, growth product lines, and operational product lines.

The main product line is our core product line, which is aimed at developers. From a product perspective, there are three stages that I mentioned in the previous question.

The growth product line mainly refers to the growth tool products such as People's Launchpad and People's Alliance that you just mentioned.

The operational product line includes our testnet platform Particle Pioneer, etc.

Why do we need to set up growth product lines and operational product lines in addition to the main product lines?

becauseWe are essentially a cryptocurrency project, not an Internet company, we understandRunning a cryptocurrency project is never about doing standardized business to a single group of people.You need to make your customers, investors,Community, the end user is satisfied. So the growth product line is for usCommunity的，通过紧跟市场热点资产，保持社区的兴奋度以及和我们的互动频率。

The operations product line is for our end users. Even though we are an infrastructure for developers, our product solutions are very innovative and unique. The operations product line helps us quickly let the industry know what unique products or features we provide.

As for why operations and growth are not done in an activity- and content-oriented way, this is determined by our team style. We like to solve each problem in a product-driven way and tend to get good results in a standardized + data-based way. Therefore, even in marketing activities, growth, etc., we will launch products that may seem complicated to achieve some of our goals. The result of this may be that it seems that we provide more products.

The popularity of Bitcoin ecology is a result of our strategy of “horizontal full-chain ecology”. We are not only working on Bitcoin ecology, we are also making great progress in Cosmos ecology.

I think the reason why the outside world may feel that we are not focused is because we have done well: each product line has a good reputation and has received a lot of recognition. But what we have not done well is to communicate our overall strategy to the outside world, iterate products, and the underlying logic of launching different product lines. I think today is also a good opportunity to talk about our overall thinking.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: This iterative approach is commercially self-consistent, but will the continuous evolution of your products lead to less support for partners who use your products from the previous stage?

Pengyu: This is a good question. If the iteration of your main channel product has no inheritance relationship in terms of technology, function, and user group, it is easy to cause such problems. But we don’t design product iteration in this way. As I mentioned before, we areDesign from the perspective of the entire life cycle of users and developers, and technically each stage fully utilizes the technical accumulation brought by the product in the previous stage.

I can give you some specific examples. For example, our first-phase wallet abstraction product and the second-phase account abstraction product can be used independently or in combination. Developers can use independent third-party wallets such as MetaMask to drive our account abstraction protocol, or they can use the wallet abstraction (social login + built-in wallet) we provide to drive the account abstraction protocol, which is equivalent to changing the dapp's built-in wallet from an ordinary EOA account to an AA account.

The third phase of our chain abstraction product has three core underlying modules, namely Master Keystore Hub, Decentralized Bundler and Messaging Network.

The Master Keystore Hub and Decentralized Bundler here are derived from the accumulation of account abstraction products in the previous stage. In essence, they are a decentralized and full-chain account abstraction solution. From the actual experience of developers, they feel that we are constantly adding new features for them to use or choose from. In addition to wallet abstraction, they can use account abstraction to upgrade the original account structure to a smart account. Chain abstraction products allow them to simply expand their single account abstraction product to the full chain.

We have been iterating on how to get more support from our partners.Currently, there are more than 1,800 dapps (excluding experimental products from various hackerthons) connected to our various products, of which about 1,000 are still active (DAU greater than 0).Last month, weSDK downloads for developers (various npm packages) have exceeded 500,000 downloads/month and are still growing rapidly.

However, we hope to maintain a small operation and large R&D team structure. In this context, our strategy is layering + automation. We will pay more attention to projects with real traffic and on-chain interactions. For projects that simply increase the number of EOA accounts, we will adopt automated support solutions and no longer have dedicated human support.

Coderworld: I have noticed that you have many partners for these three product lines. It seems that they can get a lot of support as soon as they are launched. They will not face the problems of most Web3 projects in starting or growing. How do you do it? Do you have any special practices?

PengyuThere are several main reasons:

• Although several product lines have been iterating their products, the cooperative groups have not changed:Public chain + dApp, so that we can continue to accumulate cooperative resources.

• We only pursue feasible cooperation and ensure that the trust relationship with our partners is real.We have direct cooperation with nearly 80 public chains, and we will try to implement them from all angles.For example, we have done a large-scale Consumer Crypto hackerthon with Avalanche, and People's Alliance inscription activities with Linea. Near and Sei gave us Grants, Avail and we have cross-airdrop plans, we are about to launch Co-Testnet activities with Berachain and Arbitrum, Citrea and BOB have co-hosted multiple offline conferences, and Merlin has been on our People's Launchpad. Including some independent scene chains, such as Depin-themed Peaq and game-themed Xter.io public chain, their ecological projects almost all adopt our various types of technical solutions.

• We have a systematic internal management mechanism.Ensure that the cooperation can not only be implemented but also be carried out from as many angles as possibleThis mechanism includes a self-built CRM system that suits us. We will regularly review the status of the top cooperation projects to ensure that we catch up with the key projects at a fixed frequency to understand their needs from all angles other than product cooperation.

New narrative: Chain abstraction is an inevitable product of the background of chain explosion, and it is also the direction of evolution we are most excited about.

Xiaobai Navigation Coderworld: The current external positioning of Particle is "The L1 Unifying All Chains Through Universal Accounts", aiming at chain abstraction. We have seen a saying that there are too many abstractions in the industry. Is chain abstraction a fabricated narrative? Why do you think the industry needs a new "abstraction"?

Pengyu：First of all, there will be more and more chains, which will help promote this from the perspective of the cost and benefit of chain issuance. The cost of chain issuance and maintenance has been greatly reduced due to the rise of modular infrastructure such as RaaS and DA and the implementation of EIP-4844.Launching a blockchain has obvious benefits for projects of any background: it adds a simple and efficient way to capture the value of tokens, broadens the boundaries of the project’s product operations, etc..

Currently, there are about 400 chains that can be tracked. It is expected that there may be nearly 1,000 chains by the end of this year, and more than 3,000 chains by the end of 2025. So many chains not only increase the learning threshold for so-called Web2.5 users, but also so-called professional users have already felt the problems brought about by this fragmentation.

Everyone has a similar feeling that their USDT is scattered across many chains, and often because of time-consuming transfer or insufficient gas, a lot of purchasing power is actually sunk.In the context of thousands of chains, providing end users and developers with a unified interaction and development environment requires a solution..

I think the key to judging whether a narrative is fabricated is to see whether it is solving a specific problem, how high the ceiling is for solving this problem, and whether there is a feasible solution to actually solve this problem. Chain abstraction is not fabricated, but an inevitable product of the background of chain explosion.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: There are many other narratives in the industry, with both ceilings and actual product launches. Why did you choose chain abstraction as the direction of evolution instead of AI Or Depin, etc.?

Pengyu：Narrative is undoubtedly one of the most important tasks of Web3 projects. Because narrative is essentially a mixture of product evolution direction, technology delivery route and valuation system of investor community. Especially in the current industry where there is no standardized value discovery path (such as traditional PE multiples and other indicators), narrative = pricing range. But the biggest challenge here is to choose a narrative direction suitable for Particle.

I understandNarrative directions can be roughly divided into: mature narrative, open-card narrative, aristocratic narrative, pioneering narrative, etc..For example:

• Mature narratives are similar to oracles, cross-chain bridges, etc.

• The obvious narrative is the new and widely accepted one, such as the AI or DePin et al.;

• The Aristocracy narrative is the so-called narrative that is most closely aligned with the Ethereum Foundation, such as ZK, privacy, reputation, etc.

Both have advantages and disadvantages. For example, the advantage of the open-card narrative is that there is no need to educate the track, but proving that you are the leader is the most difficult. The aristocratic narrative is that someone will definitely pay for it, but it is more difficult to get on the table (it requires a high level of team origin and background), and the delivery of products and traction are uncertain. The challenge of the pioneer narrative is that the narrative may be falsified very quickly.

The direction we want is to be able to deliver products, create traction, and make good use of our products, users, and technological accumulation.

All things considered, chain abstraction is the evolution direction we are most excited about.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: In terms of the chain abstraction track itself, there are also some other projects working on it, such as Near, Polygon, Everclear (formerly Connext), etc. Is there any difference in the entry point of Particle's chain abstraction solution? What are your unique advantages?

Pengyu：From the perspective of entry point. Particle is from the perspective of universal account, Near is from the perspective of decentralized signature calculation, and Polygon is for those built on CDK. L2 Providing a bridge for shared liquidity, Everclear approaches the issue from the perspective of transaction settlement.

The most unique advantage of Particle's chain abstraction solution from a product perspective is:

1. There is no migration cost for users and developers, which increases the speed of solution adoption.

2. Our solution has a Decentralized Bundler network at the bottom, which can package multiple UserOps into one transaction execution, saving the gas cost of complex multi-chain and multi-step operations.

From a business perspective, our biggest advantage is that all the users and developers we have accumulated in wallet abstraction and account abstraction products can be seamlessly migrated to our chain abstraction foundation.Xiaobai NavigationIn a sense, we have already accumulated users and liquidity for our own chain abstraction solution before it is officially launched.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: The underlying concept of your chain abstraction solution is "designing a new chain". Doesn't this go against the original intention of chain abstraction, which is to "solve the problem of too many chains"?

Pengyu: Our chain is positioned as a supporter, coordinator, and enabler, not a new chain that competes with other chains..

When designing our chain abstraction solution at the bottom level, we mainly focus onSafetyThe overall evaluation shows that it is most appropriate to use an independent Layer-1 to carry the network.

When a user initiates any transaction through our Universal Account, from the perspective of the value chain, we do not reduce the on-chain Gas consumption of other chains. All chain abstract transactions are sent to our chain first, and then we coordinate the external chain to perform the corresponding operations, shielding the user's perception of multi-chain and cross-chain interactions. However, users do not need to cross-chain their assets to our chain in advance. Layer-1,therefore, weIt does not compete with other chains from the perspective of TVL or developers, nor does it exacerbate the fragmentation of user liquidity..

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: Particle's product delivery capabilities have always been strong, but from a commercial perspective, how can this chain abstraction solution achieve a commercial closed loop and maintain sustainable operations in the future?

Pengyu：We understand that the only business models that have been proven to be scalable in the entire Web3 industry are the native Gas Token of the public chain and the commission on on-chain or off-chain transactions.

The bottom layer of our entire chain abstraction solution is a Layer-1 based on the Cosmos SDK. Any transaction initiated by the user based on the Universal Account provided by this chain (complex cross-chain transactions, or transactions involving only a certain chain) will first send a transaction packaged with the user's UserOps to our chain. The Particle L1 node disassembles, executes, and coordinates the corresponding operations.

Therefore, any transaction on the Universal Account will indirectly or directly consume our L1 tokens. This is a natural and continuous way to capture value.

Token and the future: The issuance of Token will bring help from multiple angles. I hope Particle can become a lubricant for the entire industry.

Xiaobai Navigator Coderworld: Now let’s move on to the topic of Tokens, which is of most concern to users. Many users are looking forward to Particle’s design of Tokens. Could you first tell us in one sentence how you define a good Token?

Pengyu:I thinkA good token is a meme with utilityThe most representative one among them may be SOL.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: For you, why is it necessary to issue tokens? What is the significance and how can it promote the development of the project?

Pengyu: We understand that tokens have several functions:Starter, Booster, Filter, Revenue Generator.

• LauncherIn the early stage of the project, you can use token-related incentives to cold start and gain some users or community supporters who recognize the concept and direction. But a popular saying before was that the customer acquisition cost of Crypto projects is much lower than that of mobile Internet. This is definitely wrong, because long-term debts also have costs, unless you default on not paying it back, or you think that the token will not have liquidity or value. Therefore, using tokens for starters in the earliest stage also requires very sophisticated design.

• BoosterIn fact, it is about how to bind interests with core ecological partners when reaching a certain scale, such as the recent cooperation between zkSync and Lens.

• FiltersThis is because there is a cost to purchase and hold tokens. By gradually increasing this cost, long-term supporters can be screened out reversely. However, the biggest challenge here is how the project party can make long-term supporters have excess returns, otherwise the long-term supporters will be PUA instead.

• Sustainable Income GeneratorIf there is a Token-Centric business model, it is actually exchanging business growth for profits, but it is manifested in the healthy growth of Token liquidity and price.

In general, we think that if the token can help the project from the above four perspectives at the same time, it is worth launching.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: Let me ask a pointed question. Some teams just lay flat after issuing tokens. What do you think about this issue?

Pengyu: There are actually two types of lying flat, active lying flat and passive lying flat.

Many Web3 teams actually want to continue working after issuing tokens, but they don’t get much recognition in the business later becausePassive lying downThere could be several reasons:

• Technical design is separated from engineering practice and cannot be delivered.

• The product has no PMF and no one can use it.

• Tokens have no ability to capture value, so there is little point in continuing to do business.

andThe essence of actively lying flat is that the team believes that the development potential of the current project is limitedNo one will refuse to continue to pursue wealth returns. The reason behind choosing to lie flat is that the team believes that investing personal energy and wealth in other assets has more potential, while the expected returns from continuing to invest in existing projects are not high.

Back to ourselves,We don’t have the challenge of lying down passively. From the very beginning of designing each of our products, we consider who the product is suitable for and how to ensure that the technology is leading while being delivered in a reasonable time.Our Token, as a native Gas Token of a public chain, is also one of the few proven ways to capture value on a large scale.

More challenges come from how to continuously open the ceiling of the particle itself.The entire Web3 technology evolution process is a continuous cycle of unity and division..

合久必分的标志是 L2 的兴起以及模块化的流行，分久必合的核心就是链抽象.

This track occupies a central position in the wave of development of the entire industry. Let alone ideals, from the perspective of efficiency in wealth value creation, we have no reason to slow down.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: Web3 is an industry with extremely fast technological evolution and is widely influenced by open source culture. Are you worried that your major innovations in the field of chain abstraction today will become technological standards tomorrow as the industry develops, thereby losing the technological advancement?

Pengyu: These are actually two questions. Will open source products lose their technological leadership? What are the barriers to Particle Chain abstract infrastructure?

The topic of open source products is very broad, and I can only briefly talk about my understanding. The technological leadership of open source products is contrary to intuition. Generally, open source product companies will continue to lead, while companies that are accustomed to magic changes and forks will lose the motivation to break through because there are too many directly available options. Uniswap is actually a good example. Most on-chain DEXs are optimized based on Uniswap, but we see that innovations such as Uniswap V4 are still one of the driving forces behind the on-chain trading track.

The essence of chain abstraction is to establish an interoperability standard across the entire industry as a coordinator.

Any standard is never achieved simply by relying on product or technology leadership. Instead, it is the penetration rate leadership brought by product leadership at the beginning, the scale effect brought by continuous snowballing, and finally a standard is formed. After the standard is formed, it needs to be iterated in an open manner to be sustainable.

Back to Particle's chain abstraction infrastructure, our current product solutions and delivery time are leading, and we can make good use of our past accumulated user scale. From the initial release, it has a relatively good account scale and liquidity scale, and our solution is based on a completely open + empowering logic. We do not compete for TVL or developers.

Coderworld: As far as I remember, you were founded in May 2022, which was the beginning of the bear market. You experienced the entire bear market. If I ask you to talk about the biggest challenge during this period, what do you think it was?

Pengyu: The biggest challenge lies in the sense of tearing brought about by "balance".

Small teams need to balance doing "big" things：The team size of Web3 projects is not large, but they require many business aspects of traditional giant companies, such as technological innovation, customer acquisition, brand marketing, international expansion, listing management, investor relations, etc.

1 project, 4 roles of balance: For partners, for the community, for investors, forexchangeThe roles and interests of the company are not completely unified. The balance between narrative flexibility and product accumulation, the balance between Asian traffic and Western communities, etc. Overall, it requires both execution and flexibility, as well as utilitarianism and long-termism. This sense of division is the biggest challenge during this period.

Xiaobai Navigation coderworld: What do you think about the future development of the industry? What role do you expect Particle Network to eventually play?

Pengyu：Our ideal Web3 industry is a large-scale consumer industry driven by edge innovation and technology, but the current characteristics of the industry are still a "pseudo" technology industry with financial leverage and relying on attention monetization. "Pseudo" technology industry does not mean that there is no real technological progress, but that there is no standardized value discovery logic for technological innovation.

I thinkThe problem with today’s infrastructure is not that there are too many of them, but that the overall penetration rate is too low; the problem with applications is not that there are too few of them, but that they are not in the right direction..

At this point in time, I cannot judge what the end of the industry will be: perhaps people will redefine the so-called Mass Adoption, no longer pursue content-based, pan-entertainment Consumer Crypto, and return to simply pursuing the efficiency of on-chain asset issuance and transactions; it is also possible that the industry has broken through the difficulties caused by the lack of a standardized business model and created a AI Multiply it by the huge consumer industry at the level of mobile Internet. However, no matter what happens, all industry users still have to deal with the chain. How to make the process of dealing with the chain better is an unlimited pursuit.

usWe hope that Particle can become a lubricant for the entire industry as a coordinator and enabler, reducing the friction of all people interacting with the chain..

The article comes from the Internet:Exclusive interview with Particle Network: Chain abstraction is an inevitable product of the background of chain explosion. We are committed to solving the ultimate problem of Web3 UX

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