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

Reporter: Deep Wave TechFlow

Interviewee: Pengyu, CEO of Particle Network

Introduction

On June 20, Particle Network officially announced the completion of US$15 million in Series A financing. Spartan Group and Gumi Cryptos Capital co-led the investment, with participation from SevenX Ventures, Morningstar Ventures, Flow Traders, HashKey Capital and others.

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 launch this week, while the mainnet is scheduled to go online in the third quarter of this year.

Different from the previous one, we found that in this financing, Particle Network seems to pay more attention to the description of the positioning of "Chain Abstraction". Compared with Particle, which started from wallet abstraction two years ago, "chain abstraction" is like a new leap. Not long ago, Particle Network also launched new products such as People's Launchpad.

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

Key Points

• Particle’s mission since its inception has always been to empower developers and solve the ultimate problem of Web3 UX. Our products are divided into three stages: wallet abstraction, account abstraction, and chain abstraction.

• User experience at different interaction layers is multiplication rather than addition. UX issues in any link have a global impact.

• The underlying logic of our products is: Horizontal full-chain ecology, vertical full life cycle, and we have three internal product lines: main channel products, growth product lines, and operation product lines.

• We are essentially a cryptocurrency project, not an Internet company. We understand that operating a cryptocurrency project is never a standardized business that only caters to a single group.

• We design from the perspective of the full life cycle of users and developers, and technically each stage makes full use of the technology accumulation brought by the products of the previous stage.

• Chain abstraction is not created, but an inevitable product under the background of chain explosion.

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

• A good Token is a Meme with Utility.

• It is wrong to say that the customer acquisition cost of the Crypto project is much lower than that of the mobile Internet, because forward debts also have costs, unless you default not to repay them.

• The entire technological evolution process of Web3 is that if it unites for a long time, it must divide, and if it divides for a long time, it must unite, in a continuous cycle. The symbol of long-term integration is the rise of L2 and the popularity of modularity. The core of long-term integration is chain abstraction.

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

背后的思考：积累技术优势，沿着用户和开发者全生命周期不断迭代

深潮 TechFlow：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从成立以来的使命一直都是赋能开发者，解决 Web3 UX 问题。产品有三个阶段：钱包抽象，账户抽象，以及链抽象。

• 钱包抽象：通过给开发者提供社交登录和钱包套件减少用户进入链上的摩擦；

• 账户抽象：升级用户在链上的账户底层结构，提高和链交互的效率；

• 链抽象：减少多链生态带来的账号和流动性的碎片化体验问题。

分别对应开发者以及用户的整个生命周期：进入链上-单链交互-多链交互的 UX 问题。

我们对 UX 优化的理解是全生命周期的 UX 优化才有实际意义。用户在不同交互层的体验是乘法而不是加法，任何一个环节的 UX 问题带来的都是全局的影响。

深潮 TechFlow：第二个问题可能相对比较直接，就像你刚才提到的，你们其实经历了好几个产品阶段的迭代，同时你们又推出了 People's Alliance 以及 People's Launchpad，并且好像 BTC 生态也打的火热。从外部来看，也许会觉得你们不聚焦，有热度导向的嫌疑？可以分享一下你们做各类产品的底层逻辑吗？

Pengyu：我们产品的底层逻辑是：横向全链生态，纵向全生命周期。

不是因为我们不聚焦，片面地求大求全，而在于我们解决的是 UX 相关的问题，这个必须要全局的考虑。

从行业发展角度来看，多链与跨链的趋势是不可逆的，用户在不同生态都会有账号和流动性，怎么能够让用户在整个生命周期，在横跨各个链生态的体验都是统一且高效的，这是 Web3 UX 的终极问题。

举个不是特别精准的例子，互联网时代你不能说访问日本的网站很快，但是访问美国的网站就很慢对吧。同时也不能让你玩某个游戏的时候注册账号阶段很丝滑，但是充值的时候就卡住。

基于这个思路，我们回到你的问题，我们内部有三条产品线：主航道产品，增长产品线，运营产品线。

主航道产品线是我们核心产品线，面向开发者的，产品角度有我在上个问题提到的三个阶段。

增长产品线主要指的就是你刚才提到的People's Launchpad，People's Alliance 等偏增长工具的产品。

运营产品线是我们的测试网平台 Particle Pioneer 等。

为什么要在主航道产品线外设立增长产品线以及运营产品线？

Becausewe are essentially a cryptocurrency project, not an Internet company, and we understand that operating a cryptocurrency project is never a standardized business that only caters to a single group. You need to satisfy your customers, investors, community, and end users at the same time. Therefore, the growth product line is oriented to our community. By keeping up with the hot market assets, we can maintain the excitement of the community and the frequency of interaction with us.

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

As for why operations and growth are not done in an activity-based, content-oriented way, this is determined by our team style. We like to solve every problem in a product-driven way, and prefer a standardized + data-based approach to obtain good results. As a result, so even in terms of market activity, growth, etc. we will launch products that may seem complex to achieve some of our goals. The result of this may be that it seems that we offer more products.

The popularity in the Bitcoin ecosystem is a result of executing our strategy of "horizontal full-chain ecology". In fact, we are not only working on the Bitcoin ecosystem, we are also making very good progress in the Cosmos ecosystem.

I think the reason why the outside world may feel that we are not focused is because we have done well: we have a good reputation in each product line and have gained more recognition. But what we didn’t do well was communicating our overall strategy to the outside world, what is the underlying logic of iterating products and launching different product lines. I think today is a good opportunity to talk about our overall thinking.

Shenchao TechFlow: Such an iterative approach is commercially consistent, but by constantly evolving the product, will it lead to less support for partners who use your previous stage of the product?

Pengyu: This is a very good question. If the iteration of your main channel product has no inheritance relationship in terms of technology, functions, and user groups, it is indeed easy to cause such problems. But this is not how we design product iterations. As I mentioned before, we design from the perspective of the full life cycle of users and developers, and technically each stage fully utilizes the products of the previous stage. The technology accumulation brought about.

I can give some specific examples. For example, our first-stage wallet abstraction product and second-stage account abstraction product can be used independently or in combination. Developers can use independent third-party wallet drivers such as MetaMask. Our account abstraction protocol can also be driven by the wallet abstraction (social login + built-in wallet) we provide, which is equivalent to turning the dapp's built-in wallet from an ordinary EOA account into an AA account.

Our third stage 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 all come from the accumulation of account abstraction products in the previous stage. They are essentially a decentralized and full-chain account abstraction solution. From the actual experience of developers, what they feel is that we are constantly adding new features for them to use or choose. In addition to wallet abstraction, account abstraction can be used to upgrade the original account structure to a smart account. Chain abstraction products can allow them to A single account abstraction product can be easily extended to the entire chain.

We have actually been iterating on how to provide partners with more support. We currently have more than 1,800 dapps (not counting various Hackerthon experimental products) connected to our various types of products, of which about 1,000 are still active (DAU greater than 0) . Last month we targeted Developers' SDK downloads (various npm packages) have exceeded 500,000 downloads/month, and are still growing rapidly.

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

Shenzhen TechFlow: I have observed that these three product lines of yours have a lot of partners. It seems that they can get a lot of support as soon as they are launched, and they will not face the difficulties in starting or growing most Web3 projects. You guys How is it done? Is there any special way to do it?

Pengyu: Mainly for several reasons:

• Although several product lines have been iterating products, the cooperation group has not changed: Public chain + dApp, which allows us to accumulate cooperation resources.

• We only pursue practical cooperation and ensure that the trust relationship with our partners is real. In terms of cooperation with public chains, we have direct cooperation with nearly 80 public chains, and we will try to implement it from all angles. For example, we did a very large-scale Consumer Crypto Hackerthon with Avalanche, we did the People's Alliance inscription event with Linea, Near and Sei gave us Grant, Avail has a cross-airdrop plan with us, and we are about to do a cross-airdrop with Berachain, Arbitrum Launched Co-Testnet activities, Citrea and BOB, our co-host, have held many offline meetings, and Merlin has been on our People's Launchpad. Including some independent scene chains, such as the Depin-themed Peaq and the game-themed Xter.io public chain. Their ecological projects almost entirely adopt our various types of technical solutions.

• We have a systematic internal management mechanism to ensure that cooperation is not only implemented but also from as many angles as possible. This mechanism includes a set of CRM systems that we have built ourselves. We will regularly review the status of head cooperation projects to ensure that we catch up with 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 under the background of chain explosion, and it is also our most exciting evolution direction

Deep Wave TechFlow: The current external positioning of Particle is "The L1 Unifying All Chains Through Universal" Accounts", aiming at the chain abstraction, we have seen a saying that there are too many various abstractions in the industry, is the chain abstraction a created narrative? Why do you think the industry needs a new “abstraction”?

Pengyu: First of all, there will definitely be more and more chains, which will boost this matter from the perspective of the cost and benefit of chain development. The cost of chain issuance and chain maintenance has been greatly reduced due to the rise of modular infrastructure such as RaaS and DA and the implementation of EIP-4844. Chain development has obvious benefits for projects of any background: it adds simplicity and efficiency to Token The value capture method broadens the product operation boundaries of the project, etc..

There are currently about 400 chains that can be tracked, and it is expected that there may be close to 1,000 by the end of this year, and more than 3,000 by the end of 2025. So many chains not only add a very high learning threshold to so-called Web2.5 users, but in fact so-called professional users have also felt the problems caused by this fragmentation.

Everyone will have a similar feeling that their USDT is scattered in many chains. In many cases, due to time-consuming transfer or insufficient gas, a lot of purchasing power is actually sunk. ThereforeIn the context of thousands of chains, providing end users and developers with a unified interaction and development environment must have a plan to achieve this.

I think the core of judging whether it is a creative narrative is to look at: whether it is solving a specific problem, how high the ceiling is to solve this problem, and whether there is a practical solution to actually solve this problem. Chain abstraction is not created, but an inevitable product in the context of chain explosion.

Deep Wave TechFlow: There are many other narratives in the industry, both with ceilings and with actual products being implemented. Why did you choose chain abstraction as the direction of evolution instead of AI or Depin?

Pengyu: Narrative is undoubtedly one of the most important tasks of a Web3 project. Because narrative is essentially a mixture of product evolution direction, technology delivery route, and the valuation system of the investor community. Especially in an industry today where there is no standardized path to value discovery (such as traditional metrics like PE multiples), narrative = pricing scope. But the biggest challenge here was choosing the right narrative direction for Particle.

I understandnarrative directions are roughly divided into: mature narrative, brand narrative, aristocratic narrative, pioneer narrative, etc.. For example:

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

• Best-brand narratives are new and widely accepted, such as AI or DePin in this cycle;

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

There are advantages and disadvantages. For example, the advantage of bright-card narrative is that there is no need to educate this track, but proving that you are the head is the most difficult. Someone will definitely pay for Noble Narrative, but it is more difficult to get on the poker table (it requires high team background and background), and delivering products and doing Traction is uncertain. The challenge with avant-garde narratives is that the narrative can be quickly disproven.

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

Taken together, chain abstraction is the evolution direction we are most excited about.

Deep Wave TechFlow: From the perspective of the chain abstraction track itself, there are also other projects being worked on, such as Near, Polygon, Everclear (formerly Connext), etc., and Particle’s chain abstraction solution has been introduced. Is there any difference? What are your unique advantages?

Pengyu: From the entry point. Particle is from the perspective of general accounts, Near is from the perspective of decentralized signature calculation, Polygon is a bridge that provides shared liquidity for L2 built based on CDK, and Everclear is from the perspective of transaction settlement.

The most unique advantages of Particle’s chain abstraction solution from a product perspective are:

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

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

Our biggest advantage from a business perspective is that all users and developers we have accumulated in wallet abstraction and account abstraction products can be seamlessly migrated to our chain abstraction infrastructure. In a sense, we have accumulated users and liquidity of our chain abstraction solution before it is officially launched.

Shenchao TechFlow: The bottom layer of your chain abstraction solution is to "design a new chain". Does this go against the original intention of chain abstraction "to solve the problem of too many chains"?

Pengyu: The positioning of our chain is a supporter, coordinator, and enabler. It is not a new chain that competes with other chains.

When designing our chain abstraction solution at the bottom level, we mainly consider security, transparency, the marginal cost of the chain abstraction service, and the sustainability of value capture. After an overall evaluation, it is most appropriate to use an independent Layer-1 to carry it.

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, but all chain abstract transactions are sent to our chain first. We then coordinate the external chain to perform corresponding operations to shield users from the perception of multi-chain and cross-chain interactions. However, users do not need to cross-chain assets to our Layer-1 in advance, so we do not start from TVL or From a developer perspective, it competes with other chains and does not exacerbate the fragmentation problem of user mobility.

Shenchao TechFlow: Particle’s product delivery capabilities have always been strong, but commercially, how can this chain abstraction solution achieve a commercialized 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 public chain’s native Gas Token and on-chain or off-chain transaction commissions.

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) The transaction that packages the user's UserOps will be sent to our chain first, and the Particle L1 node will disassemble, execute, and coordinate the corresponding operations.

So any transaction on the Universal Account will indirectly or directly consume our L1 Token. Value capture is natural and ongoing.

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

Deep Wave TechFlow: Let’s get into the Token topic that users are most concerned about. Many users are While looking forward to Particle's design of Token, could you first describe in one sentence how you define a good Token?

Pengyu: I think a good Token is a Meme with Utility. The most representative one here may be SOL.

Shenchao TechFlow: For you, why is it necessary to issue Tokens, what is its significance, and how will it promote the development of the project?

Pengyu: We internally understand that Token has several roles: starter, booster, filter, revenue generator.

• Kickstarters are users or community supporters who can use Token-related incentives to cold-start early in the project to gain some recognition of their ideas and directions. But a popular saying before is that the customer acquisition cost of the Crypto project is much lower than that of the mobile Internet. This is definitely wrong, because forward debts also have costs, unless you default not to repay them, or you think this Token will not Have liquidity or value. Therefore, using Token for a launcher at the earliest stage also requires very careful design.

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

• The filter is because there is a cost to purchase and hold Tokens, and long-term supporters can be screened out through the gradual increase of this cost. However, the biggest challenge here is how the project side can make long-term supporters Supporters get excess returns, otherwise long-term supporters get PUA instead.

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

Generally speaking, we feel that if Token can help the project from the above four perspectives at the same time, it is worth launching.

Deep Wave TechFlow: Let me ask a sharp question. Some teams just fell asleep after issuing tokens. What do you think of this problem?

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

Many Web3 teams actually wanted to continue doing things after issuing Tokens, but they did not get much recognition in the business afterwards because they were passive. There may be several reasons:

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

• The product does not have PMF and no one can find it.

• Token has no value capture ability, and it makes little sense to continue doing business.

And the essence of actively lying down is because the team believes that the development potential of the current project is limited. No one will refuse to continue to pursue wealth returns. The reason why they choose to take the initiative to lay down is because the team believes that investing personal energy and wealth in other assets has more potential, and the return expectations of continuing to invest in existing projects are not high.

Back to ourselves, We don’t have the challenge of passively lying down. From the very beginning of the design of each of our products, we consider who it is suitable for, and how to ensure that we are technologically advanced and can be delivered within a reasonable time. As the native Gas Token of a public chain, our Token is also one of the few proven methods of scalable value capture.

More challenges come from how the ceiling of Particle itself can continue to open. The entire technological evolution process of Web3 is that if it unites for a long time, it must divide, and if it divides for a long time, it must unite, in a continuous cycle.

The symbol of long-term integration is the rise of L2 and the popularity of modularity. The core of long-term integration is chain abstraction.

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

Shenzhen TechFlow: Web3 is an industry with extremely fast technological evolution and is widely influenced by open source culture. You will worry that your major innovations in the field of chain abstraction today will become the technical standard tomorrow with the development of the industry itself. Will it lose its technological advancement?

Pengyu: This is actually two questions. Will open source products lose technological leadership? What are the barriers to Particle chain abstraction infrastructure?

The topic related to open source products is huge, 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. On the contrary, companies accustomed to magic modification and fork will lose the motivation to make breakthroughs because of 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 driving the on-chain trading track.

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

And any standard can never be achieved simply by relying on product or technology leadership. Rather, it is the leading penetration rate brought by the initial product leadership, the scale effect brought by the continuous snowball, and finally the formation of a standard. After the standard is formed, it needs to be iterated with an open attitude to be sustainable.

Back to Particle’s chain abstraction infrastructure, our current product solutions and delivery time are leading, and we can make better use of our past accumulation of user scale, and we have had a relatively good account since the initial release. Scale and liquidity, and the attitude of our solution is completely open + empowering logic, not competing for TVL or developers.

Deep Wave TechFlow: My impression is that you were established in May 2022, which was just the beginning of the entire bear market, and you have completely experienced the entire bear market. If you could tell me about the biggest challenge during this period, what do you think it was?

Pengyu: The biggest challenge is the tearing feeling caused by "balance".

Small teams need to balance doing "big" things: The team size of the Web3 project is not large, but it requires many traditional meanings such as technological innovation, customer acquisition, brand marketing, international expansion, listing management, investor relations, etc. On the business side of giant companies.

1 project, a balance of 4 roles: The roles and interest demands for partners, communities, investors, and exchanges 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 feeling of tearing is the biggest challenge during this period.

deep tideTechFlow: How do you see the future development of the industry, and what role do you expect Particle Network to eventually play?

Pengyu: Our ideal Web3 industry is a large-scale consumption industry driven by edge innovation + technology. However, the current characteristics of the industry are still “pseudo” technology industries with financial leverage and relying on attention to monetize. The "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 the current infrastructure is not that there are too many, but that the overall penetration rate is too low; the problem with applications is not that there are too few, but that the direction is wrong.

At this point in time, I cannot tell what the endgame of the industry will be: maybe everyone will redefine the so-called Mass Adoption, no longer pursue content-based, pan-entertainment Consumer Crypto, and return to purely pursuing the efficiency of asset issuance and transactions on the chain. ; It is also possible that the industry has broken through the difficulties caused by the lack of standardized business models and created a giant consumer industry with AI multiplied by the level of mobile Internet. But no matter what happens, all industry users will still have to deal with the chain. How to make the experience of dealing with the chain better is a pursuit with no upper limit.

We hope that Particle can become a lubricant for the entire industry as a coordinator and enabler, reducing the friction for everyone interacting with the chain .

The above is the detailed content of Exclusive interview with Particle Network: Chain abstraction is an inevitable product in the context of chain explosion. We are committed to solving the ultimate problem of Web3 UX. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!