The Future Is Abstracted

The last few years in DeFi have seen a monumental increase in blockchains, layer 2s, rollups, bridges, a crazy number of DEXs, and countless tokens.

While each has helped solve some pain points of DeFi, there is still an underlying issue: users still really care only about the chain beneath them and the DEX they like to use. Daily bridge volume is 25x lower than DEX volume and even though aggregators provide lower slippage, better pricing, and a more abstracted, easier user experience, over five times as much volume is swapped directly on DEXs compared to aggregators each day.

DeFi will never reach mainstream adoption without abstraction and a better UX. So what are some of the steps that have been taken or that we believe need to be taken to make mass adoption real?

Intents

One of the ways DeFi has implemented the beginnings of an abstracted experience are user intents, with protocols such as @LayerZero_Core, @ParticleNtwrk, and many others building intents into existing UIs and protocols. These intents are implemented into aggregation protocols such as ourselves (Flytrade), @1inch, and others to work in the background to provide a better experience. Many don’t even realize the front-end they’re using utilizes an intent system, which is the end goal for abstraction. So what do intents provide?

Diversified Liquidity

Solvers aren’t limited to one DEX or liquidity source, and have the ability to pull from multiple sources, whether they’re on-chain, off-chain, CEX, or DEXs in order to find what you need for the best price. As such, and by the nature of Solvers competing with one another, this results in much better pricing and MEV protection.

Fast, Seamless Swaps On and Cross-Chain

As there is no need for users to hold native gas tokens (Solvers do the swaps and pay the gas for you), and no need to use a bridge yourself, as Solvers handle cross-chain trades and settle them, you just say what you want, and which chain you want it on, they do the swap and send it to your wallet on the destination chain, making swaps across chains simple and fast.

Intents have gone a long way towards abstracting much of DeFi for the user, but it can get better.

Enter: Multi-Chain Abstraction

Chain abstraction takes the intent idea and goes one layer deeper: the chain itself fades from the front‑end. Projects like SocketLL (Socket’s Liquidity Layer), Polkadot’s Cross‑Consensus Message Format (XCM), and the Superchain (powered by the OP Stack) already allow devs and protocols to treat multiple chains as one execution environment.

Think of it as TCP/IP for blockchains, where packets of information (assets, messages, NFTs, etc) route automatically to the intended destination. With this implemented and taken full advantage of, users won’t need to choose chains any more than they would have to pick which ISP or routes their data takes when searching the web, playing a game, sending an e-mail, or any other general activity you’d use the web for.

When chains are abstracted, users can simply get what they want, when they want, as the infrastructure in place allows for a DeFi experience where intimate knowledge of all chains, DEXs, pools, and dapps is not required.

Which brings us to…

Why The Future Being Abstracted is Necessary

Abstraction isn’t giving up complexity or the ability to manually interact, if that’s your thing, it’s making the most use out of that complexity for the benefit of the entire ecosystem. The protocols that abstract away the chaos of navigating hundreds of chains & bridges, as well as thousands of DEXs, will own the boarding pass for millions of new users, or simply make exploring DeFi that much easier.

Abstraction is not simply a UX improvement, nor is the boarding pass simply a nod to us here at Fly, abstracting DeFi and onboarding new users is absolutely essential for the future success of DeFi. In order to achieve that, DeFi must abstract its complexity: chains, gas, DEXs, wallets, approvals, seed phrases, and even just how long it takes to do or go anywhere and accomplish what you want to do. We like our flight puns and metaphors here, and this is like boarding a plane and taking a flight, users shouldn’t feel burdened with the need to know how it all works, only that it gets them where they want to go.

Without abstraction, the future many of us envision for DeFi won’t happen. Real-world integration, composability, accessibility of DeFi, and mass adoption all depend on abstraction and how EASY DeFi is to use on the front-end. DeFi can continue to push tech forward and be incredibly advanced, but it needs to be in the background.

We’re helping users move on from asking “which chain?” , “which bridge?” , or “how do I do this?”. DeFi should be more than navigating infrastructure, that’s why we’re here, to do it for you.

Fly 2.0: Universal Aggregation & Abstracted UX.

The Fly team is working towards Fly 2.0, an upgrade which moves beyond aggregation infra and into Universal Aggregation. A solver network that can source liquidity, swap, bridge, stake, or lend in one click, on any supported chain, without needing to figure out for yourself which DEX, bridge, or chain you need to be on.

We see the potential in the tech of DeFI: it’s there, it’s great, and it keeps moving forward, but users, both existing and those who haven’t joined DeFi yet, need to be able to use it without frustration. Fly 2.0 will be the UX that can be the beginning of a true multi-chain DeFi, not just a dream.

So how are we going to do it?

First, we’ll continue to do what we do best, and that’s continuing to build upon our aggregation infra that doesn’t find the best routes, but creates them. We’ll be upgrading our routing algorithm, implementing an Intent Solver Network, and working with multiple excellent projects like

@ParticleNtwrk

to prepare our UI and aggregation infra to cover even more blockchains, DEXs, bridges, assets, LP, and much more. Some more specifics on some of what we’re building are in our roadmap article, which you can check out here.

An abstracted experience with nothing underneath would be frustrating, not game-changing.

The next step is the Fly UX, and that’s to make it easier for users to do what they want: use DeFi.

With Fly 2.0, you won’t need to think about what chain you’re using, which bridge to use, which DEX to search, or even how to add liquidity, just tell us what you want and we’ll do it for you. We’re adding charts, social log-in support, smart contract wallet creation with social log-in, real-time order tracking, DCA options, limit orders, and more.

It’ll feel and look like you’re just using one, large, unified blockchain, whether you’re on Ethereum, Sonic, Arbitrum, Solana, Eclipse, or any other chain we support. Fly 2.0 will let explore DeFi all from one app, in one interface.

What comes next? How is “The Future Abstracted”?

Interoperability

With intents and abstraction working together, interoperability goes from being a manual, user-driven series of tasks to completely seamless. Interoperability will be a prerequisite to take part in DeFi without being siloed away from everything else.

Interoperability enables users to directly swap BRETT on Base for xSHADOW on Sonic to start earning yield by signing one intent, without needing any gas tokens on both Base and/or Sonic. When connected, things change. Interop will enhance functionality, adoption, scalability, UX, and so much more.

You will see new protocols and apps that wouldn’t be able to exist without it, just like we have now in Web 2.0.

What comes after?

If you’re interested in what comes after abstraction, and how blockchain and DeFi can really take advantage of it, stay tuned for our next blog post where we explore the potentials of blockchain tech in the real world.

Let’s Fly