Because change usually occurs gradually, it’s hard to remember the before time. Usually, there is no split second between something existing and not existing, like the universe itself. Instead, change happens slowly, insidiously, imperceptibly until we struggle to recall that there was ever a time when things were done differently. Take your smartphone, for instance. Can you recall the time when it wasn’t the last thing you looked at before going to bed and the first thing you looked at upon waking up?
Or take crypto. Do you remember the time when smart contract blockchains weren’t a thing? That’s pre-Ethereum, just for the record. Or going back further, can you recall when the multi-chain landscape wasn’t a thing – when Bitcoin was the only blockchain and the term “blockchain” wasn’t even used because it didn’t merit so much as a single mention in Satoshi’s seminal whitepaper?
It’s okay, this isn’t a crypto purity test. It’s merely an attempt at illustrating that when change happens for the better, it’s impossible to go back to the way things were. Crypto without smart contracts? Unthinkable. And we’re now fast approaching the point at which another “unthinkable” is on the verge of materializing: single-chain deployment.
The days when a dapp would release on one chain and stay true to that chain are numbered. A new wave of web3 platforms is emerging, and while they’re loyal to blockchain, they’re not fussy about which chain they deploy on – in fact, the more the merrier. The blockchain polyamory era is here. Let’s show it some love.
More Chains, Less Pain
Anyone who’s spent more than 10 minutes in crypto is familiar with the exponential curve. When you time it right, you buy your tokens right before the chart goes exponential. But more often, you discover you’ve actually bought at the apex of the curve and it’s down only from there. This same curve can be applied to the number of blockchains in existence: if you bought into the Ethereum ICO, for instance, you got in early, whereas if you bought into the latest Layer 3 AI chain, you’re late to the game, though not too late necessarily.
We’ve no idea how many chains crypto will eventually spawn or how many of them will go the distance, but we can correctly use the term “Cambrian explosion” to describe the number of networks that have sprung up since Ethereum. Just as the days of a job for life are now a thing of the past for the majority of the global workforce (the average employee switches jobs every 3-4 years), the notion of a chain for life has also been rendered obsolete. Which is why the next wave of web3 platforms will be multichain from day one – and for valid reasons.
In short, deploying an omnichain dapp is now a doddle compared to the complexity once associated with incorporating multiple chains, especially those spanning different VMs. As a result, today’s dapps have the luxury of being able to experience more chains with less pain in terms of deployment and ongoing management.
Multichain. Multichain Everywhere
Gauging the rate at which web3 dapps and protocols deploy to multiple blockchains is a simple exercise: just go to DeFi Llama, pick your preferred starting network or DeFi vertical, and scroll down the list of projects, ranked by TVL. You’ll struggle to find a single top 10 project in any category that has limited itself to a single chain.
Take lending, for example: all the leading platforms are multi-chain. Silo, for instance, the risk-isolated lending protocol, is live on more than 10 chains across its V1 and V2 iterations. The reason for this is obvious: DeFi users need liquidity on the chain they’re actively using – they have no desire to borrow assets and then bridge them to another network, not least because, should their position become under-collateralized, they then need to rapidly reverse the process to avoid being liquidated.
As DeFi has fragmented, sending users and liquidity scattering to different chains, DeFi primitives such as lending have been compelled to follow suit. Pick another DeFi primitive – say, liquid staking – and you’ll find the same story playing out. Kelp, for example, is active on an impressive 16 networks, which must keep their RPC provider happy in data consumption. Within the restaking sector, Renzo also deserves plaudits for deploying on a dozen chains.
But this isn’t about shooting for the omnichain high score: it’s about creating web3 products that meet the needs of users, regardless of which ecosystem they’re based in. And the good news for web3 developers is that going multi-chain is now easier than ever. So much so, in fact, that deploying on multiple blockchains is scarcely more complex than launching on a single chain from the get-go.
Multi-Chain Management as a Service
One of the reasons why the current wave of web3 platforms is going multi-chain isn’t just about maximizing the number of users they can reach: it’s also because doing so is now infinitely easier than it once was. Credit for this must go to web3 infrastructure providers that have driven down the cost and complexity of multi-chain deployment.
Back in the day, projects had to spin up a node for every network they wished to connect to. Not anymore. RPC providers now handle the heavy lifting, delivering data from dozens of blockchain networks that’s fast, reliable, and inexpensive. Adding support for a new network used to require re-coding your dapp from scratch; now it’s a case of adding a couple of lines of code, tweaking the UI, and you’re good to go.
The simplest way to envisage this revolution is in the context of the web browser. Believe it or not, the internet predates the web browser by many years. As you can quite believe, web adoption didn’t skyrocket until the web browser was created. It and the search engine were responsible for making the internet accessible to millions and, ultimately, billions.
Something similar has occurred for web3 developers, who now have the third-party tooling and infra support to go cross-chain in a matter of minutes. As a result, it’s never been easier to launch a decentralized application that can be accessed by users on Solana, Ethereum, and TON simultaneously. Web3’s ability to spawn new chains to serve new use cases is showing no signs of diminishing. There’s no need for dapps to attempt to connect to them all, of course, but any project that limits itself to a single network is leaving money on the table.
Not every blockchain will make it, and not every dapp that’s multi-chain will make it. But every web3 application that’s single-chain is virtually guaranteed to wither away. The next generation of high-value dapps won’t just be multi-chain – they’ll be multi-chain from day one. And they’ll be swift to add every new network that gains sufficient traction to justify its inclusion. After all, what’s to lose? All it takes is a couple of clicks to add another RPC stream and another chain to the mix.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
