Disclaimer: The next weblog is a proposal from the Account Abstraction crew. Content material might not suggest consensus views, and the EF is a broad group that features a wholesome variety of opinion throughout Protocol and past that collectively strengthen Ethereum.
Because the early days of Ethereum, the promise has at all times been daring: a worldwide, permissionless, censorship-resistant computing platform. Right this moment, that promise is extra alive than ever. Ethereum has scaled by way of rollups, the place blockspace is considerable and transactions are low cost. The problem now isn’t just throughput, however seamless consumer expertise throughout that multichain horizon.
What if all of the L2s felt like a single, unified Ethereum?
No bridges to consider, no chain names to acknowledge, no fragmented balances or belongings.
That’s the imaginative and prescient of the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL): making Ethereum really feel like one chain once more — whereas preserving the trust-minimized, decentralized foundations all of us care about.
EIL makes Ethereum’s rollups really feel like a single, unified chain by enabling customers to signal as soon as for a cross-chain transaction with out including new belief assumptions. Constructed on ERC-4337 account abstraction and the rules of the Trustless Manifesto, customers themselves provoke and settle cross-L2 actions instantly from their wallets, not by way of relayers or solvers. EIL preserves Ethereum’s core ensures of self-custody, censorship resistance, disintermediation, and verifiable onchain execution. This new account-based interoperability layer unifies Ethereum’s fragmented L2 ecosystem below Ethereum’s personal safety mannequin.
The issue: fragmentation at scale
L2 chains have introduced dramatic positive aspects in throughput and cost-efficiency. But they’ve launched a brand new form of complexity for customers and wallets:
Which chain is my token on?How do I transfer tokens from Arbitrum → Base → Scroll → Linea?Do I must belief a third-party bridge or relayer?Does my pockets or dapp must manually combine each new chain?
From a consumer’s perspective, the result’s much less Ethereum and extra a number of separate Ethereums. You’re managing chains, not merely transacting. That creates friction, cognitive overhead, and sometimes publicity to extra belief assumptions — bridges, relayers, solvers — together with elevated censorship threat.
The imaginative and prescient: many L2s, one Ethereum
Think about this as an alternative:
You open your pockets, select an asset and an handle, and hit Ship.
Your pockets figures out which chain it’s on and the right way to ship the asset — behind the scenes.
You mint an NFT, transfer tokens, commerce belongings — and it doesn’t matter which rollup you or the counterparty are on, or the place the dapp is deployed.
New networks be part of the ecosystem, and your pockets simply works with them — no customized integrations, no reliance on off-chain operators.
That’s EIL. It’s about wallet-centric multichain UX: the pockets turns into your common window into the Ethereum ecosystem, and the community appears like one seamless expertise moderately than a patchwork of islands.
In a way, EIL is to Ethereum what HTTP was to the early Web.
Earlier than HTTP, customers might connect with particular person servers — however not seamlessly mix them in a single movement.
HTTP unified the expertise, letting browsers traverse servers effortlessly.
EIL goals to do the identical for Ethereum’s rollups: bringing Ethereum into its “internet period”, the place wallets act like browsers and customers navigate freely throughout L2s with out friction.
What it takes: belief assumptions, preserved
Unity of UX is compelling — however provided that it doesn’t compromise Ethereum’s core values:
Self-custody: customers maintain their belongings and provoke transactions themselves.Censorship-resistance: no middleman can block or delay your transaction.Privateness: you don’t should reveal your IP handle or intentions to a relayer or solver.Verifiability: any logic that issues could be checked onchain or in open-source pockets code.
EIL was designed based on the trustless manifesto. It strikes the logic onchain and into the consumer’s pockets, eradicating dependence on intermediaries and opaque server logic. Customers transact instantly on all chains; trustless liquidity suppliers provide funds however by no means work together instantly with customers, nor see their transactions.
As a substitute of “I belief a bridge operator to maneuver my funds,” you get “my pockets and contract do it — below verifiable guidelines.”
The belief boundary stays minimal.
Ethereum is about disintermediation — interop needs to be as nicely
Ethereum’s nice innovation is changing intermediaries with verifiable code.
Crypto as soon as relied on centralized exchanges (CEXs) till Ethereum made decentralized exchanges (DEXs) doable — no must belief a custodian, no counterparty threat, only a verified sensible contract. DeFi modified the world by providing an intermediary-free different to TradFi.
Cross-L2 interop nonetheless resembles a CEX mannequin, with bridge operators, relayers, solvers, and opaque off-chain infrastructure.
Transacting throughout L2s needs to be as trustless as utilizing a DEX.
EIL strikes the logic onchain and into the consumer’s pockets, eradicating dependence on intermediaries and opaque server logic. Customers transact instantly on all chains; trustless liquidity suppliers provide funds however by no means work together instantly with customers, nor see their transactions.
From the consumer’s view: the way it feels
Cross-chain switch — Alice has USDC on Arbitrum, Bob is on Base.In a single click on, her pockets executes a switch to Bob’s Base handle. From Alice’s perspective: “Ship USDC to Bob” — she doesn’t care which community it occurs on.
Cross-chain mint — Alice holds ETH on Arbitrum and Scroll. She desires to mint an NFT on Linea.Her pockets mechanically consolidates balances and handles inter-chain gasoline and asset motion transparently. One click on, one signature.
Cross-chain swap — Alice finds higher liquidity for her token on an Optimism DEX.She swaps from Arbitrum, her pockets handles the trail, and he or she finally ends up again on Arbitrum together with her new token — no bridging, no guide steps.
For the consumer it’s: “Ship, mint, swap — I simply do what I would like.”Behind the scenes it’s: “Pockets + onchain protocol transact throughout chains — no new belief necessities.”
Why this issues for the ecosystem
When interoperability turns into a wallet-level functionality as an alternative of an app-by-app integration, all the ecosystem advances:
Wallets and dapps turn out to be multichain-native by default.New rollups are mechanically suitable, accelerating adoption.Builders can give attention to constructing nice experiences, not wiring up cross-chain plumbing.Customers reclaim the simplicity of Ethereum: one pockets, one signature, many chains — one expertise.Most significantly, Ethereum’s trust-minimized mannequin stays intact with out new intermediaries.
This brings us nearer to the unique promise: a world pc that’s international, open, seamless and trustless.
The underside line
Ethereum has already scaled. What’s lagged is the sensation of unity.
The Ethereum Interop Layer is the following step towards that unity — the place your pockets is your portal, and each rollup appears like Ethereum’s native extension moderately than a separate silo.
We invite pockets groups, dapp builders, community designers, and the broader ecosystem to affix this journey.Collectively, we are able to make Ethereum not simply scalable — however seamlessly singular.
Let’s make Ethereum really feel like one chain once more.
