UniversalX Case Study: Lessons from Building a Chain-Agnostic App

We said “one account, one balance, any chain”. Next thing we knew, Universal Accounts were live.

Then, as we were pushing UAs to the world, we thought: If chain abstraction is so revolutionary, why aren’t we the first to trust it with real money?

That thought gave birth to UniversalX, a trading front-end built entirely on UAs, destined to become a single point of access to the decentralized economy.

As we prepare to present the world with unlimited access to Universal Accounts, this post will reflect on our learnings from deploying chain-agnostic applications. In the end, whope these learnings will shape the path of builders as Web3 enters an Abstracted Era.

Jumping right into the deep end

As we released a trading platform, we realized that we couldn’t have picked a tougher stress test. 

Onchain trading in 2025 is by default high-frequency trading, and going into high-frequency trading (HFT) meant throwing Universal Accounts and UniversalX into an ultra‑competitive market, one where milliseconds and complex strategies decide winners.

In this competitive environment, we quickly realized that even with record-breaking Testnet numbers, first-of-its-kind chain abstraction technology didn’t mean a guaranteed success without:

• Lightspeed finality: The market proved to us that although our users loved the idea of never bridging again, for them, this one-time annoyance was worth the hassle if trades executed fast. Our product offered a superior onboarding experience, but they still needed something worth onboarding for.
• Real‑time data with no latency: Traders WILL notice data discrepancies and expect data to always be reliable and up-to-date. We had to deliver streaming price and liquidity updates—no polling, no stale snapshots—so that what users saw was exactly what they executed.
• Optimal, transparent fees: In HFT, fee costs add up quickly. As such, we learned that competitive pricing was more important to our users than any other competitive advantage we had, leading us to adapt accordingly.
• Exposure to the right circles: When most trading happens on a siloed network, you need to be attractive to its users. Regardless of whether a product can encompass users from every network, Web3 behavior is (still) predominantly tribalistic. Mindshare in any one circle doesn’t directly translate to others, leading to the need to bootstrap a reputation from scratch.
• Deep marketing understanding: Not all Web3 marketing knowledge is transferable. Driving trading volume and deposits, as well as understanding the power users that drive a trading platform to success is a challenge of its own

In short?

Lesson #1: If you’re building a chain-agnostic project, you’ll instantly be different from your competition. Standing out will be easy—it’s up to you to make the most of it.

Lesson #2: Standing out makes marketing easier. However, if you want users to stick, you should know exactly what they want. Trust us, research pays off.

And, as a bonus:

Lesson #3: Play to your strengths, and use ChA to accelerate them. Particle Network already had a successful track record of forming communities and solving hard UX problems (social onboarding, in-app wallets, using Smart Accounts). Furthermore, as our goal was to both create a successful product and spread awareness of Universal Accounts, we decided to put these to the service of Web3’s most popular use case: trading. 

Had we not had access to all these tools, we probably would’ve ended up with a much simpler application, but this setup allowed us to iterate quickly, and as such, meet traders’ requests much faster than most teams could.

In retrospect, debuting Universal Accounts alongside UniversalX was a risky decision—but it paid off: Thanks to it, we managed to strengthen both our infrastructure and our marketing in ways that wouldn’t have been possible without real-world experience.

Priceless.

Turning ChA into a differentiator

Another thing our experience has taught us is that, when launching chain-agnostic dApps, all assumptions go out the window.

We’ve come to reflect on and learn a great deal about the role new technologies play in dApps.

The integration/acceleration curve

A clear example of how user experiences evolve is in-app wallets powered by social logins. 

“In-app” wallets secured by e-mail, Google, or Twitter keys first appeared in 2022, looking clever but niche. Their breakthrough only came a year later, when friend.tech raised as the most popular dApp of the year and quickly launched its simple, Web 2.0-like onboarding process into the mainstream.

In 2024, this trend seemed to confirm itself, as HyperLiquid went a step further: traders arrive with nothing but a social login, bridge USDC to HyperLiquid’s rollup in-app, and start placing perps in seconds. Under the hood that bridge is chain abstraction by another name—users never “bridge” assets into HyperLiquid, they would just see “deposit USDC”.

HyperLiquid onboarding, as simple as it could be.

But, what does this have to do with chain abstraction? (Or why moat size also matters)

Above, we’ve shown how UX primitives can feel awkward and complex until a killer use case turns them into baseline expectations. 

In the case of chain abstraction, this involves two kinds of complexity:a. The perceived complexity to users (even when, in fact, the new system reduces complexity; andb. The complexity of the integration itself.

However, just as chain abstraction carries deeper utility than social logins, builders should consider the increased complexity as a greater opportunity: by implementing ChA once, they will differentiate for quarters—and even years.

Three key factors make chain abstraction a powerful moat:

• Hard to copy. True ChA transforms user onboarding, gas funding, and liquidity routing, all of which require dedicated infrastructure most projects can’t build for themselves.
• Sticky by design. The superior user experience of abstracted chains and a combined balance make bridging and ecosystem-exclusive dApps feel like pre-Internet technology.
• Compounding. Each new chain or liquidity source that gets abstracted drastically accrues to chain abstraction’s utility.

Marketing chain abstraction the right way

If your goal is to build a chain-agnostic dApp, here are several key considerations to follow, both for your marketing strategy and to incorporate into your product.

The following principles are key to promote a ChA-powered dApp (remember: you’re marketing chain abstraction to the next wave of users, not just today’s experts):

• Use outcome-first taglines. Users remember “Trade any token, on any chain” (e.g.) far more than “intent-centric, chain-agnostic trading.” Keep the benefit in mind, and don’t build for crypto engineers.
• Reveal features contextually. Show advanced toggles (like “Pay gas in output token”) only when the user can immediately utilize them. Your users don’t want to learn in advance, they want to move onto their next task as soon as possible.
• Compare freely—not everyone will get it at first. With so many different ecosystems, you need to earn trust repeatedly. Embrace this, it’s part of the game

Looking ahead

As we’ve written before, fragmentation will continue to shape crypto’s future. However, with chain abstraction, you can benefit from this trend, as abstraction will slowly but surely become the only sustainable UX.

That’s why, in the coming days, we’re taking the battle-tested Universal Account infrastructure to a new level: Public SDKs, direct support for new dApp integrators, hackathons, and much more.

Watch out for the announcement. The next chapter is yours.

One account. One balance. Any chain.

About Particle Network

Particle Network powers chain abstraction, addressing Web3's fragmentation of users and liquidity. This is enabled by Particle's Universal Accounts, which give users a unified account and balance across all chains.

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