Bringing Arcana's Chain Abstraction to Aztec

Aztec
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1

Contact

Email: mayur@arcana.netowrk
Telegram: @mayur_5

Summary

Enabling users to unify their asset balances across different chains supported by Arcana’s Chain Abstraction protocol (EVM L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base…, non-EVM L2s like Fuel, other EVM chains like Polygon, Arbitrum Orbit chains, Validiums and other non-EVM chains like Aptos, Solana) and spend them privately on Aztec, near instantly, without needing to bridge.

Unified Balances
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Unified Spend
Unified Spend644×604 33.5 KB
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Arcana employs a novel intent-solver mechanism that would afford users the ability to not only bridge assets over but also spend unified balances from across many chains and also generally support the widest array of chains and assets, beyond just those supported by Ethereum and EVM L2s.
We will demonstrate this, firstly, via the Arcana Chain Abstraction enabled, self-custody wallet: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/arcana-wallet/nieddmedbnibfkfokcionggafcmcgkpi
enabling users to transfer their unified balances across various EVM L2s, privately, to an address on Aztec.

The experience will be similar to what is seen below:
Demo 1 (CoWSwap): https://x.com/ArcanaNetwork/status/1870073493691478321
Demo 2 (Aave): https://x.com/ArcanaNetwork/status/1817894728412565887

Arcana CA Arch@2x (8)
Arcana CA Arch@2x (8)1904×1880 242 KB

About Us

Arcana is a Chain Abstraction protocol that eliminates the complexities of interacting across multiple chains. Our protocol allows users to spend assets from a unified balance across EVM and non-EVM chains, without bridging, native gas tokens, or smart contract wallets.

Unlike traditional bridges, Arcana’s intent-solver model providers instant liquidity fronting, collecting funds across chains and delivering them seamlessly to the destination chain. This ensures flexible and frictionless cross-chain transactions, all while keeping users in full custody of their assets.

Through support and grants from ecosystems interested in bringing Arcana’s Chain Abstraction to their chain, Chain Abstraction is deployed across 8 major chains (Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Linea, Scroll, Fuel Network) and is being integrated in 10+ apps

Details

Aztec RFP@2x (1)
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  • The Arcana Wallet is a browser extension app.
  • User A has 10 USDC on each of Base, Arbitrum and OP.
  • User A is looking to privately send 25 USDC to User B.

Flow

  1. The Arcana wallet shows the user a unified view of their USDC balances, across the 3 chains i.e. 30 USDC
  2. User A intiates a transfer of 25 USDC from their unified balances, privately, to user B.
  3. The Arcana Chain Abstraction SDK in the Arcana Wallet creates the aforementioned intent of User A, supplying the sources and setting the destination as a disposable address deterministically derived from User A’s wallet.
  4. The Arcana Chain Abstraction protocol kicks in, making collections (based on allowances from the user) of the amounts on the source chains. This places a lock on the funds, not affording User A to double spend them.
  5. The Arcana Solver Network, aware of the intent created, verifies the collection of User A’s funds on the source chains
  6. A solver proceeds to perform a public transfer of 25 USDC amount in favor of a disposable address on Aztec.
  7. This completes the solver’s duty of making the liquidity available to the User B and the intent is considered “Closed”. The solver can also be settled with funds collected from User A on the source chains.
  8. Once funds are received on the disposable address, a private transfer of the 25 USDC from it to the User B’s wallet is initiated. The note(s) are created and published to Aztec.
  9. User B’s wallet scans the Aztec blockchain for note(s) pertaining to User B and persist them to the local storage.

Privacy

The existing Arcana Chain Abstraction protocol will have to be modified to support these “private” transactions. Intents in the protocol are inherently public and so:

  1. We will need to add a way to create and dispose of disposable addresses to enable the last mile private transfer of the asset from sender to receiver.
  2. Enable the solver to perform public transfer to aseets to front eh sender’s liquidity liquirements on Aztec.
  3. Orchestrate the final private transfer through creation of note(s) and publishing them to the Aztec chain.

In this entire process, the only public information is the disposable address, a la Monero, which cannot be linked to either the sender or the recipient.

Start and End Date

We envision starting work on the solution in April and reaching a functional version on the Aztec Testnet by June.

Grant Milestones and Roadmap

1. Arcana Vault Smart contract spec and implementation - 3 weeks (April wk 1 - wk 3)
Rewriting the existing Arcana Vault contract in Noir and adding the verification functionality to handle the “reveal” step by the recipient.

2. Arcana Solver changes - 2 weeks (April wk 4 - May wk 1)
Updating the solver to not supply funds but call the update intent functionalityto indicate collection of funds on source chain(s) from the sender.

3. Arcana Wallet changes - 3 weeks (May wk 2 - May wk 4)
Update it to handle the Aztec account model, add in Aztec.js and PXE support, secrent sharing UX, UI updates.

4. Testing and Deployment - 4 weeks (June wk 1 - wk 4)
Internal testing and make solution public to a small cohort for external testing before deploying publicly.

Future Roadmap

This is very exciting given how the changes to the protocol in this MVP stage can lead to interesting stand-alone improvements and features:

  1. Make the Wallet fully compatible with Aztec keys, accounts and transactions.
  2. Enable supplementing existing funds on Aztec with funds from other chains (not just other chains to Aztec).
  3. Enable using Aztec funds as a source to spend on other chains.
  4. Once the solver is updated to handle #2, we are potentially looking at a very interesting prospect to using Aztec as a “mixer” network to enable wholly private transactions from one chain to another, near instantly, without needing to bridge. Eg: I have USDC on Arb, OP and Base and I want to transfer it, privately to an address on Avalanche!

Grant Amount Requested and Rationale

We request $50,000 to develop the aforementioned MVP.
Development of the MVP would primarily require this budget given:

  1. Extensive changes in the existing Arcana Chain Abstraction protocol to support the nature of private transactions described above.
  2. Developing the Arcana Vault on the Aztec side as a smart contract built using Noir.
  3. Updates to the client side Wallet app to afford the user the aforementioned flow.
  4. Resources to test and debug the MVP as a whole.