Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum, has recently acquired smart account infrastructure provider ZeroDev, marking a significant step towards expanding its goals beyond just scaling infrastructure.
The merger with ZeroDev, a team of five individuals now fully integrated into Offchain Labs, is seen by CEO Steven Goldfeder as a natural progression of the company’s mission. “We started off [with] layer two, we went down to layer one, and now we’re going a little bit further up…in the smart contract layer,” Goldfeder explained. “We can make these tools work seamlessly together.”
Originally focused on scaling Ethereum with optimistic rollups, Offchain Labs has always aimed to tackle the most challenging obstacles hindering the widespread adoption of blockchain technology. This acquisition of ZeroDev, known for its smart account infrastructure utilized by projects such as ApeChain, Infinex, and Crossmint, aligns perfectly with Offchain Labs’ overarching vision.
Smart accounts play a crucial role in facilitating features like gas abstraction, programmable security, and automated transactions, which are essential for onboarding the next wave of blockchain users. Goldfeder emphasized that the current hurdle lies not only in technology but in the fragmented developer experience, particularly in terms of wallet integration and support.
“Often the user experience doesn’t seamlessly pull these all together in a way that’s abstracted away from the user,” Goldfeder noted, drawing a parallel with common online experiences. “When I go on YouTube to watch a video, I don’t get a pop-up that says, ‘Do you wanna watch this video on AWS or on GCP?’ I just want to watch my video.”
Addressing the issue of chain fragmentation within the Arbitrum ecosystem, Goldfeder pointed out the challenges users face when navigating different gas currencies across various platforms. ZeroDev’s smart account tooling is expected to streamline these complexities and address some of the more challenging aspects of blockchain technology.
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