What is Particle Network?

Particle Network: The L1 Unifying All Chains Through Universal Accounts

Particle Network's goal is to solve the issue of Web3’s fragmentation of users and liquidity across chains.

Launched in 2022, Particle Network debuted as a Wallet Abstraction service provider, enabling users to create smart contract wallets linked to their Web2 social accounts, which can then be used natively within dApp-embedded interfaces.

After more than 17 Million wallet activations, 10 Million UserOperations, and over 900 dApp integrations later, Particle is taking the next step in its evolution with its L1 unifying all chains with account-level chain abstraction.

Modular L1

The Particle Network modular L1 blockchain powers chain abstraction by coordinating Universal Accounts and Liquidity, enabling users to have a single address and balance across every chain and pay for gas in any token.

Relying on the Cosmos SDK to build this L1 allows us to make it intrinsically modular, retaining its sovereignty while outsourcing key functions like validation and data availability to specialized ecosystem actors. This is primarily driven by Modular Nodes, which help secure the network and allow for its decentralized operation through managing transaction validation, data availability, etc.

Our L1 features a high-performance EVM-compatible execution environment and relies on Babylon for additional security via dual staking.

Particle Network enables three core functionalities, each creating a unique user advantage:

Universal Accounts: Specialized Smart Account implementations powered by Particle Network’s Universal SDK. They offer a single user address and balance across ecosystems, including heterogeneous blockchains like Bitcoin and Solana.
Universal Liquidity: Unifies the liquidity of all chains through the optimistic execution of multi-chain atomic transactions. This allows users to interact with new chains without holding tokens on them.
Universal Gas: Allows users to pay gas with any token (e.g. PARTI, USDT, or USDC) sourced from any blockchain, as opposed to the multi-chain ecosystem’s need for multiple chain-exclusive gas units (SOL, ETH, MATIC, etc.) All transactions are ultimately settled on Particle Network through its native token, $PARTI.

Key modules and initial ecosystem

Particle Network is primarily constituted by three key modules. For a detailed description of these modules you can read our Modular L1 section.

Design and security

Particle Network features a dual staking system, combining Proof-of-Stake through Tendermint with Bitcoin’s economic security and resilience, powered by Babylon.

Furthermore, it presents a unique data availability aggregation (AggDA) model relying on providers like Celestia, Avail, and NEAR DA to reduce vendor lock-in and liveness risks. This constitutes a decentralized system of Aggregated DA node operators to dynamically publish and verify data between providers for conditional redundancy or optimization.

Furthermore, Particle Network’s architecture and rollout plan allows pre-existent Smart Accounts created through its existing, widely-adopted Wallet Abstraction solutions, Modular Smart WaaS and BTC Connect (see below), to seamlessly evolve into Universal Accounts, seamlessly bootstrapping its initial ecosystem and creating additional utility for existing users.

The first phase of Particle Network's modular L1's Testnet is already live and can be accessed through the Particle Pioneer campaign.

Wallet Abstraction solutions

Prior to the release of our Modular L1, Particle's Wallet Abstraction stack comprised two main products, both of which are currently used by over 4M daily users across 56 chains. These are:

Modular Smart Wallet-as-a-Service

Particle's Modular Smart Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) stack allows developers to tap into MPC-TSS and social logins to enable self-custodial, dApp-embedded smart contract wallets.

In short, Modular Smart WaaS allows developers and users to interact natively with AA while directly tied to an MPC-secured account generated by Particle. This fulfills the following critical points:

Seamless onboarding via WaaS & non-custodial key management: MPC-TSS walllets accessible via social logins.
Leveraging AA’s flexibility: Developers can easily implement ERC-4337 account abstraction into their dApps while retaining familiar transaction structures, transaction building, and account management.
AA modularity via WaaS: Particle’s AA SDK allows developers to approach AA modularly, plugging into their preferred smart account implementations, Bundlers, Paymasters, etc., with ease. Particle can also be plugged into any initial/onboarding point within AA applications as an EOA-based Signer, even if they don’t natively use Particle’s AA SDK.

BTC Connect

BTC Connect is the first EVM-compatible ERC-4337 account abstraction protocol for Bitcoin, supported and implemented by the largest Bitcoin Layer-2s in the ecosystem.

Particle Network enables account abstraction in the Bitcoin ecosystem by bringing ERC-4337 natively to Bitcoin L2s. Thanks to it, users can enjoy all the UX benefits of AA on Bitcoin without the need for secondary interfaces (such as a MetaMask wallet). This enables them to control a smart account on an EVM-compatible Bitcoin L2 with a "regular" Bitcoin Wallet (such as UniSat, Xverse, Bitget, TokenPocket, etc.) as its Signer. As a result, a user can interact with these networks while holding either only native BTC or no assets at all.

By implementing BTC Connect, developers can offer their users all of the benefits of account abstraction within EVM-compatible Bitcoin L2 chains, including account programmability, gasless interactions, batched transactions, etc.