Why Infra Layers Win in Fragmented Markets with Appchains

The multichain ecosystem is becoming more fragmented by the day. With the rise of new L2s, L3s, and appchains, the surface area of blockchain UX, developer complexity, and liquidity coordination gets more chaotic. For developers, this means more environments to deploy to, more chain-specific logic to manage, and more fragmentation in UX. For users, it results in fractured experiences and scattered liquidity. The more chains we add, the harder coordination becomes.

Amid this fragmentation, the infrastructure layers that provide abstraction and coordination across chains are becoming increasingly essential. Just like Stripe standardized payments, Twilio simplified communications, and Plaid abstracted banking connections in Web2, Web3 needs its own set of robust coordination layers.

Why UX Breaks at Scale

End users don't care which chain they’re on; they just want their transaction to go through. Yet, the current state of cross-chain UX forces users to:

• Constantly switch networks 
• Bridge assets manually
• Hold & manage native gas tokens

The result? High drop-off rates and user confusion. According to multiple UX audits and developer reports from 2024, over 70% of user-facing Web3 apps still require three or more discrete actions to complete a single cross-chain transaction. The mental overhead remains significant, even for crypto-native users.

This is where infra layers step in. Infrastructure layers can mask this complexity by handling routing, gas abstraction, and execution coordination under the hood. When done right, the user sees one unified balance, clicks once, and the infra handles the rest.

Appchains Amplify the Need for Infra

Appchains are designed to offer sovereignty, scalability, and customization. But they don’t solve fragmentation, they shift the burden. Every app that becomes its own chain adds another isolated environment with unique security assumptions, fee markets, and bridge dependencies.

Without infrastructure to connect these chains, composability breaks down. Developers either have to:

• Rebuild app logic for every new chain, or
• Remain siloed, limiting user reach and liquidity

Infrastructure layers like Arcana solve this by acting as the connective tissue between appchains. They provide the coordination layer needed to support multichain execution, shared liquidity access, and unified user experiences across chains.

Liquidity Coordination Is an Infrastructure Problem

Fragmentation isn’t just a UX or devex problem; it’s a capital inefficiency. In DeFi, fragmented liquidity leads to:

• Higher slippage on trades
• Broken or inefficient strategies
• Lost yield and unutilized capital

Without a coordination layer that abstracts and routes liquidity in real-time, users are forced to manually shuffle assets between chains, while protocols lack visibility into where usable capital sits.

Real-time liquidity coordination is a fundamentally infrastructural challenge. Chain Abstraction protocols and intent-solver networks are beginning to address this, offering the ability to treat fragmented liquidity as a unified pool.

Closing Thoughts: Arcana’s Role in a Fragmented World

Arcana is one of the few projects building and shipping this kind of coordination infrastructure. Built on a dedicated Cosmos appchain, Arcana’s Chain Abstraction Protocol enables developers to offer a multichain UX without deploying to every chain. With a plug-and-play SDK, intent-based routing, and a decentralized solver network, Arcana abstracts away the hardest parts of multichain development and offers: 

• Unified Balances
• Liquidity routing and fulfillment
• Gas Abstraction
• Cross-chain execution

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