Summary
This proposal introduces Push Chain, the next evolution of Push Protocol. Built on top of years of innovation, Push Chain transforms the Push technology from a notification and chat standard into a shared state blockchain designed for scalable consumer and universal applications.
Built as a shared state Proof-of-Stake layer 1, Push Chain enables seamless transactions, liquidity bridging, and smart contract interoperability across EVM and non-EVM chains.
Push Chain aims to simplify web3 user experiences by introducing features like wallet abstraction, fee abstraction, and universal smart contracts, paving the way for truly unified apps. In short, Push Chain enables any app to be accessed by any user from any chain.
Additionally, Push Chain is situated to form the infrastructure for onchain AI. Push Chain’s shared state, fast finality, sharding, tx payload size, and ability to have users from any chain allow it to support fast, multi-use AI use cases (agents, apps) across all of web3.
The existing Push Protocol notification and chat protocols will integrate with Push Chain, transforming these activities into value-accruing transactions while maintaining their status as de-facto standards. The project invites community feedback on the whitepaper as it continues to refine its roadmap and build toward a universal web3.
Abstract
Push Protocol has established itself as the de facto communication layer for web3, enabling any dapp, smart contract, or backend system to seamlessly send real-time notifications, chat, or onchain communications. Since its inception, the Push ecosystem has focused on driving real-world adoption of web3 by enhancing overall user experience.
Push Protocol bridged web3's communication gap through notifications and introduced a decentralized chat system using web3 wallets. The protocol now offers an expanded suite of features including group chats, video calls, and audio streaming.
All of Push Protocol’s efforts have consistently been directed towards three major goals:
- Enabling better UX for the overall web3 ecosystem.
- Driving mass adoption of web3-native apps.
- Creating one of the first web3-compatible consumer apps (EVM and non-EVM).
While we improved the UX of dapps through our communication layer, we recognized that core issues in web3 remained unresolved, posing significant hurdles to our vision of driving mass adoption with better UX. We identified the following key challenges:
- Web3 is not well-equipped to support truly scalable and consumer-centric apps.
- The fragmented blockchain ecosystem makes it nearly impossible to improve the overall web3 UX for the average user.
- Achieving a truly synchronous and unified execution layer is still not feasible.
These insights led us to develop notification nodes to help Push Protocol serve as a better notification and communication solution. We built these notification nodes to be truly scalable (linearly, as more nodes are added) and capable of serving as a universal hub for interacting with all blockchains.
While developing these notification nodes (originally called Push Nodes), we discovered their potential extended beyond notifications and could significantly impact the entire web3 ecosystem, prompting this proposal.
This proposal is an extensive document that outlines these concerns, how we aim to address them, and the upcoming changes that are critical for Push Protocol and its entire ecosystem.
Motivation
To understand what we aim to solve, it’s important to first examine the major concerns in web3 today.
- Web3 is not well-equipped for building truly scalable and consumer-centric apps.
The entire web3 ecosystem is heavily skewed toward financial applications. This focus on DeFi is evident in the proliferation of blockchain projects centered around trading, lending, staking, re-staking, perpetual trading, and similar activities.
While these innovations have their own significance, they have also inadvertently narrowed web3’s true potential, overshadowing non-financial and consumer-centric applications that could drive mass adoption.
This financial focus has created a perception that web3 is mainly for traders and investors. For mass adoption, web3 must expand beyond its financial roots into consumer applications that benefit everyday users.
This need for diversification was also highlighted by Vitalik at Devcon in Bangkok, where he emphasized the importance of “mixed financial + non-financial” applications.
To build truly consumer-centric applications for the average user, the underlying infrastructure must fulfill the following requirements:
1.1. A simplified and seamless user experience: Consumer applications need to prioritize ease of use, removing unnecessary complexity.
1.2. Instant finality and scalability: The infrastructure must support the speed and scale required by typical consumer apps to ensure a smooth experience.
1.3. Negligible usage costs: The cost of using an application should be almost negligible. High gas fees are a significant barrier to adoption. Affordable and efficient storage solutions are also essential for the success of consumer apps.
1.4. Shared app experiences: Applications must abstract away wallets, chains, and fees to create a unified user experience. For instance: A) Transactions should be possible from any chain. B) Wallet login should work seamlessly for both web3 users and newcomers. C) Fees should be flexible—payable by the app itself, via a fee contract in the native token of the respective chain, or by wallet delegation.
The major challenge today lies in the lack of infrastructure that adequately supports these requirements, which are essential for creating scalable and user-friendly consumer applications.
- The fragmented blockchain ecosystem makes it nearly impossible to improve the overall web3 UX for the average user.
Since the Rollup-Centric Ethereum Roadmap was proposed on October 2, 2020, Ethereum has embraced rollups as its primary scaling strategy. Rollups significantly increase transaction throughput and reduce transaction costs by bundling multiple transactions into batches. This approach has led to a proliferation of chains, including L1s, L2s, and even L3s.
The proliferation of new chains has complicated the web3 user experience. Users must juggle multiple wallets across different chains, while asset bridging remains complex and potentially insecure due to reliance on various bridging protocols.
The lack of a unified user interface exacerbates this issue, forcing users to switch between different web3 apps, wallets, and interfaces to manage their assets, track transactions, and interact with protocols.
- Achieving a truly synchronous and unified execution layer is still not feasible.
A shared state chain is essential to enable shared app experiences. This chain reads the state of wallets across other chains, facilitating universal smart contracts and creating an ecosystem where users from any chain—or even web2—can interact seamlessly. Such a chain would provide shared settlement across both EVM and non-EVM chains, ushering in an era of universal apps and shared experiences.
With shared state capabilities, universal app experiences become possible. Users, regardless of their origin—whether from any chain or ecosystem—can effortlessly interact with consumer apps that prioritize user engagement without regard to how or where they enter the system.
Specification
Push Protocol proposes the development and launch of Push Chain, a shared state L1 blockchain designed to support truly scalable consumer applications and universal apps.
Push Chain is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chain built to empower developers to create universal applications and serve as a shared settlement layer for multiple L1s, L2s, and L3s. It enables transactions from any chain, incorporates gas abstraction to eliminate the complexity of cross-chain interactions, and provides wallet abstraction for seamless onboarding and signing for both existing web3 users and newcomers from web2.
Push Chain introduces consumer transactions (where ordering isn't critical) to enable non-financial apps to achieve better speed and scalability. This is accomplished through orderless blocks, parallel execution, and dynamic sharding.
By addressing the challenges posed by fragmented chains, Push Chain creates the ideal environment for consumer applications and universal apps to thrive, heralding a new era of seamless shared app experiences.
Push Chain will achieve this vision through three key phases, each addressing the specific challenges faced by applications in that segment:
Phase 1: Consumer-Centric Apps
This phase enables truly scalable applications by supporting cross-chain transactions and an advanced virtual machine. It introduces consumer transactions (where order isn't critical), fee abstraction (pay fees from any chain or app), and wallet abstraction (social logins and cross-chain support). These improvements make web3 more accessible to both existing users and web2 newcomers.
Phase 2: Enabling Seamless Interoperability
This intermediary phase focuses on creating a unified L1 by enabling seamless and unified liquidity bridging between blockchains.
Phase 3: Universal Smart Contracts and Shared State
This phase unlocks the potential for universal applications by enabling seamless chain-to-chain settlement and establishing a shared state that supports cross-chain interactions.
