After DeFi Summer, the decentralized finance ecosystem has been on a wild ride, but the problems that come with it are gradually surfacing. The most painful phenomenon is liquidity fragmentation — which has become a major pain point for the entire industry.

Let's take a look at the current landscape: Ethereum Layer 2, new public chains, application chains are emerging everywhere, each with its own ecosystem. As a result, users' capital is spread across dozens of chains and thousands of liquidity pools. Transaction costs soar, slippage becomes fierce, capital efficiency is low, and the overall market maturity is thus limited. Over time, everyone is asking: Is there a way to consolidate this fragmented liquidity? Can we provide users with a unified, efficient, and truly cost-saving trading interface?

Walrus Protocol emerged against this backdrop. Its idea is very clear — to create a high-level cross-chain liquidity aggregation protocol. But the key is how to do it.

It doesn't adopt a brute-force listing approach (simply stacking trading pairs from different chains together), but instead implements a smart routing algorithm. Once a user initiates a transaction, this system immediately activates: analyzing the trading path in real-time, comparing liquidity sources across multiple chains, calculating Gas costs, and evaluating price difference opportunities. The underlying technology includes on-chain liquidity depth indexing, real-time price difference monitoring, and fee calculation. It sounds a bit complex, but essentially, it helps machines find the most cost-effective trading solutions for you.

Even more ambitious is its goal to build a "unified liquidity layer" — a system where users don't need to care about which chain or pool their assets are on. If this can be achieved, it could be a significant breakthrough for the entire cross-chain DeFi ecosystem.