The Death of the Network Switch: Why We Finally Stopped Toggling RPCs

I distinctly remember the moment I decided I was done with multi-chain development. It wasn’t a hack, and it wasn’t a rug pull. It was a Tuesday afternoon in late 2023, trying to demo a simple lending protocol to a friend.

“Okay, now connect your wallet,” I said.

“It says wrong network,” he replied.

“Right, switch to Arbitrum. No, wait, the liquidity is on Optimism today. Switch to Optimism. Do you have ETH there? No? Okay, switch back to Mainnet, bridge some over… wait, don’t use that bridge, it takes 20 minutes. Use the fast one. Now switch back.”

He closed the laptop. I didn’t blame him.

For years, the “Network Switch” was the single biggest friction point in DeFi. It was a crude, manual toggle that forced users to understand the underlying infrastructure just to move value. It was like asking someone to manually switch cell towers when they drove into a new neighborhood.

Now, looking at the architecture we’re building in late 2025, that concept feels archaic. The manual “Switch” is dead. It’s been replaced by Chain Abstraction Layers that handle the routing logic where it belongs: on the backend, away from the user.

The Technical Cost of the “Switch”

Let’s look at what actually happened under the hood when a user triggered a network switch in the old paradigm (circa 2022-2024). It wasn’t just a UI toggle; it was a complete context destruction.

When a dApp requested wallet_switchEthereumChain, the injected provider had to:

• Tear down the current WebSocket or HTTP connection.
• Re-handshake with a new RPC endpoint (often failing if the user had a custom RPC set).
• Reload the entire application state because the smart contract addresses on Chain A don’t exist on Chain B.
• Force the user to re-sign any pending approvals.

From a developer perspective, handling this state management was a nightmare. You ended up with codebases riddled with chainId checks and conditional logic for every single interaction. If chainId === 10, do this. If 42161, do that. It was brittle.

The Shift to Intent-Based Routing

The solution wasn’t better bridges. It was removing the concept of “location” from the user’s immediate concern. We stopped asking users to “Switch” and started asking them to “Sign.”

This is where Intent-Based Architectures (or Chain Abstraction) took over. Instead of a transaction that says “Call function X on Contract Y on Chain Z,” the user signs a message that says “I want to move 100 USDC to this yield vault.”

They sign this on their home chain. They never switch networks. They never touch a bridge UI.

Behind the scenes, a network of Solvers (or Fillers) sees this intent. One solver, who happens to have liquidity on the destination chain, executes the action instantly. They claim the user’s funds on the source chain later as reimbursement (plus a fee).

Here is a simplified look at how we structure these “Cross-Chain Intents” in Solidity today compared to the old direct calls:

// OLD WAY: Direct Execution (Requires user to be on the specific chain)
// User must manually switch to the destination chain to call this
function depositToVault(uint256 amount) external {
    IERC20(usdc).transferFrom(msg.sender, address(this), amount);
    // ... logic
}

// NEW WAY: Intent Settlement (Chain Agnostic)
// User signs an off-chain message; Solver calls this function
struct UserIntent {
    address user;
    address asset;
    uint256 amount;
    uint256 destChainId;
    bytes actionData; // The actual function call encoded
    uint256 deadline;
    bytes signature;  // User's signature from ANY chain
}

function settleIntent(UserIntent calldata intent) external onlySolver {
    // 1. Verify user signature
    verifySignature(intent);

    // 2. Solver fronts the assets
    IERC20(intent.asset).transferFrom(msg.sender, address(this), intent.amount);

    // 3. Execute the action as if the user did it
    (bool success, ) = targetContract.call(intent.actionData);
    require(success, "Execution failed");
    
    // 4. Emit event for cross-chain settlement/repayment
    emit IntentSettled(intent.user, intent.amount);
}

Notice the difference? The settleIntent function is called by a Solver, not the user. The user is chilling on Mainnet or Base, while the execution happens on Polygon or Arbitrum. The “Switch” has become a backend routing decision made by a bot, not a manual toggle made by a human.

Why This Architecture Wins

I was skeptical at first. I thought, “Great, another layer of centralization with these solvers.” But the UX benefits are undeniable, and the competition between solvers actually keeps fees lower than manual bridging ever did.

The magic happens in the Unified Liquidity Layer. By aggregating balances virtually, apps can present a “Global Balance.” If I have 50 USDC on Chain A and 50 USDC on Chain B, the app just shows “100 USDC Available.” When I click “Invest,” the abstraction layer figures out where to pull the funds from. It might pull 50 from each, or swap and bridge in the background.

This fundamentally changes how we write frontends. We used to query the provider for chainId every five seconds. Now? We barely check it. The app is chain-agnostic. The “Switch” component in the UI library is gathering dust.

The Developer’s New Reality

If you’re still building dApps that require users to manually add RPC URLs or switch networks in 2025, you are building for a ghost town. Users have tasted the flow state of abstraction, and they aren’t going back to the friction.

The integration complexity has shifted. We used to spend time building “Switch Network” modals. Now, we spend that time integrating Solver APIs and standardizing Intent structures. It’s a trade-off I’ll take any day. Writing logic for intent verification is cleaner than handling the asynchronous hell of browser wallet switching errors.

The network switch served its purpose during the infrastructure phase of Web3. It was the manual transmission of the crypto world. But we’ve moved to automatic. And honestly? Good riddance.