For years, the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem has promised open access to financial tools without intermediaries. But for everyday users, that promise often collided with a reality of prohibitively high gas fees, opaque transaction systems, and technical barriers. In 2024, average Ethereum transaction costs spiked during periods of network congestion, with some users paying more than $100 per transaction. For smaller developers and retail participants, this created a system where Cryptocurrency felt anything but accessible.
One builder has worked to change that equation
As Head of Growth for Uniswap Foundation, Chirag Narang led the development and launch of a new Layer 2 blockchain architecture called Unichain, designed from the ground up for DeFi. The mission was clear: eliminate the bottlenecks that inflated user costs, starting with the structural causes behind gas inefficiency.
Chirag Narang didn't approach the problem as a feature tweak or short-term optimization. He viewed high gas fees as a systemic failure, one that necessitated a fundamental re-evaluation of how transactions are ordered, validated, and executed. Rather than build around the inefficiencies, Chirag Narang led the creation of an entirely new infrastructure layer with fairness and cost-efficiency as core design principles. This wasn't just about cutting fees, it was about making DeFi truly accessible.
Why High Transactional Fee Was More Than a Technical Glitch
Ethereum's core infrastructure was never optimized for the high-frequency, multi-party transaction logic required by most DeFi protocols. With every smart contract interaction competing for blockspace, high gas costs became the norm rather than the exception. These costs didn't just impact power users trading large volumes. They excluded many participants entirely, particularly smaller U.S. investors and developers experimenting with their first smart contracts.
Moreover, high gas prices weren't just a matter of congestion. As Chirag Narang observed, centralized sequencer models across many Layer 2s often prioritized throughput over fairness. This meant users who couldn't pay higher gas premiums were routinely pushed to the back of the queue or fell victim to front-running by faster, well-resourced users.
Building an Infrastructure That Cuts Cost at the Root
Unichain was built to solve this problem at the system level. Rather than layering onto an existing architecture, Chirag Narang led the effort to architect a purpose-built network that integrated two critical components: decentralized sequencing and programmable liquidity.
At the core of Unichain's architecture is its Validation Network (UVN), a decentralized group of validators that eliminates reliance on a single sequencer. This structure alone limits the gas manipulation opportunities that single-operator rollups often introduce.
The use of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in Unichain enables fair ordering of transactions. Unichain ensures a fairer playing field for users by imposing gas-based priority instead of backroom preferences. Failed trades are refunded. High-speed trading doesn't drown out slower participants. And most critically, users aren't forced to overpay just to ensure inclusion.
Gas Efficiency Through Programmable Liquidity
The other half of the cost equation lies in liquidity design. Traditional DeFi systems require repeated contract calls and static fee structures, each adding cost to a transaction. Under Chirag Narang's leadership, Unichain launched programmable liquidity hooks that allow developers to consolidate logic such as rebalancing, fee adjustments, or collateral management into a single on-chain module.
That consolidation reduces the number of steps in a transaction, and therefore, reduces gas fees. In practice, users engaging with Unichain-enabled apps pay less because they're no longer routed through bloated, hard-coded smart contracts.
From System Design to Measurable Impact
The proof is in adoption. Within six months of launch, Unichain secured around $900 million in total value and became one of the fastest-growing Layer 2 networks. U.S.-based developers, including those without large operational budgets, were able to deploy applications with greater capital efficiency. Unichain enabled retail users to return to the ecosystem without worrying about the high gas fees and threats. Apart from retail users, Unichain was adopted by several other significant organizations, including finance firms like Enso Finance, researchers from universities in the UK and Germany, and various other blockchain founders.
More than a protocol upgrade, Chirag Narang's contribution redefined what DeFi affordability could look like, not through subsidies or temporary incentives, but through architecture-level changes that persist across market cycles.
Lower Fees, Higher Trust
Gas costs in DeFi aren't just a line item. They're a trust signal. When users feel they're being priced out or manipulated at the infrastructure level, adoption stalls. By reducing those costs systemically, Unichain under Chirag Narang's leadership rebuilt a foundation where DeFi can be what it always claimed to be: open, fair, and efficient for all.
In conclusion, Chirag Narang didn't just launch a Layer 2 blockchain; he helped restore access to an entire class of users priced out of the digital financial future and showed that cost-efficiency, when built into the architecture, can scale equity along with innovation.
