Whether one likes it or not, traditional DeFi interactions have remained steeped in complexity even as crypto adoption has surged globally, so much so that by late 2024, an estimated 659 million people worldwide were reported to be holding crypto. Yet, of this number, only a fraction of these users felt comfortable navigating the DeFi sector — despite its promise of an “open system of interoperable protocols.”
In practice, liquidity within this space has continued to remain fragmented and user experience highly bloated. Cross-chain bridges, in this regard, have become essential as during January 2025 alone, users moved a record $16.29 billion across chains (with over $10 billion being locked in these bridges at any given time).
Yet every bridge or swap adds more friction to the mix. For new (and even some seasoned) users, this multi-step process of selecting a token, bridging it, swapping on a destination chain, etc can be daunting. Not only that, these steps have real human costs associated with them as several industry studies have found that 85% of users who connect their wallet to a dApp never complete a transaction.
In layman terms, this means projects see only one or two real users for every ten who try to enter their app. The result is a striking paradox, i.e. while DeFi has continued to witness explosive growth in user accounts (151 million unique addresses), revenues per user have collapsed (from ~$148 per user in 2021 to about $7 in 2024).
What needs to be done?
Such obstacles mean that one-click simplicity is no longer a luxury but rather table stakes as in every other corner of consumer tech, users expect immediate results from a single interaction. Streaming services, shopping apps and even basic banking websites streamline onboarding so well that most new users expect instant gratification.
The same mindset is now becoming a necessity in DeFi because protocols that require multiple approvals, swaps, or chains to engage with are being abandoned rapidly. To help allay these issues, Enso and Stargate recently introduced a new Cross-chain DeFi Widget, which has been described as “the first embeddable shortcut that allows any DeFi protocol to accept deposits from any chain”.
This widget is a plug-and-play React component (with a hosted web app alternative) that teams can drop into their frontend with only a few lines of code. From a developer’s standpoint, it provides a single interface for cross-chain routing — as after installation, the widget uses Enso’s routing API and LayerZero/Stargate bridging to handle everything under the hood.
Moreover, it leverages real-time on-chain liquidity data to compute the optimal path and then calls Stargate (via LayerZero) to transfer assets securely.
From a user’s perspective, the experience is startlingly simple as well. They simply have to select an input token (on their home chain), pick a target protocol on another chain, and see a preview of the full multi-chain route before signing. The widget then bundles all necessary actions (token swaps, bridge transfers, and final deposits) so that the customer only ever signs one transaction.
Lastly, it bears mentioning that the tool is highly customizable, supporting pinning specific chains and tokens or restricting flows to certain vaults, farms, or LP positions. Thanks to all of this, Enso’s widget has already seen rapid real-world adoption, being integrated by projects like Plume Network, Rooster Protocol, Royco Protocol, and Yield (with support for Optimism and other chains coming soon).
What happens now?
After years of fragmented liquidity and laborious processes, Enso’s latest offering aims to remove many of today’s DeFi-related complications. As a result, for the first time, any dApp can plug in a single component that automatically bridges, swaps, and demand deposits. If widely adopted, this technology could substantially broaden DeFi’s reach as millions more crypto holders could potentially be able to try yield farming or vaults on any chain without ever leaving their home wallet experience. Interesting times ahead!