In the ever-evolving Web3 landscape, a new user interaction method is rapidly developing - Intent-Centric. Without losing their autonomy, users only need to express what intentions/needs they want and get the results. The complex paths and implementation processes involved are handled by the protocol/third-party solver.
Just like if I want to buy a Yuanyuan now, I only need to fill in my name, address, and phone number in the e-mall to place an order, sign for express delivery, and get the physical product without having to worry about logistics and distribution. Or, just say to ChatGPT Help me summarize the Ethereum white paper in 1,000 words and it will do it for you.
Intent-Centric can make todays Web3 greatly enhance user experience, composability and privacy.
fromuser experienceFrom one perspective, the essence of Intent-Centric is to simplify the user experience. By emphasizing “goals and results” rather than “process,” users are not exposed to complex interactive processes.
fromCancompositionalityOn the other hand, protocol applications customized for users intentions can achieve maximum compatibility, thereby cultivating a richer and more cohesive Crypto ecosystem.
fromPrivacyOn the other hand, users can avoid revealing details or data about themselves by simply expressing their intentions.
Just like the online shopping example above, in Web2, we can experience various smooth operations and minimalist user experience design. However, in Web3, the high threshold of user experience has become one of the important reasons that hinders the large-scale adoption of Web3. Even the simplest Swap requires cumbersome operations such as wallet creation and management, wallet connection, and contract signing. Slippage may also be too high due to factors such as MEV and poor liquidity.
Therefore, the emergence of Intent-Centric, which disassembles user needs and helps implement them, is no accident. Instead, together with Account Abstraction, TGBot, and MPC Wallet, which also aim to simplify the user experience, we will continue to large-scale adoption of Web3. ” This narrative is pushed to new heights.
Intent-related infrastructure
Account abstraction
Account abstraction is a popular concept that emphasizes that users should use more specific smart accounts to do more specific things.
The account abstraction of ERC-4337 was finalized, realizing smart accounts, giving more login methods, social recovery and other capabilities, lowering the threshold for new users to enter Web3 applications, and allowing new users to enter applications where they can express their intentions. In addition, the capabilities of smart accounts such as bundled transactions and gas payment can also better implement Intent-Centric. If authorization is required for every interaction, this will inevitably lead to a cumbersome and slow process of realizing user intentions.
Therefore, smart accounts have the potential to become the real front-end entrance to Intent-Centric.
Leading wallet projects currently working on achieving account abstraction include: Safe Wallet, Biconomy, ZeroDev, Argent, Ambire, Sequence, etc.
AI
Integrating AIGC similar to Siri and ChatGPT into the wallet allows users to express their intentions by talking to AI. This may be the final form of Intent-Centric. Moreover, AI built on a large number of large language models is also the most effective tool for deciphering user intentions. Only by cracking the users intention can third-party solvers perform more clearly. The winning project of this years ETHGlobal Paris Hackathon, Bob the Solver, is a good example. The veteran MPC wallet Particle Network is also working on such projects.
Although the ideal is very full, it is still some distance from being realized.
As it stands now, it is difficult for AI to achieve 100% accuracy in capturing user intentions, and it is difficult for users to express more complex intentions. As an example, I express my intention to the AI: mint an NFT in the XX NFT series based on the average price, but my account balance cannot be lower than $5.
This sentence contains both explicit and implicit intentions.
The explicit intention is Mint an NFT and my balance cannot go below $5 which makes my intention very clear.
The implicit intent is based on average price, which only roughly describes the intent. Obviously the AI must also understand and analyze the following issues:
• What is average price?
• Which platforms are referenced?
MEV
MEV (Miner Extractable Value) is a long-term challenge in DeFi, with users often facing adverse outcomes as miners exploit their positions at the expense of ordinary users.
However, realizing the users intention needs to be outsourced to the solver for execution, so the MEV generated by the transaction in Intent-Centric is also one of the issues that needs to be focused on.
Currently, both Essential and Flashbot SUAVE are trying to solve this problem.
Intent-Centric Infrastructure
Juvix
Juvix is a programming language designed by Intent-Centric public chain Anoma. Developers can use Juvix to easily implement application logic containing public, secret and encrypted data.
Bob the Solver
Bob the Solver core is working on AI solver and account abstraction wallet. The AI solver is equipped with machine learning models that can classify user intent. For example, if a user expresses the intention to purchase a specific NFT, the solver will accurately decipher that intention and find the best path to achieve the desired outcome. The solver will then forward the intent and optimal path to the account abstraction wallet, which will execute the transaction based on the optimal path.
OKcontract
OKcontract created the low-level intent standard to make it easier for developers to integrate transactions into any web page/application.
Delegatable
Delegatable is a tool and framework that implements universal delegation on Ethereum, enabling users to entrust friends/third-party agents to perform actions on their behalf without paying gas fees or making transactions. The agents batch processing of transactions can reduce gas costs and improve efficiency.
Intent-specific DApps
It is worth mentioning that Intent-Centric did not appear in Web3 only after Paradigm published a research article; on the contrary, the protocol for executing user intent has been around for some time. There are already many protocols or features with specific intent in different vertical areas of Web3.
In the case of Web3, the oldest field of DeFi, user intentions are usually oriented towards generating revenue and utility. Surrounding this intention, many DeFi DApps can be called the predecessors of the Intent-Centric narrative.
For example, the most familiar aggregators such as 1inch and Blur emerged to help users save the trouble of finding the best trading paths and income strategies. Users only need to enter their trading intentions, the smart contract will orchestrate the best route, and they only need to make the final decision.
Another example is Unibot and other TGBots that became popular some time ago. They cleverly turn complex on-chain operations into decisions within Telegram chat options. By selecting the corresponding options, users can perform operations such as executing transactions, interacting with airdrops, and sniping at market openings, which are relatively complex operations for new users.
As for issues such as MEV and transaction slippage, some new and old DeFi protocols are helping users with their intention of “better transactions”, for example,
• CoWSwap, 1inch Fusion, UniswapX: off-chain matching, the solver completes the transaction on the chain. Complex transactions do not need to pay gas fees multiple times, and there is no need to pay gas fees if the transaction fails.
• Seaport: A completely decentralized alternative to Opensea. It is matched off-chain and completed on-chain by the solver. There is no Gas fee for users to place orders.
• Symmio: Intent-based on-chain peer-to-peer derivatives trading platform. A user sends a transaction and all other users can see the transaction information and become a counterparty/solver if they accept the transaction. There is no capital pool involved in this process. What A earns is what B loses.
• BASED Markets: an on-chain trading platform based on the Symmio trading framework.
• BananaHq: Use Intent-Centric, ERC-4337 and zero-knowledge proof to build smart wallets to lower the threshold for new users to enter Web3.
Universal solution
The blockchain-centric architecture currently represented by Ethereum provides a key attribute:Programmable settlement, which is enough to support simple specific intent DApps, but difficult to implement complex intents. Some projects are creating universal solutions for Intent-Centric, providing the necessary attributes for any specific intent DApp from the start.
Anoma
Anoma is an Intent-Centric + privacy-protecting public chain used for counterparty discovery, resolution and multi-chain atomic settlement. Suitable for building DApps on top of which involve users issuing an unlimited number of complex intentions.
Anomas total financing scale is approximately US$57.8 million, of which it successfully completed a US$26 million Series A financing in November 2021. The project valuation at the time of the Series A financing was approximately US$260 million. Although Anoma is still in its early stages, its white paper can be traced back to 2018. After years of incubation and evolution, it is the absolute time and technology leader in the Intent-Centric field.
Anomas core workflow includes the following steps:
• User interaction: Users can send transparent, private, or protected intents to Anomas intent propagation network.
• Intent collection and matching: Solvers in the network collect intentions and perform equilibrium state transitions to achieve matching. For example, if a user chooses to exchange 1 Bitcoin for Ethereum, another user must reverse the transaction to achieve a balanced state transition.
• Transaction processing: The matched transaction is submitted to mempool, and the verifier will send the block packaged by the proposer to the execution layer to complete the execution and verify the validity, and finally complete the state root update.
Anomas technical core includes Taiga (private state transition framework integrated into the intent propagation layer and matching layer), Typhon (cross-chain atomic transaction consensus mechanism), MASP (multi-asset shielded pool), Vamp-IR (arithmetic circuit language), Juvix (Programming language) etc. It has been used for the construction of DApps with specific intentions from the beginning, so Anoma is indispensable when it comes to the implementation of Intent-Centric.
Essential
On September 21, Essential, which focuses on building Intent-Centric universal solutions, announced a US$5.5 million seed round of financing.
Essentials solution is mainly divided into three parts. The first is to create a standard for users to express their intentions. By adopting this standard, no matter which chain it is, there will be a common framework for expressing and solving intentions; secondly, a An Ethereum standard for intent-oriented account abstraction. By leveraging account abstraction, users will allow solvers to execute transactions to achieve their intentions; and finally a new Intent-Centric blockchain.
Compared to Anoma and Essential, which directly create new public chains, dappOS and Particle Network adopt a new approach, packaging existing DApps to become the intent layer of Web3.
dappOS
In July 2023, dappOS completed a seed round of financing jointly led by IDG Capital and Sequoia China, and had previously received pre-seed financing from Binance Labs.
dappOS is the first Web3 operating protocol and an Intent-Centric protocol that enables users to create and manage wallets by providing a multi-chain smart account (unified account) dappOS Account and a solver network dappOS Network, and integrating more than 20 industry-leading DApps , experience different chain DApps, manage multi-chain assets, and conduct complex transactions as smoothly as using commonly used apps.
For example, Xiao Ming’s total balance in the dappOS unified account is 100 USDC, of which 50 USDC is on the Ethereum chain and 50 USDC is on the BNB Chain. Xiao Ming only needs to sign once to confirm the transaction on GMX on Arbitrum or Benqi on Avalanche. Use the total balance of this 100 USDC. This is where dappOS Account and dappOS Network come in. It is as convenient for users to use dappOS as it is to trade on CEX, and all the processes involved behind each transaction are performed by the solver.
As dappOS V2 went online in early September, it became more than just a theoretical concept, with Perpetual Protocol being the first to be integrated into it. More leading DApps will be integrated in the future, such as Perpetual, Benqi, QuickSwap, KyberSwap, GMX, KuSwap, and Pangolin. Thanks to dappOS, users can now use the Perpetual Protocol, which was originally only available on Arbitrum, across various chains such as BNB Chain. Users can use any token of their choice to settle Gas fees.
Particle Network
Particle Network officially launched its V1 product at the end of October last year, a Wallet-as-a-Service (wallet as a service) product based on MPC-TSS, and upgraded to an MPC+ account abstraction wallet when ERC-4337 was launched. The highlight is that based on MPCs secure key fragment management and execution environment, users can log in in the familiar Web2 way without worrying about the custody of private keys and mnemonic phrases; at the same time, the experience of using the wallet is improved based on account abstraction, such as unifying Gas fees, batch operations, etc.
In the 10 months since V1 was launched, hundreds of DApps of various types have integrated Particle Networks products and services, including Xter.io, Hooked Protocol, ApeX, 1inch and CyberConnect, etc., basically covering the top of each track. department project.
After the Intent-Centric concept became popular, Particle Network continued to work and announced an upgrade to the new version V2. As it introduces itself, Particle Network V2 will be an Intent-Centric-based Web3 access layer.
Particle Network V2 builds a solver network based on the existing MPC+ account abstract wallet and integrates hundreds of DApps, and adds an AIGC to the wallet. Users only need to directly express their intentions to this AIGC to solve the problem. The server then calculates the best path to execute from hundreds of DApps based on the users intention. Particle Network V2 is committed to implementing the final form of Intent-Centric mentioned above.
In summary, dappOS is like the WeChat mini program platform, which abstracts away the concepts of public chains and interaction processes, allowing users to use dozens of DApps on different chains at the same time in one wallet; Particle Network V2 is more like ChatGPT, users only need to interact with AIGC chats, and AI will automatically help them complete complex transactions. Once the product is perfected, the two will play a very large role in attracting new users of Web3. Anoma and Essential are more like iterating the current Web3 and maximizing Intent-Centric. Although there is still a long way to go, once it matures and the developer and user ecosystem is well established, it is expected to trigger a new round of explosive growth in DApps and usher in the next era of Web3.
DYOR
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