Why is the new narrative of "Intent" expected to change the blockchain and Web3?

11/07/2023·1years ago

The new concept of "Intent" in Web3, proposed by Paradigm, has attracted attention in the industry, followed by the emergence of dappOS around this concept. Well-known VCs such as Sequoia Capital and Binance have entered this track, with Paradigm's Series A project valued at $4 billion and raising $35 million, and dappOS raising $50 million in seed funding. So why has the new concept of "Intent" attracted a large amount of capital? Is it a milestone concept? This article will take you through what "Intent" is and share a few potential highlight projects.

What is Intent?

As a Web3 user, do you feel lost in the bustling Web3 world, not knowing where to start in the market, grab the best prices, switch to the correct public chain, or ensure the security of your signatures? In life, when we enter a large market, we also encounter similar problems: imagine having a list of things to buy, but with such a large market, it takes a lot of time to figure out where to start. If you have a friend who knows the market well, you can simply hand over your list of needs to them, and they can take care of everything for you. Similarly, in the world of blockchain, there is a similar concept called "Intent-centric."

Intent is a design concept that emphasizes the central position of "user intent," focusing on the user's intent and goals. Through smart contracts or protocols, user intent is encoded into executable instructions, enabling automated execution and interaction.

Intent is like a chef in a restaurant. Users only focus on their needs—ordering the dish they want and the goal of eating that dish. The chef knows how to cook the dish, and you just wait for the delicious food, without having to tell the chef every step of the cooking process.

In the Web3 world, the role of "Intent" is similar. Users directly tell it what they want, rather than giving the computer step-by-step instructions. For example, users do not need to say, "I want to transfer from account A to account B using method XX," but rather say, "I want to send 50 USDC to Mr. Wang." The system understands the user's "intent" and takes the necessary steps. This idea of "intent transactions" simplifies transactions and has the potential to completely change blockchain and Web3.

How does Intent change blockchain and Web3?

We can compare the limitations of the current transaction model with the advantages of intent transactions to understand the importance of "intent transactions" in simplifying blockchain and Web3.

1. Limitations of the current transaction model[1]:

Opacity of the transaction process—When submitting a transaction, the result depends largely on factors such as network congestion, miner/validator behavior, and the overall blockchain state at a specific execution time. This opacity makes users vulnerable to attacks such as front-running, reverse transactions, and other "maximum extractable value" (MEV) techniques.
Complex cross-network paths—The expected transaction results often require coordinated atomic transactions across multiple domains, protocols, and decentralized applications.
Risks of signature control—By signing the original transaction, users give a lot of control and permissions to complex smart contract code and backend infrastructure, giving too much power to decentralized applications and their creators.
Lack of readability—The transaction model forces users to consider low-level details such as random numbers, gas fees, and other blockchain mysteries. Transactions provide users with limited capabilities and cannot express intent in simple terms that map to their mental models.
Lack of flexibility—The transaction model provides little built-in support for cross-domain composability, privacy, and other progressive features.
Centralization risks—Transactions give miners, validators, and relayers a high degree of freedom, allowing them to easily extract value through reordering, review, and other techniques. The lack of visibility into execution exacerbates user vulnerability to MEV exploitation.

2. Advantages and importance of intent transactions:

Increased user control—Users can set constraints without giving up all permissions.
Personalized custom choices—Users can decide personalized parameters when expressing intent, such as privacy, atomicity, transaction counterpart, and fees.
Flexible cross-domain composability—Intent seamlessly specifies results across applications, protocols, and blockchains, increasing transaction possibilities to maximize user benefits.
Mitigation of MEV—Encryption and programmability hinder extractors.
Enhanced outcomes—Professional solvers compete to optimize intent realization.
Readability—Intent is closer to the user's transactional mental model.

Therefore, the emergence of the new narrative of Intent is to transform the blockchain experience from a manual, step-by-step process to a more intuitive, results-oriented method, enabling smoother transactions, faster execution, and a more user-centric experience, which gives it the expectation of changing blockchain and Web3.

Highlight Project Sharing

1. DappOS

dappOS is an intent-centric protocol that helps users manage Dapp operations. As a Web3 unified operation protocol, dappOS virtualizes public chains between users and encrypted infrastructure such as cross-chain bridges, providing users with a one-click friendly interaction experience.

For project parties, this platform is like an App Store, where projects only need to be deployed once to cover traffic on all chains. For users, using dappOS to access different Web3 applications is as convenient as calling mini-programs in WeChat, requiring only a wallet account on one chain to access applications on various chains without any hassle.

Its main features include:

Increased account security and accessibility: Functions to recover deleted mnemonic phrases and reset accounts through other devices or third-party KYC services.
Simplified operation verification and authorization process: Users can complete various operation processes with just one click, without the need for cumbersome steps or multiple confirmations. This efficiency provides great convenience to users, reducing potential troubles when using Dapps.
High openness and user-friendliness: dappOS simplifies the complex Dapp operation process to the extreme, making it accessible to anyone, regardless of whether they have in-depth knowledge of encryption. This accessibility is expected to attract more people to participate in the blockchain and decentralized world.
Autonomy: dappOS allows users to control and manage their data and assets without third-party intervention or restrictions.

dappOS's core technologies include dappOS Account and dappOS Network, which respectively provide virtual wallet and cross-chain service functions. Its product features include dappOS SDK and mini-program platform, providing solutions for multi-chain deployment and access for both B-end and C-end users.

In terms of funding, dappOS was selected for the fifth season incubation program by Binance Labs in November 2022, and on June 20, 2023, it received pre-seed funding from Binance Labs, but the specific funding amount was not disclosed. On July 21, 2023, Web3 operation protocol dappOS announced the completion of a seed round of funding at a valuation of $50 million, led by IDG Capital and Sequoia China, with participation from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures, and others.

2. Anoma Network

Anoma Network is an intent-centric, privacy-preserving protocol for decentralized trade discovery, negotiation, and multi-chain atomic settlement. Through smart contracts or protocols, Anoma Network can automatically find the best trade solutions for users and ensure the reliability and privacy of transactions. The core transaction process of intent interaction is as follows:

User interaction: Users can transparently, privately, or protectively send intents to the Anoma network through Anoma's intent gossip layer.
Intent collection and matching: Anoma's solver is responsible for collecting intents, balancing state transitions to match trade counterparts. The solver is a smart contract that can find the best trade solutions based on user intent and network state, and generate corresponding trade data.
Transaction processing: Matched trades are submitted to the encrypted mempool, and validators send proposer-packaged blocks to the execution environment for execution and validation, ultimately updating the state root. The execution environment is a secure and reliable operating platform that supports transparent, secret, and encrypted data types, as well as cross-application data interaction.

Anoma's team background is very impressive, founded by Brink, Awa Sun Yin, and Christopher Goes, who met while working at the blockchain technology company All in Bits (also known as Tendermint), which built the Cosmos network. All three are co-founders of the Anoma project.

Anoma also has a strong technical development team, independently developing core technologies such as Taiga, Typhon, MASP, Vamp-IR, and Juvix, covering various aspects such as privacy computing, cross-chain communication, and circuit programming, demonstrating Anoma's deep accumulation in distributed systems and cryptography. Additionally, Anoma's product iteration speed is fast, able to quickly respond to market demands and continuously launch new products, such as Namada, a privacy partition ledger being developed by Anoma, which will be compatible with Ethereum and IBC chains, providing asset-free inter-chain privacy communication. Anoma has built a complete technical system, establishing a solid technical foundation, which guarantees Anoma's continuous leadership in cutting-edge areas such as intent computing in the future.

In terms of funding, Anoma completed a $6.75 million private placement led by Polychain Capital in 2021, followed by a $26 million funding round led by Polychain Capital in the same year, and a $25 million funding round led by CMCC Global in May 2023.

3. Bob the Solver

Bob the Solver is middleware for intent-based transactions, integrated into wallets and applications to achieve an intent-centric user experience. Bob the Solver consists of two parts:

Interaction layer:

This layer achieves accurate recognition and understanding of user intent through a combination of AI chatbots, intent classifiers, and transaction optimizers. When users express their intent, the Solver determines the best execution path based on their needs.

AI chatbots engage in conversations with users, listening to their needs and problems to determine user intent. This allows users to interact with the blockchain in a more natural and intuitive way. The operation of AI chatbots is similar to conversations between people, helping users better express their intent.
The Intent classifier is a key technical component for better serving users. It categorizes user intent, grouping different types of user needs. Through classification, the Intent classifier can more accurately determine user intent and pass it to the transaction optimizer.
The transaction optimizer is the final step in the interaction layer. Once the user's intent is identified and the best execution path is determined, the transaction optimizer constructs a set of transactions and sends them to the AA (Automated Agent) wallet.

Execution layer:

This layer consists of the AA wallet system, bundler (transaction batch processing smart contract), and LianGuaiymaster (Gas fee management smart contract).

The AA wallet system, based on the EIP-4337 standard, aims to execute transactions. It is a powerful and efficient wallet system that provides users with a convenient transaction environment.
In the AA wallet system, the bundler is an important component responsible for collecting and organizing transactions sent by the Solver. The bundler packages these transactions into a batch to improve transaction efficiency and speed. This batch processing method is similar to bundling multiple packages for faster delivery. Through batch processing, the bundler effectively optimizes the transaction execution process.
Another key component is LianGuaiymaster, a Gas fee management smart contract. In blockchain, every transaction requires a certain amount of Gas fees. LianGuaiymaster manages the Gas fees associated with these transactions. By managing Gas fees reasonably, LianGuaiymaster improves transaction execution efficiency and economy.

Bob the Solver gained attention at the EthCC conference due to its intent-centric approach, enlarging the future development space of Solver with AI as a third-party collaborator, demonstrating a new paradigm of AI+blockchain cooperation.

4. Essential

Essential is building intent-based infrastructure and tools to accelerate the transition from value extraction to intent satisfaction, mitigate the centralized threat posed by MEV, and improve user satisfaction. The project aims to minimize extraction behavior, allowing users to better protect their interests and reduce the risk of unfair value deprivation. Its goal is to accelerate the transition from value extraction to intent satisfaction, which helps improve the efficiency and sustainability of blockchain systems.

In terms of funding, Essential completed a $5.15 million seed round of funding in September 2023, led by Maven11, with participation from Robot Ventures, Karatage, Batuhan Dasgin, Skip, James Prestwich, Brandon Curtis, Eclipse founder Neel Somani, and others. By reducing extraction behavior, the Essential project is expected to promote the development of a fairer and more sustainable blockchain ecosystem.

[1] Reference: MarsBit. Revealing the advantages and use cases of intent-driven transactions[OL].(2023-08-18) https://www.bitget.com/zh-CN/news/detail/12560603803380

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