Author: YBB Capital; Translator: LianGuaicryptonaitive
Preface
The user experience problem of Web3 has always been one of the reasons why blockchain is difficult to be widely adopted. Recently, the concept of “intent-based protocols and infrastructure” ranks first among the top 10 potential cryptocurrency trends released by LianGuairadigm, a well-known Web3 venture capital firm. When LianGuairadigm introduced the top 10 potential trends of their institution to the cryptocurrency field, the concept of “intent-based protocols and infrastructure” immediately attracted industry attention. It is a design concept that focuses on user needs. For example, “I want to order a $30 worth of hamburger delivery” is an “intent”, and users only need to enter their name, phone number, delivery address on the delivery platform and place an order to achieve this intent, without having to worry about how the merchant earns $30 and how the platform allocates the delivery rider and how the rider delivers the order to the customer’s home. This architecture greatly simplifies the user experience threshold, so that each user only needs to express their intent, and various other protocols handle the intermediate process, waiting for the final result.
Intent-based Design Principles
Origin:
In the Web3 world, transactions are the most core function, whether it is DeFi, GameFi, NFT, or any other concept, they all rely on basic transactions. However, the reality is that the decentralized nature of the blockchain determines that different chains are independent islands, and we need to find a bridge to connect them to complete asset exchange. Although centralized exchanges provide convenient trading experiences for users, countless Dapp applications still require wallet authorization one by one. In order to reduce the user experience threshold of decentralized applications, the concept of “intent-based” was born.
Although the concept of “intent” is not new, LianGuairadigm has sparked a wave of this concept, so we borrow their definition for reference: “By signing and sharing an intention, users are actually allowing the recipient to choose the calculation path on their behalf.” In practice, the signing is mainly governed by the user’s spontaneous intention, but can assets really be handed over to third-party outsourcing to reduce the usage threshold? The following sections will discuss the content involved in implementing the vision of intent-based.
What is Intent:
LianGuairadigm’s explanation of the concept of “intent” is reflected in the article “Intent-based Architecture and Its Risks”, which was published on June 1, 23. In the user’s regular transaction process, the transaction signature allows the verifier to perform verification operations based on specific calculation paths, and the Gas cost of the process is used to incentivize the verifier to complete the calculation. However, the intent does not point to a specific calculation path, and only needs to meet specific constraint conditions to be completed by any path to achieve the final result. In fact, by signing and sharing an intention, users are actually allowing the recipient to choose the execution path on their behalf (as shown in the figure below). In order to distinguish it from transactions, we define intent as a message signature that allows multiple paths to transition from a given starting state to the final state result.
As shown in the above figure, when submitting a transaction, the execution path needs to be specified. For example, when exchanging tokens on Uniswap, the execution path is determined by the matching result when submitting the intention. For users, they only need to express their intentions, and the protocol/application based on intentions completes other work, that is, matching the execution path.
In short: Transaction = I specify the operation to be executed; Intention = I want the result but don’t care about the process of achieving it. Intentions with different preferences can be matched in a complex way, and this process requires “counterparty discovery” and “solver solving”.
Bob, the intention solver
Bob Solver (hereinafter referred to as the solver, not specifically referring to Bob Solver) is an intention-based transaction infrastructure whose main purpose is to simplify the operation process, reduce user participation thresholds, integrate wallets and decentralized applications, and essentially create and execute users’ outsourced transactions. Its implementation consists of two main associated components:
● Solver for creating transactions: composed of AI chatbot + intention classification + transaction optimization, responsible for implementing the best execution path for user intentions and sending it to the AA wallet. The solver is equipped with a machine learning (ML) model for classifying user intentions;
● Abstract account wallet for transaction execution: AA wallet system adopting the EIP-4337 standard, composed of bundler and LianGuaiymaster, integrated with the solver to simplify the transaction process.
Intention Layer and Solver
Is it possible to build an independent intention layer for solvers to compete for solutions? Theoretically, it is feasible, but in practice, it is very difficult to implement. We need to focus on Anoma, SUAVE (detailed below) as solutions to solve the core MEV problem. In order to realize the vision of intention-based, what functions are needed to securely complete asset transfers by packaging transactions to third parties?
1. Reliability:
In order to achieve the reliable decentralized blockchain features, it may not be sufficient to assume the existence of a simple “intention network” to satisfy the guarantees of intentions for users and solvers. After the user expresses their intentions, the solver calculates the specific cost of each execution path, and the solver will be restricted by the rules set by the user. The user needs to know that each execution path is reliable;
2. Privacy:
The complexity of the solver providing the best execution path to users will inevitably be affected by hacker attacks to steal assets or obtain user information, and in most cases, the user’s on-chain activity information will be visible to observers. In order to ensure the security of user information, it is necessary to encrypt or hide at least some important information of the user, but it is very difficult to achieve the privatization of computable information on the blockchain;
3. Expressing Intentions:
Intention is an abstract concept, and the way users express intentions is similar to the way users ask AI questions. What should I say to make it understand what I want to say? If someone expresses vague intentions, will the solver incur more gas fees when choosing the execution path? An efficient and accurate parser is the key to implementing intentions;
4. Consistency of Maintenance Intent and MEV:
Take SUAVE as an example of an independent blockchain that solves the practical problems of the EVM. When it processes Ethereum intent, it needs to perform cross-chain settlement, similar to the huge success of decentralized MEV solutions (such as MEV-Geth and MEV-Boost), which have been launched to meet the cross-chain MEV demand and have a more fair and transparent transaction processing mechanism;
5. Anti-censorship:
Based on the explanation of LianGuairadigm, it is easy to see that there is a central problem, which is that there should not be a single AI capability parser. For example, if a single parser is attacked or disabled, it will cause the entire system to crash, and there may be issues such as parser refusal to execute or execution errors. Anoma may be able to solve this problem in the following section;
6. Competitiveness of Solvers:
Different users will have different intents, and solvers will include various transaction types such as exchange, cross-chain, and staking. There will be no competition between individual solvers because solvers can only charge fees when settling on-chain. By allowing solvers responsible for different transaction types to reasonably reallocate or optimize the parser algorithm, so that every valid address is eligible to become a solver to successfully participate in the mempool, the quality of transaction execution can be improved. Can the competition between solvers be maintained;
7. Expected Mempool:
LianGuairadigm proposes three new mempool solutions:
Permissionless Intentpools: Open design, allowing anyone to submit intent to the mempool and providing permissionless execution authority;
Permissioned Intentpools: Require permission to submit and execute user intent, allowing users to pass it to trusted third-party representatives for execution;
Hybrid Solution: Combining the characteristics of the above two mempools, aiming to strike a balance between openness and control.
Elements Required to Implement Intent
Account Abstraction (AA)
Brief review: EtherCenter has two types of accounts, EOA (Externally Owned Account) and CA (Contract Account). The difference is that the former can initiate transactions while the latter cannot, but it can host Solidity code. Most of the accounts we currently use are EOA accounts. In addition, there is Gonsis Safe, a multisig smart contract account (SCW). As mentioned earlier, contract accounts cannot initiate transactions, so EOAs are needed to initiate SCW, so that EOAs are only responsible for signing transactions, and smart contracts can execute any logic. This can enhance asset security and develop countless new use cases.
Implementing the Intent layer requires account abstraction (explained in the SUAVE section below). EIP-4337 consists of six parts: UserOperation, Bundler, EntryPoint, Wallet Factory, LianGuaiymaster, and Signature Aggregator. The brief operation process is as follows:
● Initiate user operation, that is, execute a transaction;
● Send the operation to the P2P “UserOperation mempool” and let the bundler “bundle” the signed execution signature, gas fees, and other user operation transaction content and submit it (in practice, this includes various scenarios not discussed here);
● The bundler “bundles” the content of user transaction operations, including signatures, gas fees, etc., and submits them for upload (in practice, this includes various scenarios that will not be expanded here);
● The bundler sends the “bundle” to the entry contract for processing and can choose to use a signature aggregator for legality checks;
● The portal contract pre-sends transactions to the wallet contract or payment contract;
The payment replacement contract can have different types based on the project’s business logic, but for simplicity, it will not be discussed in this article.
Smart contract wallets undoubtedly play the largest role in account abstractions. The main competitors are Gnosis Safe (multi-signature wallet) and Candide, the latter of which focuses on building a smart contract wallet that is fully compatible with EIP-4337. Through the analysis of the chart above, it is not difficult to see that the account abstraction uses the bundler + alternative payment contract to achieve the “narrow” intention for developers, while the LianGuairadigm uses the solver + AI to achieve the “broad” intention for the general public. The concepts of “abstraction” and “intention” have a very appropriate order in the confusion.
Programmability of Intention
According to Researcher@tmel0211, the programmability of intention can be summarized as follows: if intention is not programmable, programs cannot be executed, automation cannot be achieved, and intelligence cannot be discussed. How to understand this? Intention is a human thinking expression that contains emotional factors. It itself has an abstraction that includes cold code and algorithms. For example, my intention is to make money. How can code and algorithms help me find the path to execute the intention? Design based on intention is not a completely new concept, but a simplification of existing intention designs. For this purpose, existing intention-based projects and concepts have been organized.
Known representative projects:
● UniswapX: Off-chain extension solution intention
● CowSwap: Off-chain extension solution intention
● 1inch: Fusion order matching of off-chain + multi-DEX aggregator
● Solv Protocol: New ERC3525 standard for implementing complex financial intentions
● Unibot: Automation intentions with preset parameters and rules in a centralized server background
● Opensea: Combination of off-chain signatures and on-chain contracts to complete intentions
Known representative concepts:
● ERC3525 standard: Proposed by Solv Protocol, it aims to provide a semi-quantitative asset standard to describe digital assets in a more structured way to meet the needs of various application scenarios;
● Account abstraction: Provides a set of standardized account management interfaces for different types of accounts, abstracting the underlying implementation complexity, without being limited by gas, social recovery, etc.;
● MPC wallet: Adopts private key slicing technology, dividing the private key into multiple copies and storing them on multiple independent nodes. When performing operations such as transactions, these nodes cooperate to generate signatures through secure multi-party computation protocols, without the need to rebuild the complete private key.
In summary, these representative projects or concepts are a series of more complex instructions that allow users to achieve a simplified experience. From the descriptions above, they can be classified into four categories:
● Centralized intent: based on centralized resource aggregation and matching platforms, such as Unibot and other CEX exchanges, Friend.tech, etc.;
● Structured intent: based on smart contract or proxy contract combination, on-chain + off-chain pre-processing combination, adapting to new ERC standards and other preset parameters executed by the EVM virtual machine;
● Distributed intent: based on new blockchain architectures that do not require distribution, such as Solver+Executor, which can build a new market to execute users’ complex intentions;
● Intelligent intent: based on AIGC as the carrier of input + results, users’ complex intentions can be programmed and executed through comprehensive training in DeFi.
MEV
MEV means that miners can add, delete, or rearrange transactions to obtain additional income rewards, such as DEX arbitrage, front-running transactions, back-running transactions, liquidation, sniffing robots, time-bandit attacks, sandwich attacks, etc. This is harmful to the rights and interests of users who use DeFi normally. Furthermore, transactions on Ethereum are based on Gas, allowing miners to sort transactions, with high Gas transactions processed first and low Gas transactions processed slower. Transactions are first submitted to the Mempool memory pool, waiting to be included in the next block. Validators extract transactions from the memory pool and add them to the next block during construction. Since the memory pool is public, searchers have the opportunity to extract value from users by paying fees to validators to sort transactions in a specific way, thus MEV miners obtain value. To implement users’ intentions, transactions need to be outsourced to third parties for processing, so MEV generated by transactions in the Intent-Centric architecture is also one of the issues to be concerned about.
The most direct impact of MEV: competition makes the market more efficient, but it also causes harm to the entire network.
● Unequal capital distribution (big players own more ETH chips) may lead to centralization of validators (larger staking pools obtain higher MEV income), thereby reducing the overall security of the network. Although some mitigation measures have been taken, the centralization risk caused by the right to produce blocks has not been completely eliminated;
● In order to increase the possibility of transactions being packaged, MEV competitors provide priority to searchers’ Gas bidding priority, which may cause congestion in the public memory pool due to searchers’ high Gas fee transactions. However, at the same time, DEX arbitrage, lending, liquidation, etc. can help the DeFi market achieve balance faster to maintain market stability.
MEV is an important topic that has been explored in the industry for many years, and how to mitigate the adverse effects of MEV is also under discussion, which will be explained in the next section “General Solutions for Implementing Intent”. According to EigenPhi’s data, as of September 15, 2023, there is still a lot of room for MEV income on-chain, and after the Ethereum merge, block nodes using Flashbots alone have already earned over 200,000 ETH, so this is a huge cake for profit distribution.
Cross-chain, Sorter, and Oracle
Intent-Centric is a large-scale system architecture. According to the explanation of the LianGuairadigm, Intent-Centric’s content will involve the entire blockchain field. A huge asset transfer between all types of Layer1 and different Layer2 should be passed to the intent for processing. Nowadays, the development of the industry has led us into the era of multi-chains, where each chain is an isolated island, but there are different bridges between them. Therefore, cross-chain and sorter are also necessary bridges to achieve intent.
Based on the prosperity of the Ethereum Layer2 ecosystem, the currently recognized mainstream Layer2s are Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, and Starkware, each of which showcases its own Layer3 OPstack and ZKstack narratives. The common problem faced by Layer2s is the centralization of sorters. Although we are actively seeking viable solutions, the reality is that there is a huge cake hidden here. Taking OPstack as an example, we can simplify its profit model as a “rental shop”. The profit of Layer2 = Layer2’s Gas income + MEV income – Layer1’s Gas expenditure. If we want to achieve intent, the toll between Layer2 and Layer1 is indispensable.
The topic turns to cross-chain bridges. The prosperity of Layer2 has made us realize the considerable profits of sorters early on, but the profits of cross-chain bridges should not be underestimated either. Cross-chain bridges are essential in connecting the isolated islands of different chains. In the current bear market environment, as an infrastructure, besides meeting the cross-chain needs of normal trading users, it is still a market demand that exists for airdrop enthusiasts who expect cross-chain needs. However, it is worth noting that the issue lies in the security of cross-chain bridges. According to official data from hacked.slowmist, from June 29, 2021, to September 16, 2023, the cross-chain bridge ecosystem has experienced a total of 38 security incidents, with cumulative losses reaching $2 billion. In short, achieving intent involves inevitable Gas costs, but this article does not discuss the security of sequential execution and cross-chain, although it is an issue that deserves our attention.
This topic involves oracles. From a macro perspective, the powerful financial attributes of blockchain make it a system environment pursuing determinism. Although the narrative of real-world assets (RWA) has been discussed for many years, the reality is that blockchain cannot access real-world data outside the chain, but can only access on-chain data because the virtual machine (VM) does not allow smart contracts to make network calls, so the operations of smart contracts must produce consistent results, and thus the data is closed to the external world. Results must be consistent, so blockchain data is also closed to the external world.
Let’s zoom in and take a micro view. Oracles are an important element in the DeFi world. Although the security of different protocols is usually inherited from the underlying smart contract network, their normal operation still relies on oracles. If the oracle of a protocol is attacked or compromised, the entire protocol can be manipulated. Nowadays, DeFi tends to define itself as “primitives” and hopes that more teams will build products or composite protocols on it. However, new DeFi contracts derived from this iterative process will upgrade their own operational logic to host a larger ecosystem, which also brings some external dependencies and unexpected risks.
Over the years, the DeFi sector has seen billions of dollars in cumulative theft incidents, such as the hacker attack on Euler Finance’s lending protocol in March of this year, resulting in losses of up to $200 million. The protocol allows users to provide collateral and borrow, but the problem lies in a specific function that did not undergo security checks, allowing users to break the fundamental invariant of the lending market (e.g., the basic invariant of UniSwap: tokenBalanceX * tokenBalanceY == k). Derivative protocols that rely on oracles for pricing but lack internal price discovery mechanisms are susceptible to price lag and lack of updates, severely limiting their scale and user experience. This is why trader Avraham Eisenberg was able to successfully attack Mango Markets and steal $116 million from the cryptocurrency trading platform.
In conclusion, the dark rules of the blockchain forest are often filled with unknown risks, and there is still a long way to go to achieve the vision of an Intent-Centric architecture.
Aggregators and Gas
The emergence of aggregators is to save users the trouble of searching for the best trading path and return strategy. There are various types of aggregators, such as transaction aggregators, information aggregators, return aggregators, liquidity aggregators, asset management aggregators, etc. The Intent-Centric architecture requires a certain degree of centralization, and various types of aggregators may help the resolver find a path when searching for intent, providing it with a certain degree of “reference answers”.
Gas is the necessary fee for executing various transactions on exchanges. How to optimize Gas fees is also a long-standing topic in the industry. Currently, optimization is centered around product developers, abstract account wallets, and DeFi protocols. In the future, aggregators, abstract accounts, and DeFi protocols can be optimized from a completely new product perspective. Let’s wait and see.
Wallet Authorization
The first step in Dapps’ interaction is wallet authorization. Let’s go back to the transaction itself. The Intent-Centric architecture aims to simplify transactions and reduce users’ entry barriers, but every transaction with intent involves countless authorization signatures. How to securely and conveniently solve the authorization problem is also a consideration. Perhaps abstract accounts and the upcoming dappOS V2 are good solutions.
Four Universal Solutions to Implement Intent
Anoma
Overview:
According to a report from Coindesk on May 31, 2023, the Anoma Foundation has successfully raised $25 million in investments from CMCC Global, Electric Capital, and 14 other capital providers. The intent architecture of the project was proposed in a whitepaper released on August 22, 2022: the Intent Gossip Layer is used to propagate intent, discover counterparts, and match execution paths. It is designed as the default validation path, and all Gossip messages are signed by the sending node, forming a signature chain that can be traced back to the initiator. This feature is particularly important for anti-censorship and DoS (Denial-of-Service) attacks, so Anoma is essential in implementing Intent-Centric.
Anoma initially developed and used a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism based on Tendermint, and later switched to another Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism called “Typhon” developed by Heliax, to allow for consensus partitioning between independent chains. The project team has developed multiple technologies such as Taiga, Typhon, MASP, Vamp-IR, Juvix, etc., and has contributed to the experimentation of cryptography and distributed systems.
Continuing from the “Intent-Programmable” paragraph above, programmable algorithmic structures and the discovery of transaction counterparts are essential features for realizing the vision of an Intent-Centric architecture. This needs to be built on top of multi-interaction and multi-application, hence the introduction of Anoma, a unified architecture for full-stack decentralized applications, to collectively build the decentralized application paradigm.
Design architecture and its innovations:
● Privacy Payments
To protect user privacy and prevent data tracing by others, the sender, receiver, amount, and asset denominations are all encrypted. The transfer of funds is ensured through zero-knowledge proofs zk-SNARKs, providing composable asset protection in cases where all assets share the same MASP, increasing user anonymity sets instead of individually obscuring each asset. The more participants there are, the higher the level of anonymity in asset transfer data, instead of individually obscuring each asset.
● Bartering Exchange
The “bartering” exchange program is repeatedly emphasized in this project, and its core idea comes from ancient bartering practices. In short, this is a bartering program that does not require a medium of exchange, does not involve cash payments, and requires at least a double coincidence of wants for successful transactions: on one hand, both parties happen to have what the other wants, and on the other hand, both parties are willing to transfer the convenience of the transaction. This helps users to propagate their intentions to node operators in the Intent Propagation Layer and to matching node operators running compatibility checks for these intentions, to create and match relevant transactions and send the corresponding executed transaction ledger. Anoma implements a digital bartering program that facilitates transactions of goods, services, or digital representations of value.
● Intent Matching System
In the Ethereum EVM, transactions do not require a future state but authorize specific execution paths. Anoma includes a matching system that allows users to broadcast transaction intentions through gossip. In short, Anoma consists of two main components: the distributed ledger and the intent matching system, which complement or work independently of each other, helping users discover transaction counterparts automatically by using intent gossip, running nodes, token exchange solvers, and RPC parsers, requesting new intents from matching intents, and submitting transactions to the distributed ledger.
● Multi-Chain Support
Anoma uses the Interchain Communication (IBC) protocol of the Cosmos ecosystem for blockchain interoperability, which utilizes relayers to achieve data transfer between different blockchains, aiming to become a multi-chain privacy layer. Currently, although relayers are typically operated by node operators, anyone capable can run them and earn fees in the process.
● Fractal Scaling Solution
Anoma uses the fractal solution to address the scalability issue in blockchain, allowing users to create local instances for other transactions. Fractal refers to dividing Anoma into different application chains to handle different tasks, allowing each Anoma application chain to be highly customizable, thereby achieving scalability and responding to user growth (similar to supporting the IBC protocol to achieve scalability goals), and its security will be enhanced in the future through the IV Interchain Security, IV Mesh Security, and IV Interchain Alliance plans.
SUAVE (Single Unified Auction for Value Expression)
Overview:
According to the news on July 25, 2023, Flashbots, an Ethereum infrastructure service provider, has completed a $600 million Series B financing round, bringing its valuation to $1 billion, for the development of the SUAVE platform. SUAVE separates the mempool and block generation from the existing blockchain, forming an independent blockchain network layer (ordering layer), and provides a highly professional plug-and-play alternative solution aimed at addressing infrastructure challenges related to MEV.
Although SUAVE is a new blockchain, it is not a general-purpose smart contract platform and cannot compete with Ethereum or any other participating chains. If Anoma can be compared to building an intent-centric blockchain, then SUAVE is building an intent-centric infrastructure.
Three goals of SUAVE:
● Reveal the Dark Forest: Expose unfair events in the current opaque MEV ecosystem to every user, quantify their impact, and eliminate information barriers between participants;
● Democratize Mining: Integrate miners and retrievers in an open manner, promote competition among all parties, minimize and provide free access to all miners to prevent the consolidation and centralization of MEV;
● Benefit Distribution: Give MEV to the people who create it – Ethereum users.
According to SUAVE’s intent-centric solution, cross-chain settlements (e.g., Ethereum) are required when handling transactions from external sources. It can attempt to address various risks in EVM, just like the successfully launched decentralized MEV solutions such as MEV-Geth and MEV-Boost. However, it is worth noting that in the process of implementing the intent for users to deposit funds into SUAVE and unlock funds after the demand is met, the smart contracts on SUAVE need to perform asset verification and involve an oracle. Therefore, to some extent, SUAVE will also face all the risks of existing cross-chain bridges that already exist today.
From SCW with AA to Intent-centric SUAVE:
Reviewing the part about “Account Abstraction AA” mentioned above, considering the main functions brought by account abstraction: private key retrieval, gasless payments, multi-signature authorization, multiple transfers in a single transaction, rate limiting, etc., account abstraction is a perfect combination of the advantages of both regular accounts (EOAs) and smart contract accounts (CAs).
The vision of SUAVE is to become a universal ordering layer between different chains, including cross-chain transactions and MEV. Therefore, if the user’s intention involves cross-chain asset transfer, the Account Abstraction (AA) and Multi-Signature Smart Contract Wallet (SCW), such as Gonsis Safe, combined with SUAVE’s EVM solution, may theoretically be a better solution.
CoWSwap
Overview:
If we are to choose a project that is closest to the intention-centric architecture, CoWSwap would definitely be at the forefront. Its protocol is different from others because users only need to send a signed order to complete the execution of the transaction, delegating the execution of the transaction to the solver network, which completes the transaction in the network without specifying the execution path. Additionally, due to the “batch packing” rights of the solver, the Gas cost of the process will be borne by the solver, and no fees will be paid if the transaction fails.
CoWSwap Hooks:
Talking about Hooks, does it remind us of Uniswap V4? But in fact, the usage of these two features is quite different. CoW Hooks are a series of transactions, bridges, staking, deposits, etc., which can be executed in the form of individually sequenced transactions before/after the execution of the order.
Main Features:
● Pre-hooks can be used to set conditions for the order. For example, executing code that requires verification of on-chain signatures or setting the required approvals through EIP-2612 permits;
● Post-hooks are executed after the exchange occurs and the funds are received by the recipient address. Post-hooks provide immediate access to funds, including methods such as collateralization, providing liquidity, bridging tokens to L2, etc.
DeFi Examples of CoW Hooks:
● Debt repayment and staking: Set up Pre-Peg operations for debt repayment and liquidation operations, then use CoW Swap to exchange assets, and finally use Post-Peg operations to deposit the new assets into a fixed position insurance vault;
● Creating LP positions: Use either pre-linked transactions or post-linked transactions only;
● JIT (Just-In-Time) smart orders: Write a Safe smart contract wallet using the composable CoW framework (ERC-1271) to execute custom smart contract approvals and exchanges;
● NFTs: NFTs can be bought or sold within the CoW Hooks functionality;
● Cross-chain: Cross-chain transactions can be completed by sending assets to bridge contracts through CoW Hooks;
● Airdrops: Airdrops can be sold using CoW Hooks without using ETH for gas;
● Unlocking and re-staking: Validators who have staked 32 ETH can unbond to receive rewards or use CoW Hooks to stake assets on other chains;
● Automatic increase of LP positions: Assuming someone becomes a liquidity provider for the Euro-USDC pool to earn GNO token rewards. They can use CoW Hooks to automatically convert their GNO into Euro-USDC in a 50/50 ratio, thereby automatically increasing their LP position.
dappOS V2
After discussing the intention layer and related infrastructure layer, let’s explore the dappOS V2 protocol, which is dubbed as the “new wave of intention layer”. It is understood that dappOS V2, with a valuation of up to $50 million, completed a seed round of financing on July 21, 2023, led by IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital (China), attracting attention from other major VCs and Coinsafe.
dappOS V2 is an intent protocol that introduces dappOS accounts and dappOS networks to simplify the interaction between users and dApps, achieving a user experience similar to CeFi level. It also eliminates the fragmentation barriers of multiple chains through the “chain abstraction” technology (chain abstraction is similar to the behind-the-scenes of account abstraction).
Whether for intent or transaction purposes, the user’s focus is always on the total amount in the account, rather than the individual asset balances between different chains. Based on the understanding of dappOS V2, there should be a unified account wallet to achieve the vision of “one signature completes everything”, and introduce the concept of one-click multiple “TXN (transactions)” design to eliminate barriers for users to complete TXN and achieve intent-oriented transactions.
For example, it is borrowed to achieve GMX interaction between Arbitrum and Avalanch different chains without assets, thus realizing the basic intent-oriented transaction rules for future DeFi. Therefore, implementing the concept of intent-oriented transactions involves chain abstraction, account abstraction, and more “protocol abstraction”. However, there is a question to consider: assuming that all types of abstractions have been implemented, will there be changes in intermittent user interaction rules and various project airdrop rules?
Summary
Intent is still full of risks and challenges in its execution process. It relies on intermediaries or specific executors, thus there is a risk of centralization and monopolization, which affects the trust of the entire middleware. Secondly, handing over transactions to third parties is associated with security and privacy risks, and it is worth considering. It is hoped that intent application developers can find a balance between security, privacy, and convenience.
The concept of intent has mature applications in Web2, such as taxi software, ticketing software, map navigation, etc., but the success of these applications is based on the solid foundation of Web2 infrastructure. Therefore, in the Web3 field, mature application scenarios need to wait for the industry to continue to mature. The intent center is a grand concept involving various aspects of blockchain and is also one of the best paths for the combination of blockchain and artificial intelligence. However, whether it can develop and grow in practical applications still requires our continuous attention.
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