A look at the 9 hot projects in the Intent-Centric track

With the approval of the US Bitcoin spot ETF and the development of the RWA protocol in the DeFi field, cryptocurrencies are accelerating to the forefront, and more and more users are participating in on-chain DeFi, trying to find new opportunities for income. However, the cumbersome on-chain operation steps are discouraging some Web3 newcomers.

The Web3 world already has thousands of cryptocurrencies, plus countless Layer1, Layer2 and now Layer-3, as well as cross-chain bridges connecting different blockchains. In this vast and innovative ecosystem, it is increasingly difficult for new users to intuitively discover which way is the best choice for them to trade.  

The "Intent-Centric" track is to solve this problem for new users, thereby achieving Crypto Mass Adoption, allowing a wider user group of Web2 to enjoy a silky experience and easily cross into Web3.

What is intent?

In the Web3 world, "intent" refers to a specific goal that a user wants to achieve in the blockchain ecosystem, and is an expression of the final state of this specific goal. Generally speaking, a transaction explicitly refers to "how" an operation should be performed, while an intent refers to what the expected result of the operation should be.

So what new can the intent protocol bring? In short, let users just state their goals and leave the "how" to those who are more professional problem solvers.

For example, if you want to get from point A to point E (goal/intent), the current old vision transaction requires you to go from A-> B-> C-> D-> E, step by step. This is just the tip of the iceberg in the current DeFi world, not to mention the need to transfer Tokens from CEX to the chain, and the actual complexity of the interaction may be far beyond imagination.

However, in the case of the intent protocol, after you propose the intent of "I want to go from A to E", each step of A-> B-> C-> D-> E is executed by the solver. The solver here can be a person, AI, or other protocol.

If a transaction is "go to A first, then go to B, and pay a certain amount of C to get E", then the intent is "I want X, and I am willing to pay a certain amount of C". Users submit their intent to the protocol, and the protocol then delegates each step of the task to the solver for execution.

With the intent protocol and solver, in addition to abstracting the cumbersome transaction process for new users, it can also save gas fees to a certain extent, and the solver executes transactions at the most powerful price, improving efficiency. As blockchain technology becomes increasingly important, such a paradigm will change the landscape, making Web3 interactions more efficient and secure, and easier to attract the experience of billions of Web2 users.

The hot development of the intent track was kicked off by Paradigm's "Intent Structure and Its Risks" in June 2023. What are the hot projects worth paying attention to today?

Recently popular intent networks/protocols

dappOS

The intent execution network dappOS has become a hot search on Twitter due to its $300 million Series A financing and the integration project GMX's 100,000 $ARB airdrop for active users.

dappOS recently completed a $15 million Series A round led by Polychain, with a valuation of $300 million, making it one of the new "star projects" in the intent track. Last year, the network also received investment from top VCs such as Binance Labs, Sequoia China, and IDG.

In addition, GMX V2 has added 30,596 new users in the two months since it integrated dappOS, and 15% of the new TVL in the past 30 days came from dappOS users. In order to incentivize active dappOS users, GMX airdropped 100,000 $ARB. As the dappOS network grows further, there will be more and more airdrop opportunities like this, making it a golden shovel tool for Airdrop interaction.

As an intent execution network that solves priceable intent, dappOS is meeting the extremely low on-chain interaction threshold for users. Users only need to submit intents, and dappOS and its solver nodes will execute the intent in a decentralized manner. dappOS can execute a variety of intents, including application contract interaction, inscription casting strategy, copy trading, Telegram robot trading, etc.

At the same time, dappOS also provides middleware compatible with the network, so that developers can expand this set of "intention" capabilities to more dApps at a low cost and maintain decentralized characteristics. Therefore, dappOS is promoting the transformation of integrated dApps to "decentralized intent applications".

As the dappOS ecosystem grows, it will attract more and more users to participate, especially under the blessing of the "golden shovel" effect, it will accelerate the transformation into sticky users and gradually form a network effect, which will also accelerate the optimization of the dappOS intent network for service nodes. The intent execution network will be lower cost, more efficient, and have a better user experience, which in turn will prompt more dApps to support dappOS. It is also worth mentioning that dappOS is introducing the governance token $DOS, and the growth of network revenue and transactions will further provide benefits for $DOS holders.

Anoma

The Anoma protocol is the first protocol to introduce the concept of "intent" and provides a general dApp architecture centered on intent. The architecture is designed to meet a wide range of requests, enabling service-providing dApps to align intent with a network of solvers, facilitating the matching of user intent with solvers across a variety of applications and scenarios. It is worth mentioning that Anoma is actually an "interface", a series of codes that can be freely copied, rather than an intermediary chain, so there will be no Anoma chain. In other words, Anoma can be deployed to any current L1, L1.5, L2 or non-EVM chain, such as Ethereum mainnet, Arbitrum, Solana, Cosmos, Eigenlayer AVS.

Particle Network

Many friends have come to know Particle Network, which provides services such as account abstraction and BTC Connect behind the scenes, through MerlinChain. In fact, in addition to its achievements in the field of chain abstraction, the protocol is also laying out the field of intent.

Particle Network is building a general dApp framework, Intent Fusion Protocol, for expressing, converting, and executing intents. Developers can use it to create intent applications, and the intents expressed by users will be submitted to the solver network for on-chain execution.

In this ecosystem, developers have a direct path to leverage the unique capabilities of Web3 while providing users with the best possible user experience, focusing 100% of their energy on creating problem solutions.

By combining the Intent Fusion Protocol with Particle's mature chain abstraction, modular smart WaaS, and cross-chain atomic swap solutions, developers from Web2 can easily leverage the unique capabilities of Web3 while providing users with the simplest user experience.

Essential

Essential calls itself the first "declarative blockchain", but it is still centered around the concept of "intention".

Essential believes that since the birth of Ethereum, the first general-purpose blockchain, every general-purpose blockchain has used an imperative programming model. Since they rely on the linear execution of code to achieve state updates, the only way for users to interact with these blockchains is through imperative instructions (such as transactions and smart contracts). Indeed, the most common user experience criticisms of blockchains by new Web3 users are nothing more than uncertain results, failed transactions, MEV, and high slippage - in fact, they are all criticisms of the underlying imperative model.

Next, let's see how Essential's "declarative blockchain" is done?

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According to the official interpretation, a declarative blockchain means a blockchain that uses constraints to implement state updates without execution. Or in other words, Essential allows users to sign their intended transactions with the desired (declarative) results rather than (mandatory) instructions. In fact, it is also within the scope of intent.

Essential has high requirements on the solver. Compared with the ordinary solver of 1+1=2, when the user submits the intention, the solver of the Essential network must do its best to propose the optimal solution, not only to meet the user's intention, but also to maximize the user's satisfaction. To put it more simply, after the user proposes an intent, each solver will compete to answer the following question: Given the constraints and goals, which new state do I think will maximize user satisfaction?

Essential's technology stack has three core pillars:

- Blockchain without execution: Similar to ZK Rollup, the calculation of user intent is completed off-chain, while the fraud proof verification part is performed on-chain, so as to provide applications and users with greater throughput and lower transaction fees.

- Constraint-based domain-specific language (DSL): Allow users to propose intents only through natural language expressions. Developers can simply describe business logic and outsource transactions or calculation logic to solvers, so that users can more conveniently get the desired interaction results and developers can more easily create more complex dApps.

- Solver network: Provide the best solution for the intents submitted by users in the entire network.

Self Chain

Self Chain is a modular, intent-centric new blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK. In the incentive testnet V2 that ended last month, Self Chain achieved a good result of 366 applications and 19,000 users.

In fact, I wanted to introduce this project together with Ruby Network, which has already launched the mainnet, because the two are too similar. Both started with the Mass Adoption narrative, from MPC, account abstraction, chain abstraction to intent, and all the hot spots that can be used have been used. However, compared with the stitched monster Ruby, Self Chain has put much more technical effort in the intent narrative (Ruby seems to have only been labeled "intention").

Self Chain integrates the concept of intent into its blockchain architecture through a three-layer structure:

- dApps layer: Users interact with dApps through a simplified interface. This layer collects the user's intent and translates it into simple, structured intents using a large language model (LLM) similar to GPT-4.

- Intent access layer: This layer will search for various paths required to realize the user's intent and find the best way to satisfy the user's request.

- Intent solver: The intent solver intervenes to efficiently execute transactions.

Orb Stack, Orby

Orb Lasb is developing a modular cross-chain intent protocol stack Orb Stack that allows users to issue cross-domain intents. It consists of 5 layers:

- Scalable light client that provides a secure foundation for the system

- Message framework that optimizes speed, cost, and configurability

- Token packaging protocol that supports cross-chain assets

- Cross-domain intent protocol

- Unified account system that allows users to host assets on different chains

In addition, the development team is also developing the intent engine Orby, which can be integrated into any dApp front-end, enabling users from any chain to use it. It can also be integrated into wallets, enabling users to interact with any dApp on any chain without fragmenting wallet assets into various on-chain addresses. Orby's vision is to support multi-chain interactions and convert transactions into intentions that can be executed on any chain through Orb Stack.

Orbiter Finance (Orbiter Rollup)

Orbiter Finance is the leading Layer2 cross-chain protocol, with more than 3 million users using the protocol to cross-chain assets between different L2s. In January this year, Orbiter Finance announced that it will launch ZK-based Orbiter Rollup in the future as Ethereum's intent layer, mainly used to aggregate cross-chain intents of Orbiter users. With the joint efforts of partners, Orbiter Rollup will solve the execution problem, that is, users can achieve their desired results on the network without having to perform cross-chain operations step by step.

Across v3

Similar to Orbiter is the cross-chain protocol Across. In the recently launched V3 version, Across added a composable intent engine. Consists of: - Intent-based RFQ order flow - Third-party solver network with off-chain liquidity - Settlement system with Optimistic verification Aperture Finance Aperture Finance is a DeFi platform based on intent architecture that combines AI with intent to build a chatbot where users can express their intent in natural language and leverage the solver network to get results.

This is a typical example of AI + Intent. By directly interacting with AI text and expressing needs, AI automatically extracts, identifies and confirms user intent, submits it to the solver network, and the solver network seeks the best solution. Finally, it is handed over to the best solver for execution through a bidding model.

In addition to trading, there is another interesting use case of using Aperture to claim airdrops. We only need to tell AI, "Help me try to claim Airdrops, and the system will automatically search for airdropped projects on various chains based on the user's wallet address and authorization, and automatically complete the claim." This automation can greatly reduce the time for users to directly interact with each project airdrop collection website, and eliminate the risk of users being deceived by phishing websites.