The intent track is gaining popularity, quickly learn about 8 intent concept projects worth paying attention to

整理：饼干, RootData

At the recent ETHCC conference in Paris, "ETH mass adoption or widespread adoption" became a hot topic of discussion. In analyzing this challenge, a key concept emerged—the "Intent Layer." The core idea of this layer is to lower the barrier to DeFi operations by introducing user-friendly interfaces, such as mobile wallets, as intermediaries for interacting with DeFi.

At this level, "intent" is no longer limited to direct interactions between users and DeFi platforms, but is a message signed off-chain. This message represents the state transition that the user wishes to achieve, and it is a specific encoding of the outcome the user hopes to accomplish. "Intent" allows users to define the results they want, with resolvers responsible for finding the best path to achieve those results.

This intent-based design pattern brings multiple advantages. First, it greatly improves user experience and execution quality. Users only need to approve the outcomes they desire, while the complex operations are handled by resolvers. Second, it enhances efficiency. In the same on-chain environment, multiple intents can offset each other or generate economic income, thus improving overall efficiency. Additionally, the flexibility of off-chain computation also contributes to increased efficiency, as it is not constrained by on-chain computation limitations.

As a result, the intent track has garnered significant attention from the market and capital, and recently RootData has intensively cataloged several early-stage intent-based projects. In this article, RootData presents a basic introduction and operational mechanisms of 8 intent concept projects, including Flashbots (SUAVE), DappOS, Anoma Network, Particle Network, CowSwap, Fairblock Network, Essential, and PropellerHeads.

Anoma Network

Anoma is a privacy architecture centered around intent, introducing a new paradigm for building infrastructure layers and a new operating system for decentralized applications. Anoma's intent-centric approach introduces novel primitives that allow existing web2.5 dApps to be fully decentralized, such as optimistic and ZK rollups, DEXs, NFT marketplaces, or public goods funding applications like Gitcoin.

In the Anoma protocol, intent is a message created by users representing incomplete transactions or demands, which can be human-readable text, a set of features, constraints, or complex programs. Anoma's design allows users to create various types of intents and, with the assistance of intermediaries, find combinations of transactions that satisfy multiple user needs. Additionally, Anoma supports diverse fractal instances, allowing users to choose which instances to participate in based on their needs and to protect personal information according to privacy preferences. The specific implementation steps are as follows:

1. Create Intent: Users can create intents that include specific demands and transaction details. Intents can specify maximum/minimum buy or sell quantities, specific trading objects, etc.

2. Submit Intent: Users submit the created intent to the intent gossip nodes (a special component of the Anoma Network's peer-to-peer system). The intent gossip nodes maintain an intent pool that contains all intents submitted to at least one node.

3. Intent Matching: Matchers monitor the intent pool, attempting to find transactions that can combine to satisfy multiple intents. Matchers can be AI, algorithms, or manual operators responsible for finding matching intent combinations.

4. Transaction Formulation: The matcher combines the found intents into transactions. The transaction includes details that satisfy multiple intent demands, such as the quantities to buy and sell and the trading objects.

5. Validate and Submit Transaction: The transaction is validated to ensure it meets the demands of all relevant intents. Once validated, the transaction is submitted to full nodes and recorded on the blockchain.

6. State Transition and Parallel Execution: Anoma's state transitions and validations are separated, allowing for parallel execution. Validity predicates are used to validate state changes, ensuring that specific constraints are met.

7. Custom Validity Predicates: Anoma allows users to customize validity predicates to define specific transaction constraints and logic. Validity predicates can verify whether transactions meet user-defined conditions, such as specific amounts or time periods.

8. Fractal Scaling: Anoma supports multiple fractal instances, each potentially having different characteristics and functionalities. Instances can be global or localized, and operators can choose to interoperate with other instances based on demand.

9. Privacy Protection: Anoma supports zero-knowledge privacy, allowing users to choose the level of privacy protection they require. The privacy protection layer can implement specific coordination functions while preserving user privacy based on user preferences.

Anoma Network completed a $25 million funding round in May this year, bringing its total funding to $57.75 million. Investors include Polychain, CMCC Global, Electric Capital, Delphi Digital, Dialectic, and others.

Related Reading: https://medium.com/anomanetwork/an-overview-of-anoma-s-architecture-26b72e8c9be5

SUAVE

As a leader in the MEV space, Flashbots is also laying out plans for the intent track, with its development of SUAVE, a dedicated intent layer similar to Anoma, introducing a new architecture based on plug-and-play memory pools and decentralized block builders.

SUAVE is developing MEVM, a specialized version of EVM that enables developers to create MEV applications as smart contracts in a flexible and expressive programming environment. MEVM consists of three main components: a Universal Preference Environment (UPE), which is a chain and memory pool designed to express and aggregate preferences (intents) across different chains; an Optimal Execution Market (OEM), where processors compete to provide the best execution for user-submitted intents; and a decentralized network of block builders that merges encrypted user intents into blocks. This architecture facilitates the easier construction of new MEV applications, encourages competition in resolving intents, and decentralizes the MEV supply chain.

Related Reading: https://medium.com/intotheblock/a-deep-dive-into-flashbots-suave-centauri-the-first-implementation-of-the-new-vision-for-mev-de72fa34ca70

dappOS

dappOS is an intent-centric operating protocol designed to make dApps as user-friendly as mobile applications. As a unified operating protocol for Web3, it builds a layer between users and public chains, cross-chain bridges, and other crypto infrastructures, allowing users to interact solely with dappOS to complete verification and execution in the decentralized world. Currently, dappOS has launched its V2 version, enhancing user experience through the following features:

1. Unified Account: Users manage on-chain assets through a unified account, enjoying a seamless experience similar to ceFi without needing to distinguish between different chains. Instead, they can focus on the total balance of their funds.

2. Task Dependency Support: dappOS V2 enables users to confirm complex and interdependent transactions across different chains with a single signature, regardless of whether these transactions occur sequentially or in parallel.

3. New Bidding System: The bidding system in dappOS V2 integrates advanced features for bidding and billing. This system allows nodes to participate in the network and generate revenue from their services.

dappOS completed a Pre-seed round of funding led by Binance Labs in June this year, followed by a seed round in July with a valuation of $50 million, co-led by IDG Capital and Sequoia China, with participation from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, Kucoin Ventures, Gate Labs, and others.

Related Reading: https://medium.com/@dappos.com/dappos-v2-roadmap-9146c44737c8

Particle Network

Particle Network is a Web3 developer platform, with its V1 product being a wallet-as-a-service (WaaS) product based on MPC-TSS (Multi-Party Computation - Threshold Signature Scheme). In September this year, it announced the launch of its V2 product, the first intent-centric modular access layer for Web3, further abstracting the interaction needs between end users and blockchains, thereby improving transaction efficiency for end users.

Particle Network's user path design for its intent product is as follows:

Step 1: Users seamlessly log into application layer products powered by Particle Network's zkWaaS, utilizing privacy login to protect their Web2 identity.

Step 2: Users express their intent regarding the product, such as wishing to earn specific yields through their held ETH.

Step 3: Particle V2 processes the intent and automatically executes the necessary transactions to fulfill it. For example, it will seamlessly bridge ETH to Layer 2 and securely deposit it into Lido for yield, all without requiring users to sign a series of manual transactions.

In terms of funding, Particle Network announced the completion of a $7 million funding round in March this year, with participation from Animoca Brands, Longhash Ventures, GSR Ventures, OP Crypto, HashKey, and ArkStream.

Related Reading: https://medium.com/particle-network/particle-network-v2-eb2a90f16d48

CowSwap

CowSwap is a DEX aggregator that features MEV protection. The CoW protocol matches trades through batch auctions from various on-chain liquidity sources. It can provide users with better prices while saving significant amounts on gas fee optimization and liquidity provider fees.

CowSwap will also support intent-based trading. Unlike other DEXs, users of the CoW protocol do not execute trades themselves. They do not create actual Ethereum transactions to swap token A for token B (which incurs gas fees and may fail, etc.), but instead sign an intent to trade these two tokens at specified limit prices.

This intent is then passed to third parties (so-called solvers), who compete to provide users with the best possible prices for their order flow. The solver offering the best execution price is granted the right to settle the user's order. The actual settlement transaction is created and signed by the solver.

Solvers can move tokens on behalf of users (using ERC20 approvals granted to the settlement contract), while the contract verifies the user's intent signature and executes based on the user's specified limit price and quantity.

CowSwap completed a $23 million private funding round in March 2022, with participation from 0x, The LAO, 1kx, Blockchain Capital, Robot Ventures, SevenX Ventures, imToken Ventures, Delphi Digital, LongHash Ventures, Hasu, Cobie, and others.

Related Reading: https://docs.cow.fi/solvers/solvers

Fairblock Network

Fairblock can be used for front-running protection in blockchain ecosystems, privacy limit orders/intents, privacy voting/governance, sealed bid auctions, randomness generation, and anti-censorship sorting. Its goal/value is to empower users and protocols with optional freedom for encrypted transactions to protect them from various forms of malicious strategies.
The transaction process using Fairblock is as follows:

a. Users encrypt transactions using a master public key (which is updated very infrequently) and "decryption conditions," submitting them directly to the target chain. This step occurs seamlessly in the application's frontend or the user's wallet.

b. The validators or (sorters) of the target application include the encrypted transactions in blocks.

c. Once the conditions are met, FairyRing validators submit their private key shares for specific conditions. The private key can decrypt all transactions that were encrypted under certain conditions (such as block height or price). This minimizes bandwidth overhead, making our infrastructure more scalable.

d. The private key will be automatically aggregated using the honest majority of the FairyRing validators' private key shares.

e. The aggregated private key will be used to decrypt all previously encrypted transactions (or the results of privacy-preserving computations). This is executed in the order outlined in step b.

In terms of funding, Fairblock Network completed a $2.5 million Pre-seed round in October, led by Galileo, with participation from GSR, Chorus One, DoraHacks, Reverie, Lemniscap, Robot Ventures.

Related Reading: https://medium.com/@Fair_Block/fast-fairy-series-fairyring-architecture-i-d5293e0ce665

Essential

Essential is building infrastructure and tools based on intent to accelerate the transition from value extraction to intent fulfillment, mitigating the centralization threats posed by the existence of MEV. Essential aims to minimize extraction behavior and maximize user satisfaction.
Essential has proposed the ERC-7521 standard, designed to support universal intents for smart contract wallets. The methods Essential employs to realize intents include:

a. DSL for Intent Expression: Essential is developing a general-purpose domain-specific language (DSL) to standardize, compose, and parse intents, helping resolvers (Solvers) reason about intents using the same language used to express intents.

b. Intent-Centric Account Abstraction Standard: Essential is developing an Ethereum standard (ERC-4337) that combines intent-centricity with account abstraction to support intents in transaction-based systems. This standard will allow users to enjoy the benefits of intent-based systems on existing EVM chains and delegate work to resolvers to construct effective transactions to fulfill intents.

c. Modular Intent Layer: Anoma plans to build a modular intent layer designed to only ingest intents, with no concept of users submitting transactions, allowing for more efficient resolution solutions. Additionally, it introduces order flow aggregation to ensure transparency and user control of order flow, as well as reduce the potential for MEV (Maximum Extractable Value). The modular design also enables the protocol to be deployed across different stacks and ecosystems.

In September 2023, Essential completed a $5.15 million seed round, led by Maven11, with participation from Robot Ventures, Neel Somani, and others.

Related Reading: https://blog.essential.builders/introducing-essential/

PropellerHeads

PropellerHeads is a decentralized infrastructure that provides the best prices for any transaction for wallets, dapps, and users through smart routing and privacy submissions. PropellerHeads also supports protocols by designing and developing bots to maintain protocol health and prevent MEV damage. PropellerHeads primarily offers two components:

• Smart Routing: Obtains quotes and the best swap routes for any exchange from the Solver API.
• Privacy Submission: Submits fully protected transactions to builders using privacy RPC.

PropellerHeads focuses on optimizing specific elements of the intent architecture—solvers. By using PropellerSDK, particularly their Solver API and Private RPC, users are better protected from MEV and achieve better prices in transactions. The Solver API returns the best route for achieving the best price by inserting numerous liquidity sources and running optimization algorithms.

Related Reading: https://docs.propellerheads.xyz/propellerheads-docs/introduction/overview