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Written by: Rishabh Nagar
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
Doing anything on-chain currently feels like assembling furniture from IKEA — the steps are long, confusing, and there’s always a risk of screwing up. It’s even more confusing when you have to switch between different blockchains. You need to remember every step, be wary of scams, calculate fees, and not lose your mind in the process.
Now, imagine that instead of having to go through all the different operations on various blockchains — buying, exchanging, sending tokens across bridges, farming yields, and then exchanging back to your favorite cryptocurrency — all you have to do is say out loud what you want, and magically, everything happens securely and smoothly. That’s exactly what Intentions do.
Intents are like digital wishes. They help users achieve what they want to do on the internet, like send money or vote directly and automatically. In the crypto world, understanding intents is important because they allow users to control their actions without the need for middlemen or companies. This makes things faster, cheaper, and more secure.
Let's say you want to send a letter to a friend. Traditionally, you would give it to a postman, who might first deliver it to a large office, and then another person would deliver it to your friend. This is how it is usually done in today's technological world.
Now, if you could just press a button, your letter would magically appear in your friend's hand. This is what decentralization of intent looks like - skipping the middleman and doing what you want directly, securely, and quickly. This is important because it means you don't have to worry about other people interfering, slowing things down, or losing the letter.
Intentions are at the core of what an individual wants to achieve - whether it's a simple transfer of assets, or a more complex execution of a series of coordinated transactions. Traditionally, these intentions are managed through centralized systems, but blockchain technology increasingly allows them to be achieved in a decentralized manner.
For example, consider the intention to participate in a vote in a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). In a traditional setting, this requires interacting with a centralized platform where votes can be manipulated, delayed, or even censored. In a decentralized system, by contrast, this intention is expressed through smart contracts, which can automatically collect votes, count them, and make decisions without the need for a central authority.
This shift towards decentralized intent fulfillment is significant because it represents a move away from reliance on centralized intermediaries, giving users greater control, transparency, and security over their actions. It allows for the creation of systems that can directly fulfill intent without unnecessary obstacles or risk of third-party intervention.
Source: Paraswap
In the decentralized world, intents can be simple or complex. A simple intent might be similar to executing a trade on a DEX, where a user’s desire to exchange one cryptocurrency for another is processed directly on-chain, and once the necessary conditions are met, the transaction is automatically completed.
However, intent can also be complex. Imagine a scenario where a user wants to optimize a portfolio across multiple decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, balancing yield farming, liquidity provision, and automated trading strategies. This involves not just one action, but a series of coordinated interactions with various protocols, each with its own unique requirements and risks. Here, intent is multifaceted and requires complex mechanisms to ensure it is achieved in the most efficient way.
In these cases, decentralized mechanisms like smart contracts, oracles, and decentralized or off-chain solvers come into play to execute complex intent in a trustless and transparent manner. In traditional systems, these complex tasks are impossible to accomplish without centralized control.
Source: Anoma
Chain-Agnostic means you can do what you want on any blockchain. Imagine using the internet: it doesn’t matter which Wi-Fi you’re connected to — you just want to send a message or watch a video.
In the crypto world, intentions are like your digital instructions or wishes. In order for them to work smoothly on different blockchains, a Chain-Agnostic is needed. In this way, you can easily and securely implement your intentions on any blockchain without understanding or caring about the differences between them.
In various blockchain ecosystems, intent-centric models are emerging as a way to simplify user interactions and improve the efficiency of dApps. For example, in an ecosystem like Ethereum, intent is often handled through smart contracts that handle everything from DeFi transactions to NFT transactions. These systems are designed to ensure that once a user expresses an intent, the underlying infrastructure takes care of the rest, including finding a counterparty, executing the transaction, and recording it on the blockchain.
In other ecosystems, such as Polkadot or Cosmos, intent-centric architectures are being explored to leverage the interoperability capabilities inherent in these networks. For example, in Polkadot, intents can be implemented between different parachains, allowing users to interact with various dApps without having to worry about the underlying technical differences between the chains. Similarly, Cosmos is experimenting with cross-chain intent implementations, where users can initiate actions on one chain and complete them on another, while maintaining a high level of security and decentralization.
Source: Anoma
Despite these advances, the current ecosystem remains largely fragmented, with most intents tied to specific blockchains. This fragmentation can lead to inefficiencies. The Chain-Agnostic Framework aims to overcome these challenges by providing a unified system where intents can be expressed, processed, and fulfilled on any blockchain, regardless of its underlying architecture.
In the Chain-Agnostic model, intent is a universal expression that is not limited to any one application or chain. For example, a user might express an intent to trade a token, and the network will handle this intent in the most efficient way, regardless of whether the transaction occurs on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, or another blockchain. This approach not only simplifies the user experience, but also enables greater interoperability and composability between dApps on different chains.
Source: Paraswap
To build an intent-centric Chain-Agnostic architecture, several key components are required:
What technical components are involved in the decentralization effort?
Core components:
Challenges of Mempool Decentralization
Open vs. closed mempools across chains: Open mempools allow any solver to access and process intents, which increases transparency, but also brings risks such as front-running. On the other hand, closed mempools provide greater security, but at the cost of decentralization. The challenge is to balance openness and security, ensuring that intents are processed fairly and efficiently on different blockchains. Everyone can see what is happening, but there is a risk that someone may try to use your idea before you. Closed mempools are similar to private messaging - more secure but less transparent.
Source: Ethresearch
This section focuses on a specific case study: ERC-4337, a new standard on the Ethereum chain that changes the way user accounts and intents are handled. It aims to provide users with greater flexibility and security by enabling smart contract wallets to perform complex operations independently.
ERC-4337 introduces an account abstraction system in Ethereum, which aims to make smart contract wallets (SCW) more independent and powerful. This new standard enables users to perform complex operations through wallets without relying on externally owned accounts (EOA), solving a major limitation in the current Ethereum setup.
UserOps : ERC-4337 uses UserOps instead of traditional transactions. These are user-signed operations that detail the desired action. Multiple UserOps are collected into another memory pool and bundled together by specialized entities called bundlers. These bundles are then processed as a single transaction, which increases efficiency.
Censorship resistance : ERC-4337 is built to be as decentralized as possible. It is open to permissionless participation to ensure that UserOps cannot be censored or manipulated by any single entity. If all packagers refuse to process UserOps, the permissionless nature of the system will encourage new packagers to enter the network and reap potential profits, making the system vulnerable.
Safety measures : To prevent abuse and attacks, ERC-4337 enforces several rules:
ERC-4337 emphasizes the need for a unified mempool, where all packagers follow the same rules. This uniformity prevents mempool fragmentation, where different rules can result in smaller, more isolated mempools that are more vulnerable to censorship and attacks. A consistent set of rules across all packagers ensures a stronger and more resilient network, just as multiple Ethereum clients follow the same protocol rules.
The future of decentralization lies in overcoming the challenges posed by the current limitations of blockchain infrastructure and the broader ecosystem. As intentions shift from traditional transaction-based systems to more declarative user-centric models, there is great potential to improve user experience, reduce inefficiencies, and enhance privacy.
Key focus areas:
challenge:
Related reading: Open Intents: Can ERC-7683 become the “Walmart” supermarket for inter-chain intention collaboration in Ethereum?