Under Paradigm's Spotlight: What is Intent-Centric?

Top-tier venture capital firm Paradigm mentions 10 areas they have been continuously exploring in “Collaborate with Paradigm”:

• Intent-centric protocols and infra

• Hooks on top of Uniswap v4 (especially ones that focus on LP profitability and loss-vs-rebalancing)

• Infra for a rollup-centric, multi-chain world

• Shared sequencers

• Onchain games (something we would enjoy playing)

• Crypto-native social apps

• Prediction markets (creating markets with real liquidity)

• Stablecoin payments/fintech (as stablecoins mature and banking becomes more troublesome)

• Onchain treasuries (a natural step after stablecoins and before other real world assets)

• ZKP apps (there is a ZKP capability overhang: science is ahead of applied research, which is ahead of applications)

The article mentions that Paradigm currently has enough energy to work with 3 to 5 projects in depth. Intent-centric protocols and infrastructures that Paradigm has put at the top of its list of concerns What exactly does that mean？ What protocols or infrastructures for related concepts are currently available in the market？ How to look at intent-centric protocols from a market perspective.

The Concept around Intent-Centric

In the current blockchain landscape, achieving intentions often requires interacting with a series of smart contracts. For example, User A may wish to convert USDT into ETH, stake the ETH in a Staking protocol, and then collateralize stETH in a Lending protocol, all while earning rewards from both. To accomplish this, User A might need to begin by using a DEX for the initial token swap, followed by interacting with protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool for staking, and then subsequently collateralizing the obtained certificates in a Lending protocol.

Creating such transactions involves navigating a complex web of smart contracts, managing details like gas fees and random number generation, and holding specific assets for gas payment. This complexity raises the user's entry barriers and necessitates holding specific assets for gas fees.

At its core, being intent-driven revolves around prioritizing the user's needs and enabling automation through smart contracts or protocols. Intent is defined through a set of declarative constraints that allow users to outsource transaction creation to third parties without relinquishing full control over the transaction's parameters. By signing and sharing intents, users can effectively delegate authority to recipients to determine the execution path on their behalf.

Protocols or Infrastructure Related to Intent-Centric

Bob the Solver

“Bob the Solver” is an innovative project designed as an infrastructure for intent-based transactions (txs), intended to be integrated into wallets and decentralized applications (dapps).

“Bob the Solver” operates in two interconnected parts: a 'Solver' for creating transactions (txs) and an 'Account Abstraction (AA) Wallet' for executing these transactions.

Solver: The Solver is equipped with a machine learning (ML) model that classifies the user's intent.

Account Abstraction Wallet: The AA Wallet acts as the execution arm of the system. It incorporates a bundler and a paymaster. The bundler's role is to collect and organize the transactions sent by the Solver. Simultaneously, the paymaster is responsible for managing gas fees associated with these transactions. This means the paymaster pays for gas fees when necessary, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted execution of transactions.

Anoma

Anoma is introducing a novel public blockchain architecture with intent-centricity at its core. It achieves this by modularly aggregating and packaging user intents, such as privacy intents, transaction intents, security intents, and more, for on-chain execution.