From Layer1 to DEX, inventory of 8 promising conceptual projects worth attention

Exploring Layer1 to DEX 8 Conceptual Projects Worth Keeping an Eye On

Organized by: Biscuit, RootData

At the recent ETHCC conference in Paris, “ETH Mass Adoption or Wide Application” became a hot topic of discussion. In the process of analyzing this challenge, a key concept emerged – the “Intent Layer”. The core concept of this layer is to lower the barrier of 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 rather a off-chain signed message. This message represents the state transition that the user wants to achieve, and it is the specific encoding of the desired outcome. “Intent” allows users to define the results they want, and then it is up to the resolvers to find the best path to achieve these results.

This intent-based design pattern brings multiple advantages. First and foremost, it greatly improves user experience and execution quality. Users only need to approve the results they want, while complex operations are handled by the resolvers. Secondly, it increases efficiency. Within the same chain environment, multiple intents can offset each other or generate economic revenue, thus improving overall efficiency. At the same time, the flexibility of off-chain computing also helps to improve efficiency, as it is not constrained by on-chain computing limitations.

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Therefore, the intent track has received a lot of attention from the market and capital, and recently RootData has also recorded several early intent-based projects. In this article, RootData provides a basic introduction and operational mechanism for 8 intent concept projects, including Flashbots (SUAVE), DappOS, Anoma Network, LianGuairticle Network, CowSwap, Fairblock Network, Essential, and PropellerHeads.

Anoma Network

Anoma is an intent-centered privacy architecture that introduces 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 become fully decentralized, such as optimistic and ZK rollups, DEX, NFT markets, or public product financing applications like Gitcoin.

In the Anoma protocol, intent is a user-created, unfinished transaction or demand message, 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 help of mediators, find transaction combinations that satisfy multiple user needs. At the same time, Anoma supports diverse instances, and users can choose to participate in instances based on their own needs and protect personal information according to their privacy preferences. The specific implementation steps are as follows:

1. Create intent: Users can create intents, including specific requirements and transaction details. Intents can include maximum/minimum buy or sell quantities, specific transaction objects, etc.

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

3. Intent Matching: The Matcher monitors the intent pool and attempts to find transactions that can fulfill multiple intents. The Matcher can be an AI, an algorithm, or a manual operator who is responsible for finding matching intent combinations.

4. Transaction Formation: The Matcher converts the found intents into transactions. The transactions include details that fulfill multiple intent requirements, such as the quantities for buying and selling, and the trading objects.

5. Validation and Submission of Transactions: The transactions are validated to ensure they meet all relevant intent requirements. Once validated, the transactions are submitted to the full nodes and recorded on the blockchain.

6. State Transition and Parallel Execution: Anoma separates state transition and validation, allowing for parallel execution. Validity predicates are used to validate state changes and ensure they satisfy specific constraints.

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

8. Fractal Scaling: Anoma supports multiple instances of fractals, each with different characteristics and functionalities. Instances can be global or localized, and operators can choose to interoperate with other instances based on their needs.

9. Privacy Protection: Anoma supports zero-knowledge privacy, allowing users to choose the level of privacy protection according to their needs. The privacy protection layer can achieve specific coordination functionalities while preserving user privacy.

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

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

SUAVE

As a leader in MEV research, Flashbots is also venturing into the intent track. Its developed SUAVE is a dedicated intent layer similar to Anoma, introducing a new architecture with plug-and-play memory pools and a decentralized block generator.

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

Read more: 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-based operating protocol that aims to make dApps as user-friendly as mobile applications. As a Web3 unified operating protocol, it builds a layer between users and cryptographic infrastructure such as public chains and cross-chain bridges, allowing users to interact with dappOS to validate and execute actions in the decentralized world. Currently, dappOS has launched its V2 version, which improves user experience through the following features:

1. Unified accounts: Users can manage on-chain assets through a unified account, enjoying a seamless experience similar to ceFi (centralized finance) without the need to differentiate between different chains. Instead, they can focus on the total balance of their funds.

2. Task dependencies support: dappOS V2 allows users to confirm complex and interdependent transactions across different chains using a single signature, 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 income from their services.

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

Read more: https://medium.com/@dappos.com/dappos-v2-roadmap-9146c44737c8

LianGuairticle Network

LianGuairticle Network is a Web3 developer platform. Its V1 product is a Wallet as a Service (WaaS) based on MPC-TSS (Multi-Party Computation – Threshold Signature Scheme). In September of this year, it announced the launch of its V2 product, the first intent-based Web3 modular access layer, which further abstracts the interaction needs between end users and the blockchain, improving transaction efficiency for end users.

LianGuairticle Network has designed the user journey for its intent-based product as follows:

Step 1: Users seamlessly log in to application layer products supported by LianGuairticle Network’s zkWaaS, protecting their Web2 identity with privacy login.

Step 2: Users express their intents for the product, such as wanting to earn specific income through their held ETH.

Step 3: LianGuairticle V2 processes the intents and automatically executes the necessary actions to fulfill the intents. For example, it seamlessly bridges ETH to Layer 2 and securely deposits it into Lido for earning income, all without the need for users to manually sign a series of transactions.

In terms of financing, LianGuairticle Network announced in March this year that it has completed a $7 million financing round, with participation from institutions such as 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 trades with MEV protection. The CoW protocol matches transactions with various on-chain liquidity sources through batch auctions. It can provide users with better prices and save a significant amount of money in terms of gas optimization and liquidity provider fees.

CowSwap will also support intent-based trading. Unlike other DEX platforms, CoW protocol users do not execute trades on their own. Instead, they sign an intention to trade these two tokens with a specified limit price.

Then, the intention is passed on to third parties (known as solvers), who compete for users’ order flow by attempting to provide the best possible price. Solvers that offer the best execution prices are granted the right to settle users’ orders. The actual settlement transactions are then created and signed by the solvers.

Solvers can move tokens on behalf of users (using the user’s granted settlement contract ERC20 approval) while also verifying the signature of the user’s intent and executing based on the specified limit price and quantity.

CowSwap completed a $23 million private funding round in March 2022, with participation from investors such as 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, privacy limit orders/intent, privacy voting/governance, sealed-bid auctions, randomness generation, and censorship-resistant sorters in blockchain ecosystems. Its goal/value is to empower users and protocols with optional freedom in encrypted transactions, protecting them from various forms of malicious strategies.

The transaction process using Fairblock is as follows:

a. Users encrypt transactions using their master public key (updated very infrequently) and “decryption conditions” and submit them directly to the target chain. This step seamlessly occurs in the front end of the application or the user’s wallet.

b. Validators or sorters of the target application include the encrypted transactions in a block.

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

d. The private key will automatically aggregate the majority of honest private key shares using the FairyRing validator.

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

In terms of financing, Fairblock Network completed a $2.5 million Pre-seed round in October, with lead investment from Galileo, as well as participation from GSR, Chorus One, DoraHacks, Reverie, Lemniscap, and Robot Ventures.

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

Essential

Essential is building intent-based infrastructure and tools to accelerate the transition from value extraction to intent fulfillment, mitigating the centralization threat posed by MEV. Essential aims to minimize extractive behavior and maximize user satisfaction.

Essential has proposed the ERC-7521 standard to support generalized intents for smart contract wallets. The methods by which Essential realizes intents include:

a. DSL for intent expression: Essential is developing a generic domain-specific language (DSL) to standardize, compose, and parse intents, enabling Solvers to reason about intents using the same language in which they are expressed.

b. Intent-centered 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 existing EVM-based intent systems and delegate the work of constructing efficient transactions to Solvers.

c. Modular intent layer: Anoma plans to build a modular intent layer that aims to ingest only intents without the concept of user-submitted transactions, allowing for more efficient solving solutions. Additionally, it introduces order flow aggregation to ensure transparency and user control over order flow and reduce the potential for MEV (Maximal 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, with lead investment from Maven11 and participation from Robot Ventures, Neel Somani, and others.

Read more: https://blog.essential.builders/introducing-essential/

PropellerHeads

PropellerHeads is a decentralized infrastructure providing the best price for any transaction through smart routing and privacy submission for wallets, dapps, and users. PropellerHeads also supports the protocol by designing and developing robots to maintain protocol health and prevent MEV damage. PropellerHeads primarily offers two components:

• Smart routing: Fetches quotes and the best exchange routes for any swap from the Solver API.
• Privacy submission: Submits fully protected transactions to builders using a private RPC.

PropellerHeads focuses on optimizing specific elements of intent architecture – Solvers. By using the PropellerSDK, especially their Solver API and Private RPC, users are better protected from MEV and obtain better prices in transactions. The Solver API returns the best route to obtain the optimal price by inserting multiple liquidity sources and running optimization algorithms.

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

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