Behind the Explosion of TG Bot: Intentional Trading is Opening the Door to Intelligent Interaction in Web3

Summary

1. Understanding Intent: Top-Down Anoma and Bottom-Up TG Bot
2. In-depth Intent: AI is the new UI - Complex Commands vs Simple Intent
3. Navigation Intent: Evolution of the Intent Concept, Interaction Paradigms, Current Status, and Trends
4. Guiding Intent: Challenges and Prospects of Intelligent Web3 Interaction

The concept of Intent was first promoted by Paradigm in June, and related protocols and infrastructure developed rapidly, becoming a hot topic in the crypto community at the ETHCC conference in July. Intent is not a new concept, but it has brought about new changes - shifting from product interaction to human-computer interaction as the core, with AI/LLM containing more potential to enhance crypto interactions.

Top-down Anoma and Bottom-up Unibot

Recently, projects related to intent have emerged, among which the most notable is Anoma Foundation. It features an "intent-centric" architecture, including the Anoma(DApp full-stack architecture) and Namada( privacy L1), with a total of $57.8 million raised in three rounds of financing, ranking 7th among non-token L1/L2 projects.

Adrian Brink, the founder of Anoma, stated that its magic lies in the fact that all interactions begin with intent, and the core trading process is realized through a "black box architecture."

• User interaction: Send transparent/private/protected intentions to the black box
• Intent collection matching: Parser collects intents, balances state transitions, matches counterparties
• Transaction Processing: Matching transactions submitted to the crypto mempool, validators package and execute to update the status.

The Anoma team believes this is the third generation architecture of blockchain protocols, allowing users to define the desired outcome state and achieve efficient and customizable privacy transactions.

On the other hand, TG Bots like Unibot open up imaginative possibilities for Intent landing scenarios through on-chain automated trading tools. It simplifies Uniswap interactions based on intent, provides a convenient DeFi experience, and spawns a batch of imitation projects.

The top-down Anoma is innovation, while the bottom-up TG Bot is transformation. Both paths lead to the same goal: simplifying the user experience and introducing a new programmable customizable interaction interface - User Intent Layer, allowing users to express their intentions directly without complex on-chain operations.

AI is the new UI: Command Interaction vs Intent Interaction

AI is introducing the third UI paradigm in the history of computers, shifting towards a new interaction mechanism - users tell the computer what they want, rather than how to do it.

• Paradigm One: Batch Processing
• Paradigm Two: Command-Based Interaction Design
• Paradigm Three: Intent-based Result Specification

Every revolution in interaction modes creates new business models. LLM-based generative AI has disrupted human-computer interaction, directly transforming software UI interaction into a conversation with ChatGPT. LLM + crypto brings a new intent-based interaction to the crypto world, with the potential to make blockchain interactions smarter.

The Evolution of the Concept of Intent, Interaction Paradigms, Current Status, and Trends

Intent is not a new concept; it has existed since the Web2 era. From Google search engines to Amazon e-commerce platforms, and then to the "Intent-Based Network" proposed by Gartner in 2017, intent has always been a trend in the automation and intelligence of Web2 networks.

The concept of intent in Web3 is not very clear, but there is some consensus:

• Paradigm Definition: Allows users to delegate the creation of transactions to third parties while retaining full control through declarative constraints.
• Anoma Definition: A message sent by the user expressing custom preferences, defining what the system can do rather than the specific execution path.
• Propellerheads definition: Parts of transactions that require assistance from others are simplified through outsourcing complex transactions.

In Web3 intent-based transactions, users create intents off-chain, outsource them to parsers, encapsulate complexity while retaining on-chain control, and lower the interaction threshold.

The intention also brought the concept of "user intent-centric" LLM architecture. Relevant protocols and infrastructure embed the interaction layer between users and Crypto, leveraging LLM to provide a better experience.

LLM+Crypto brings a new paradigm of human-computer interaction, allowing user intentions to be directly translated into smart contract calls. In the future, users will only need to express their intentions as they would with Siri, with robots/AI agents/third-party parsers completing complex on-chain operations, significantly reducing interaction complexity.

More and more Web3 projects are exploring the potential of intentions. From an interaction perspective, they can be divided into four categories:

1. Infrastructure: DappOS, Flash 2.0 SUAVE, Anoma, Cow Protocol, etc.
2. Supporting Facilities: ERC 4337, Account Abstraction Related Facilities, Intent Related Facilities, etc.
3. Enterprise applications: PropelleHeads, EnsoFinance, Bob the Solver, Brink, Essential, etc.
4. Consumer Applications:
   • Wallet: Safe, Bitconomy, Argent, etc.
   • DEX:CowSwap, Paraswap, Uniswap, etc.
   • Intelligent Frontend: Unibot, Dora, Web3 Analytics, etc.

The trends at the consumer application layer are the most exciting:

• Wallet Intelligence: ERC-4337 introduces a user intent layer, expected to give rise to smart contract wallets (SCW)
• DEX architecture shift: transition to intent-based architecture, the landscape is undergoing significant changes.
• Intelligent interaction entry: TG Bot and others are transforming the Web3 frontend, making interactions more intelligent.

Challenges and Prospects of Intelligent Interaction in Web3

Intent-centric implementation faces many challenges: lack of relevant programming languages and architectures, parsers, composable implementations, and security risks, etc.

But the future is promising. With the emergence of relevant protocols, Web3 is expected to evolve into a more user-friendly smart interaction interface, allowing users to interact with mainstream DApps in a one-stop manner, as simple as hailing a ride with Uber. This is the real opportunity for Web3 to surpass Web2 in user experience.

More importantly, it is essential to return decision-making power to users by centering on intent. Ordinary users can also leverage third parties to complete customized transactions, becoming the true navigators of on-chain activities, rather than passive participants or victims of MEV.

Looking to the future, whether it is account abstraction, chain abstraction, or intent, Web3 has finally begun to focus on user experience. The dawn of intelligent interaction is about to illuminate the dark forest.