Behind the Popularity of TG Bot: Intending to Open a New Chapter in Intelligent Web3 Interaction

Summary

1. Understanding Intent: Top-Down Anoma and Bottom-Up TG Bot
2. In-depth Intent: AI as a New User Interface - 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

In June, Paradigm first brought the concept of Intent( into the public eye. The related protocols and infrastructure for Intent developed rapidly, becoming a hot topic in the crypto community at the ETHCC conference in July.

Intent is not a new concept. As Mindao, the founder of DForce, stated, the crypto space has been operating at the extremes of abstraction and automation, working on everything from aggregators, centralized exchanges, and contract wallets to cross-chain DeFi, as well as Chainlink and the recent automated middleware, Telegram bots, etc.

Intention to bring new changes. In the past, product interaction was at the core, while in the AGI era, human-computer interaction is central, and AI/LLM contains more potential for enhanced encrypted interactions.

01 Top-Down Anoma and Bottom-Up Unibot

In the past six months, related agreements, projects, and infrastructure have exploded in popularity. Here, we take a glimpse at the overall picture through two examples.

The most eye-catching is the Anoma Foundation, which completed its $25 million third round of financing at the end of May 2023. In the context of severe homogenization in Layer 1, the Anoma Foundation secured $57.8 million in support from investors thanks to its intention-centered architecture Anoma) Dapp full-stack architecture ( and Namada) privacy Layer1(, ranking 7th in financing amounts among Layer 1/Layer 2 projects that have not yet issued tokens.

In a review of Anoma's presentation at EthCC, founder Adrian Brink stated that the magic of Anoma lies in the fact that all interactions begin with intent. After users express their intent, it is processed through Anoma's black box architecture to realize the core transaction process based on intent interactions.

• User Interaction: Users send transparent, private, or protected intents to the Anoma black box architecture.
• Intent Collection and Matching: The parser collects intents, performs balance state transitions, and enables counterparty matching.
• Transaction Processing: Matched transactions are submitted to the crypto mempool, and validators send the blocks packaged by the proposer to the execution layer, completing execution and validity verification, and finally updating the state root.

The Anoma team has identified the underlying pain points of blockchain protocols, reviewing the evolution from Bitcoin's scriptable settlement to Ethereum's programmable settlement. Architectural limitations have resulted in existing application protocols containing at least one Web2 component, preventing the discovery and resolution of counterparties. They believe that the intent-centric Anoma architecture represents the third generation of Dapp architecture in the evolution of blockchain protocols, allowing users to define the desired outcome state and achieve efficient and customizable private transactions at the intent level.

Anoma, which features high financing and innovative technological architecture, is currently developed by the Heliax team consisting of 37 interdisciplinary members. Despite slow progress over two years, Heliax has established a complete innovative ecosystem:

• Anoma: A general Dapp architecture centered around intent, which can be modularly deployed to L1, L1.5, and L2, embedded as modular components into various EVM frameworks.
• Namada: A privacy settlement Layer1 of the Anoma ecosystem, using PoS mechanism, for asset-agnostic inter-chain privacy, will be compatible with Ethereum and IBC chains in the future.
• AnomaVM: Simplifying DApp development on Anoma, using the intent-based programming language Juvix) and the VampIR( circuit programming language).
• Typhon: Improved consensus based on Tendermint of Cosmos
• Taiga: Provides a composable privacy unified execution environment, defining three types of intentions: transparent intention, masked intention, and privacy intention.

Many institutions such as CMCC Global, Electric Capital, and Delphi Digital are optimistic about Anoma, believing that its intention-centric architecture has limitless potential for the future. However, currently, the top-down Anoma has only established a solid technological foundation, and we have yet to see any exciting real-world applications.

On the other side, the TG Bot has opened up the imagination for the implementation of Intent segmentation scenarios using on-chain automated trading tools.

Unibot is a Telegram-based trading bot that allows users to conduct automated DEX trading via Telegram, providing features such as sniper buying, copy trading, DEX limit orders, privacy, and MEV resistance. Unibot replaces the cumbersome interactions of Uniswap based on Intent, offering a convenient DeFi experience. Unibot has also spawned a batch of TG Bot clones, with the current total market value of the TG Bot sector approaching 200 million USD.

Top-down Anoma is innovation, while bottom-up TG Bot is transformation. Anoma starts from a bottom layer architecture based on intent, but the team is progressing slowly; although TG Bot brings users a new on-chain interactive interface, it is not intelligent enough and has many security risks.

The two paths converge with a common goal - to simplify user interaction experience, introducing a new programmable and customizable user interaction interface - User Intent Layer(, allowing users to bypass complex on-chain interactions and define transaction status based on intent.

02 AI Becomes the New User Interface: Command Interaction vs Intent Interaction

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

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

Every revolution in interaction modes throughout history has led to entirely new business models. LLM-based generative AI brings disruptive changes to human-computer interaction, directly transforming the traditional software UI interaction into interaction with a ChatGPT chat window, which is an unprecedented experience. LLM + crypto introduces a new proposition of intention-based interaction to the crypto world; LLM has the potential to make blockchain interactions smarter by discovering and describing user intentions.

![Behind the explosion of TG Bot: The intention to trade is knocking on the door of intelligent interaction in Web3])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-4a462840b03c62ffc001cc61e644bc5f.webp(

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

Intent is not a new concept; it has existed since the Web 2.0 era. With the rise of search engines like Google, users can input their intent, and the search engines provide relevant results to satisfy that intent.

After the rise of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay, there has been a significant shift in intent-based architecture, allowing users to express their intent to purchase products, while the platform takes care of logistics. In 2017, Gartner proposed the concept of Intent-based Networking ), which presents users with an interface where they only need to express what they want, and the platform handles the business details.

Intent-based networking is the development trend of network automation and intelligence in the Web2 era. Gartner Research Vice President Andrew Lerner pointed out in 2017 that intent-based networking will be the next milestone in the field of networking.

In the evolution from Web2 to Web3, the concept of intent in Web3 is not clear, but there are some consensus:

• Paradigm Definition: Intention is a set of declarative constraints that allow users to delegate the creation of transactions to a specialized network of third-party participants while retaining full control over the process.
• Anoma Definition: Intent is the message sent by the user to express custom preferences, defining constraints on what the system can do, rather than a specific execution path.
• Definition of Propellerheads: The intent is the part of the transaction that requires assistance from others, simplifying complex transactions by outsourcing the difficult parts to third parties.

In real use cases of intent-based transactions in Web3, users create intents off-chain, outsource them to parsers off-chain, encapsulating the complexity of blockchain interactions while retaining full on-chain control over the process for users, thus lowering the threshold for on-chain interactions.

The intention is to bring the LLM architecture concept - intent centric ( an architecture centered around user intent ). Currently, the crypto protocols and infrastructure related to intent centric are embedded in the interaction layer between users and Crypto, providing a better on-chain interaction experience with the help of LLM.

LLM+Crypto brings a new paradigm of human-computer interaction, allowing user intentions to be directly converted into smart contract calls. Users only need to express their intentions like using Siri, and robots/AI Agents/third-party parsers help complete complex on-chain operations. In the future, intent-based Web3 interaction intelligence has the potential to greatly reduce the complexity of user on-chain interactions.

AI becomes the new user interface, and more and more Web3 projects are exploring the magic of intention. Whether it is intention-based Dapps or intention-based underlying architecture, they all unleash the potential of intention from different angles. We attempt to organize this rapidly evolving field and categorize it into four major categories from an interaction perspective, tracking the latest status and trends:

Infrastructure ( intent-centric architecture layer ):

• DappOS: The first intent-centric Web3 operating protocol that builds a middleware layer between users and public chains, cross-chain bridges, and other crypto infrastructure, allowing Web3 users to interact with products seamlessly and without perception. The V2 version was recently released.
• Flash 2.0 SUAVE: an independent plug-and-play modular MEV full-chain ordering layer, Preferences(SUAVE core concept) is similar to the Intent concept, providing ordinary users with customized trading methods, ultimately helping users achieve optimal execution. Flashbots plans to launch SUAVE Centauri in Q4 2023.
• Anoma: A general-purpose Dapp architecture centered around intentions, modularly deployable to L1, L1.5, and L2, and can be embedded as modular components into various EVM frameworks. The latest update from the Anoma ecosystem is that the privacy settlement Layer1 Namada is about to launch the v0.22.0 testnet.
• Cow Protocol: Builds an underlying settlement network for traders and parsers. In July, the new intent system Cow Hooks was launched to enable customized DeFi operations. The latest data from August shows a total transaction volume of $1.05 billion, generating a profit of $5.3 million.

Supporting facilities ( related to intent and supporting infrastructure related to account abstraction wallets ):

• ERC 4337: User Operation refers to the user's intent, including the tokens for paying gas, payment options, and login methods, replacing the current transaction memory pool, achieving account abstraction, and improving wallet interaction experience.
• Supporting facilities related to account abstraction: Packager infrastructure ( StackUp, Blocknative, Alchemy Rundler, AA-Bundler, infinitism Bundler ), Wallet SDK ( Safe, ZeroDev, Biconomy ).
• Supporting facilities related to intent: Juvix( intent-based programming language), Seaport( open-source NFT trading protocol), Gelato( smart contract providing automation services Web3 execution layer), okcontract( low-level intent automation tool), Delegatable( smart contract authorization proxy tool), Hyper Oracle( off-chain automation services), symmio( intent-based on-chain derivatives trading framework).

Enterprise applications ( integrate Dapp's intent infrastructure, API, modular intent layer, specific domain parsers ):

• Trade Parser API: PropelleHeads
• Intent API: EnsoFinance
• Intent Trading Infrastructure: Bob the Solver, Brink
• Composable Intent Tool: Essential

The intelligent interface for consumer applications ( user interactions, such as wallets, DEX, Web3 AI Agents, and smart search engines ):

• Wallets: Safe, Bitconomy, Argent, Ambire, Sequence, Versa, A3SProtocol
• DEX:CowSwap, Paraswap, Uniswap, 1inch, BananaHq, basedmarkets
• Intelligent Frontend: Unibot, Dora, Web3 Analytics, kaito.ai

The intent-based architecture, supporting infrastructure, and enterprise applications attempt to solve the underlying challenges of intent realization, but infrastructure cannot be built overnight. The trend of intent consumer application layers is what is truly exciting, as the evolution of interaction gateways such as wallets and DEX demonstrates the potential for intelligent interactions.

Wallet Intelligence: ERC-4337 introduces a new user intent layer (UserOps), where users express their intents, and then the packager converts these intents into executable signed transactions. In recent months, the number of ERC4337 users has significantly increased, with ZeroDev, Biconomy, and Safe modular smart accounts being the most motivated to promote AA+ intent, potentially leading to wallet intelligence in the future (SCW).

![TG Bot's explosive popularity