They aren't new new, but have been tiptop of conversations lately, why? Read on, i'll make it simple.
(treat at the end)
Intents are the biggest upgrade to onchain transactions since forever, here is what it means and how it compares to what user experiences we have now.
An intent is a user-signed message that specifies a desired outcome. It includes details about certain parameters of the onchain action, BUT actually executing the action only happens if it meets the conditions related to those parameters.
Intents are journey-agnostic, meaning the user should only care about achieving the desired outcome according to their constraints, not the path that leads there.
A regular transaction declares to “how” an action should be done, an intent declares “what” the desired outcome of that action should be.
regular transaction: specified action
“i want to swap 100 USDC for ETH on BASE”
intent-enabled transaction: specified outcome and its conditions
“i want to get at least 0.03 ETH for from a 100 USDC budget, swap on BASE, on one of these 3 DEXs, once a week for the next 6 weeks.”
this is HUGE!!
“Okay?! But I don't trade that much, nor do I build bots. How does this affect me?”
Intents are meaningful for ANY onchain action not just swaps. Here is an absolutely not DeFi example to describe the type of unlock with a comparison to today's infrastructure here:
You’re at a fancy 7 course meal and want to order your drinks, little appetizers, the full suite.
Transactions today:
Instead of being able to place your order at once, you have to wait until you’re done with one course to order the next one. If you run out of drinks and need a refill, sorry you’re going to have to wait with that too. If you want to change your mind half-way through about what you want to drink, sorry you’re stuck with your initial order of water.
While you’re eating, the price of your main course 10x-s. You’re stuck with the bill because the only thing in your signature gave you assurance of is ordering a given course.
Intent-enabled transactions:
Declare your order whenever, change and update it whenever. If you want a new drink, sure thing anything for the customer. One more round of that delicious starter but without shrimps this time? Gotchu. Your friend showed up and squeezed into the dinner halfway through, well that’s okay too. You can be certain to get what you ordered exactly to specification, at the price you ordered it, within the time you expected it, and ratain the ability to change it.
Really, today's infra is just signatures for transactions, following one permitted path to execution, not a very good customer experience… we are just used to it. It’s far from the full value that could be delivered. However, intents do not specify exactly what path must be taken, rather allow for any that satisfies the given constraints.
Today 99% of infra is only focused on that single course on your table, not the full meal.
Every protocol will need to implement intents into the core of their functionality to keep up with the industry's needs, because—lucky for us—users require only the best. This means updating and redeploying all of their contracts.
If you have used Uniswap X (signing off-chain orders that are executed and settled on-chain with more improvements) or CoW Swap (matches you with someone of the exact opposite swap request) you already got a taste of intents without knowing. From an ecosystem-wide implementation perspective, it is in a similar spot to ZK tech in a way that it is quite segregated and with this approach it is going to take forever to reach us, the users, with the value it's supposed to provide.
There are a couple of companies forking CoW Swaps work and adding new chains or assets to it, some are building different parts of the network necessary to solve the intents, there are intense intent researchers, a few frontends that specialize in their own vertical for swapping or bridging on certain chains, and of course some are building dev tools.
I got really interested in this space because i’ve entered my “onchain every day” era over the winter and have the vast majority of my net worth onchain. Naturally I want to do more with it. Ran into ridiculous UX patterns, protocol and interface limitations for my actions, risky sites and way too many failed transactions. Of course I've also lost money because i wasn’t online enough to move when i needed to.
It’s not enough to learn how and then actively acquire more assets onchain, it is equally important to not lose them on the market. I wished something helped me with both. Cue Intents, cue Plug….
As a non-dev person who is just trying to do more and do better onchain these don't seem like the best possible outcome built, and it's going to take years before we can maximize its potential. I don't have time to wait until someone magically standardizes intents or until all protocols I want to use redeploy their contracts updated with intents.
I just want to use the best protocols, get my best outcomes, schedule stuff so i don't need to be online all the time, not have to code to do all of this, and hopefully also keep collaborating with my buddies to be better at being onchain.
A plug-and-play platform, Plug making all of the above and more available to us, the users. We are launching soon, to enjoy beta with us sign up for early access here.
Thank you Chance and Drake for the input and cooking with me onplug.io
If you wanna continue learning about intents, read these:
reka
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This, and the documents @reka links out to, provides a great overview of her vision of intent-enabled transactions. Tnese are transactions that we automate based on desired outcomes and the conditions we set for achieving those outcomes. Done well, this allows us to unplug and be more present for the people and activities that matter most to us, without suffering huge opportunity costs. https://paragraph.xyz/@reka/do-more-and-better-onchain?referrer=0xda70761a63d5d0dde3bde3b179126127cccb44b3