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In the year 2024, the blockchain industry witnessed a remarkable surge in on-chain activity, signaling a significant growth in user interest. However, challenges such as network congestion, fragmentation, and the centralization of layer-2 solutions continue to pose obstacles to the widespread adoption of blockchain technology. As the industry anticipates favorable regulations and heightened institutional interest post-Donald Trump’s inauguration, it becomes crucial to address these challenges in order to prepare for the upcoming wave of adoption.
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The 2025 Annual Crypto Theses by Messari recently highlighted the emergence of intent-centric approaches as a significant evolutionary shift that is set to enhance accessibility and efficiency for users.
Understanding intent-centric infrastructure
Intents serve as a declarative tool that operates within a decentralized peer-to-peer network to identify and fulfill counterparties. They enable users to express their desired outcomes without the need to specify the steps to achieve them. This streamlined approach to interactions mirrors the user experience of web2 applications like Uber, offering the automation benefits of AI without the associated centralization and privacy concerns. Intents play a vital role in unlocking the true potential of AI and are gaining traction in various AI applications.
Within the realm of intent-centric DeFi, users can set complex objectives, such as exchanging one Ethereum (ETH) for USD Coin (USDC) at the optimal rate within a specified timeframe, without having to manually configure parameters like routing or gas fees. The system handles the intricate details, such as identifying the best liquidity pools, securing favorable rates, and determining the most efficient execution path. This goal-oriented, automated approach represents a substantial improvement in user experience.
Furthermore, intent-centric infrastructure enhances scalability by shifting the majority of computation and data storage to users’ edge devices, thereby alleviating congestion on networks like Ethereum. The escalating transaction fees witnessed in 2024 prompted many users to disengage from on-chain activities, underscoring the necessity for scalable solutions that reduce costs and enhance interactions with the blockchain. Additionally, generalized intents have the potential to address fragmentation in the multichain landscape, enabling applications to seamlessly operate across diverse networks. Users can simply articulate their desired outcomes without grappling with the intricacies of different chains and protocols.
Intents will drive the next wave of dApp innovation
Present-day users engage with a myriad of applications ranging from social media platforms to online marketplaces, with web3 applications fully leveraging decentralized infrastructure representing a minute fraction of this ecosystem. The limitations of current-generation blockchain infrastructure, which necessitate dApps to be built on virtual machines with step-by-step instructions, hinder the industry from competing with the innovation seen in web2 applications like Uber, Discord, and Tinder.
Generalized intents offer a solution to this challenge by enabling a new wave of dApps that can match or even surpass the sophistication and user experience of web2 applications while upholding the principles of web3. Imagine a decentralized Discord offering intricate permissioning, privacy features, and interoperability across diverse security domains and user interfaces. Similarly, generalized intents can be utilized to create a unified app for ride-hailing services, consolidating all providers into a single interface to streamline the user experience. Developers are already leveraging generalized intents to design alternative dating apps that eliminate swiping and automatically match users based on shared interests or specified criteria.
In the realm of DeFi, generalized intents represent a powerful primitive that can catalyze the development of innovative applications and diminish reliance on centralized infrastructure. Decentralized, multi-dimensional order book decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are a promising example of this potential. Traditional order book DEXs rely on centralized infrastructure for counterpart discovery and only facilitate trading based on price. With generalized intents, trading can be conducted based on additional dimensions such as time preferences or yield opportunities, unlocking a realm of complex possibilities in a fully decentralized manner.
The industry’s next steps
To onboard web2 users into the web3 ecosystem, it is imperative to match the intuitiveness and user-friendliness that individuals are accustomed to. Users should seamlessly interact with web3 applications without the need to understand the underlying blockchain technology. By offering simple, automated experiences, integrated crypto capabilities, privacy features, user-controlled data, full decentralization, and interoperability, web3 can not only rival but surpass the user experience of web2 applications.
Generalized intents are poised to pave the way for this future by bridging the gap between web2 and web3, allowing users to focus on their desired outcomes. By enabling intuitive experiences without compromising the core tenets of decentralization, resilience, verifiability, and user sovereignty, intents present a promising trajectory for the blockchain industry.
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Adrian Brink
Adrian Brink is the co-founder of Anoma, an intent-centric operating system that empowers users of decentralized applications to define their desired outcomes. Anoma stands out as the only solution currently available that offers a generalized intents-based operating system, transcending dApp-specific limitations. Adrian serves as a member of the Anoma Foundation Council and has a track record of co-founding and scaling Cryptium Labs, an infrastructure operator specializing in PoS validation in the Swiss Alps. Additionally, he played a pivotal role in establishing Metastate, an R&D company focused on enhancing layer-1 protocols with a cumulative valuation exceeding $4 billion. Prior to these endeavors, Adrian contributed as the 3rd core protocol engineer in developing the Cosmos stack at Tendermint.