TL;DR
Currently, intent-centric frameworks are all constrained by their “one-shot” nature. Meaning that users are limited to only expressing their intent at one singular point in time and having that executed. This significantly limits the versatility and expressiveness of intent-centric design principles. To help overcome this challenge, Aperture and Brevis have joined forces to create an Autonomous Intent-centric Framework! This framework will enable users to specify their intentions over an extended period of time based on specifying certain actions they wish to take and what the corresponding triggering conditions are for those actions. It is important to note that this framework stands apart from centralized alternatives and is entirely trust-free thanks to Brevis’s ZK Coprocessing capabilities. We are working together with the Aperture team to release the first initial version of such a framework which will be able to be utilized by various applications with features such as active liquidity management, risk management, and yield boosting.
The Limitation of “One-Shot” Intent-centric DeFi
Intent-centric DeFi is going to revolutionize how users interact with and engage in DeFi ecosystems. It reshapes the UX that DeFi users use today.
Consider the following example:
The Intent:
- Alice wants to swap her 1000 USDC on Arbitrum to ETH on Optimism.
The Current Non-intent-centric UX:
- Alice must manually go through all of the multitude of DEXes on Arbitrum to search for the best pricing to swap USDC to ETH.
- Then Alice must, once again, manually review all the potential bridges she could use to bridge her ETH between Arbitrum and Optimism.
- Finally, Alice has to manually execute each of the swap and bridge transactions.
- Even after all that effort and work, Alice still may not be getting the optimal result based on her intent. What if she could have ended up with more ETH since it was cheaper to first bridge the USDC to Optimism and then use a DEX to swap to ETH?
An Intent-centric UX:
- Alice speaks into a magic box to share her intent: “I want to swap my 1000 USDC on Arbitrum to ETH on Optimism.”
- This magic box then compares 192 different possible paths and combinations involving different DEXes, bridges, and even intermediary chains in order to find the best possible outcome for Alice based on her intent. Then the magic box speaks to Alice: “The best option I found with my power is for you to end up with 0.5ETH on Optimism. If this is acceptable just click this button and it will be done.”
- Alice is happy with this outcome and clicks the button. Voila! 0.5 ETH shows up in her wallet on Optimism like magic.
This magic intent box serves as an aggregator that can translate users’ higher-level intentions into step-by-step transactions. There are various types of intent boxes that exist today, each tailored to specific functions: some are for swaps, some for bridges, some for lending, and some for yield optimization. These smaller, more specific boxes can, of course, be further merged into bigger boxes capable of dealing with higher-level intentions as long as there is strong composability between the small boxes.
However, the intent-centric frameworks of today all have a fundamental limitation: they can only handle a user’s request at one single point in time. Therefore it is “one-shot” in nature; a user initiates a request, and the intent-centric framework quickly executes that request with one single batch of signatures from the user. Ideally, the user does not need to take any additional actions.
Currently, users are unable to specify their intent with various triggering conditions and just leave it for an intent framework to execute autonomously over a period of time with disjoint action sets. As an example, a user cannot simply say “Whenever the price of ETH increases by 20% for more than one day, rebalance my LP position to align the market so I can maximize yield.”
The easiest solution to this issue is for the user to delegate his liquidity to someone else and let that third party execute this intent whenever their predefined conditions are met.
However, these types of solutions place significant trust in third-party executors. The determination of when these execution conditions, such as price, volatility, TVL, etc, are met is entirely determined in a centralized way. Likewise, the decision-making process for generating the final execution actions is also computed in a centralized manner. Consequently, if the executor is malicious, the user’s fund will be exposed to significant risk.
Aperture + Brevis: A Trust-free Autonomous Intent-based Framework
Aperture and Brevis are joining forces to address and solve this challenge by introducing a completely trust-free autonomous intent-based framework.
Aperture offers a range of intent-based automation functionalities, including liquidity rebalances, position closures, fee reinvestments, and limit orders—all with parameters tailored to a user’s desired price, asset ratio, or timeframe. However, these benefits have only been realistically accessible to pro traders due to the fact that there hasn’t been a trust-free mechanism for delegating execution to third parties. This requires traders to maintain an online presence to oversee everything and be the final executors and verifiers of such automation strategies.
This leaves a large untapped market of users who want to delegate their liquidity to third-party automation strategies that are able to trust-freely and autonomously execute their predefined intent.
Enter Brevis, a smart ZK coprocessor that empowers smart contracts to read from and utilize the full historical on-chain data from any chain, enabling the running of customizable computations in a completely trust-free way. Using Brevis, third-party intent executors can generate ZK Proofs to demonstrate that certain execution conditions have been met and verified before the corresponding on-chain transactions can occur.
Take the example of the autonomous LP rebalance use case. With Brevis, a user can delegate this rebalancing task and his liquidity to any third party. Since whenever the third party wants to rebalance the user’s liquidity position, they must provide proof that the on-chain price has moved beyond the current LP position’s range and that the intended action is the correct adjustment based on this price movement.
In addition to the collaboration on proving trigger conditions, Aperture and Brevis are also exploring the broader integrations of ZKPs in the Aperture tech stack. This would specifically include ensuring the assignment of the best executor for a condition-met user intent in the Aperture Solver Network—a decentralized network of executors competing to complete a user intent based on a list of task-agnostic and intent-specific metrics. With Brevis, Aperture can query if the executor does possess a satisfactory solution. Brevis can then compute the on-chain signals of the executor, and generate a ZKP to be trustlessly verified and used in the Aperture smart contract.
The fusion of intent-based architecture with zero-knowledge verifications marks a significant leap forward in active DeFi strategies. The utilization of Brevis ZK proofs to verify trigger conditions and determine the best executor in the Aperture Solver Network combines streamlined liquidity rebalances and position closures, maximized decentralization of the protocol, and cost-efficient on-chain interactions. As Aperture offers more use cases in liquidity management automation, we envision a deeper incorporation of Brevis’s zero-knowledge cryptographic algorithms into the Aperture ecosystem, to further enhance the trustlessness of the tech stack and provide users with a more secure and transparent environment for DeFi strategies.
We are working together on implementing an initial version of the Autonomous Intent-centric framework that will support key features like liquidity rebalancing and risk management. Please stay tuned for details on our upcoming release!
About Aperture
Aperture Finance is a pioneer in AI-powered intents. Featuring an IntentsGPT interface and an AI-driven smart solver simulation, Aperture’s solver network significantly reduces barriers for DeFi users and enhances transaction efficiency.
Dive Deeper into Aperture:
🌐Website | 🗨️Telegram | 🐦X | 🔊Discord | 📘Medium
About Brevis
Brevis is a smart ZK coprocessor that empowers smart contracts to read the full historical on-chain data from any chain and run customizable computations in a completely trust-free way.
Brevis can trustlessly read the states, transactions, and receipts of any time frame. It efficiently runs computations on data of any size: as the data to prove increases in size, Brevis significantly reduces the per unit cost and time for proof generation. Additionally, Brevis seamlessly verifies Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proofs on any blockchain, providing a unified and trustless user experience for dApps. Brevis empowers data-rich use cases including data-driven DeFi, user-segment optimized live-ops features, zkBridges, zkDID, and smart-contract native risk control, all executed in a trustless manner operating across multiple chains.
Dive Deeper into Brevis:
🌐Website | 🗨️Telegram | 🐦X | 🎮Demo | 📘SDK Docs
Check out our recent collaboration with Uniswap V4 for data-driven DEX experiences: https://x.com/uniswapfnd/status/1719760883965149501?s=46&t=g_eKREE5Jar3usyEsvJPZQ
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