"I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make."

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This post will examine the trade-off between getting drawn into a new field and consistent focus. 

Before we delve into the heart of the maelstrom, let me give you a glimpse of my own expedition.  In 2017, I dabbled in everything from virtual reality to machine learning, data science, and blockchain. It was an intoxicating period of exploration and discovery, of riding the waves of the maelstrom of innovation. But amid this vast ocean, I felt the pull towards one particular current: frontend programming. I have also widened my spectrum for the past year, exploring many exciting fields. Now I’m in the process of focusing again. This time I’m going for Zero Knowledge and Blockchain. This post is a recount of reflections on this type of decision.

In the modern world, we're bombarded with exciting inputs. A clear example is Twitter, which has become a never-ending nerd-sniping battlefield. This is if you follow the right people and don't visit the "For You" tab. The point is it's a trap for curious people. People reinforce these behaviors since curiosity and learning have been celebrated in Western culture. Being a builder with these traits can be complicated. I will expose both paths. Focus and diversification.

Let's consider Daniel Vasallo (@dvassallo). He's a big advocate for what he calls 'small bets.' His strategy? Simple but smart. Instead of pouring energy and resources into a single, unproven idea, he advocates launching many little proofs of concept. The aim? To test whether an idea resonates with the market before diving in headfirst. Look at Pieter Levels (@levelsio), for instance. He's another entrepreneur who has adopted this approach. But what's unique about Levels is his minimalistic execution. He tests these concepts in the simplest ways possible and observes what takes hold.

This sets the path on how to bootstrap a project. It doesn't require a VC-funded startup, but it's still entrepreneurial enough for those with an itch to build and who don't want to work in a corporation.

Explore

But there's a flip side to constant iteration: it can be downright exhausting. The relentless cycle of testing and building, only to test and build again, can push you to your limits. Also, this comes with the risk of needing to stick more. Sometimes dedication is needed to move a project from a local optimum (X1) to a global optimum (X2). 

Some common ground is starting research projects. The main focus is to learn. It prizes curiosity and doesn't make us attached to results and expect economic upside. As Linus (@thesephist) defines:

"I think smaller projects that are faster to build are better for research in this space. Building many smaller projects rather than large, ambitious ones has helped me because I avoid getting too attached to one particular idea or product. With smaller-scoped prototypes, I can try many more iterations against the same question or problem… My gut feeling is that three-month "cycles" focused on specific research questions strike an ideal balance. "

Because the map is not the territory, it's better to test in the real world before arriving at (theoretical) solutions. 

Consistent Focus

When the research finally reveals an opportunity worth pursuing, that's our cue to zero in and focus. I love the analogy used by Steve Jobs at Apple from Picasso's Bull. Picasso would try to find the "soul of the beast." Distill the essence out of complexity*. This has been Apple's design and strategy, the north star. When Jobs returned to the company, the first actions were leaving few products with transparent markets. Less is more.  

Saying no to things you think are great ideas and want to do is the main takeaway from this. To say yes to something, one has to say no many times.

The time spent on other research will help us understand different skills. When you start growing and get the project from zero to one, being able to cover a couple of roles will be essential for the project's success. This is defined as "Collapsing the Talent Stack" by Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) in his latest post, "Collapsing the Talent Stack, Persona-Led Growth & Designing Organizations for the Future":

"There is a consistent unfair competitive advantage I've witnessed when the talent stack was collapsed - when the lead designer was also the product leader, when the front-end engineer was also a designer, when the designer was also a great copywriter, when the product leader was also the founder/CEO, etc. Tighter conduits for decision making and synthesizing information are an incredible advantage when it comes to crafting products."

To truly understand the core of a concept, we need to stand at the very heart of the chaos. Stay long enough to wait for the waters to calm down and see what the sea beholds. As a good friend says, to fully commit to something, you must: "cross the chasm and burn the bridge." If there's no way to return, one will do everything possible to make that work. 

Our journey through the maelstrom teaches us one important lesson: the power of adaptability. As we navigate the sea of ideas, knowing when to explore and focus is essential. But, when you do focus, commit wholeheartedly - cross the chasm, burn the bridge. In this fast-paced world, those who adapt survive and thrive.

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Threads

Highly recommend this thread about Picasso’s influence over Steve Jobs and Apple:

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Any seasoned crypto user has experienced a moment when it “clicked”, mostly by using different apps with the same wallet. This type of intuition helps to understand the potential of a permissionless and open distributed ledger. Though, it can make us biased toward the idea of transactions as the main way to interact with a blockchain’s state. This is what we call transaction-based flow, which implies an imperative paradigm. Luckily, it’s not the only way, there are also intents.

When a user signs a transaction, it determines the expected result and the specific steps to get there. The what and the how are determined. But what if the user wants to define the end goal, without specifying the steps to get there, then we are pursuing an intent. Intents follow a declarative paradigm.

Transactions are like Uber, where you know exactly the path the driver should take, and intents are like a taxi, where you select the destination without caring about the route, and the driver defines how to get you there. For an intent to be filled, it has to go through a matchmaking process that defines the computational path to be taken.

Let’s jump into a real-life example to compare each paradigm. For this, we can take a look at how a DEX (Decentralized Exchange) works for each case. Uniswap is imperative and follows the transaction-based model, where the user defines the steps to get there.

On the other side, 0x Protocol works as an intent-based DEX. If you’re not familiar with 0x, I like to think of it like the Stripe of DeFi. It does not seem for the end user, but it’s massive. It serves 6 million users, trading on apps like Coinbase Wallet, Robinhood Wallet, Metamask, Zerion, Zapper, and more. 

The protocol uses an off-chain ordering relay with on-chain settlement. Actors that host and propagate off-chain order books in the 0x protocol are known as Relayers. End users define the maximum amount they are willing to pay and don’t care which pool they take part in, or if tokens are “triangulated” to achieve their desired goal. They just express their intent. This example focuses on an opinionated protocol to solve a specific use case which is trading. An intent-centric protocol for generalized intents is in the works, as we will see later.

What are these good for?

Besides the DEX example, we have other use cases:

• NFT DEX: OpenSea’s Seaport Protocol can be considered a specific use case for this. 

• Public good funding: Quadratic Funding with Gitcoin
  Every person signs an intent of who to fund, and then when the funding period is over, you batch all intents and redistribute the tokens accordingly.

• Private DAOs: enable private voting.

• Private auctions

• Runtime rollups: State changes are netted out.

• Private games: keep individual moves private

• Multiparty, multivariate private bartering: people set their expected outcome and the algorithm can match with very specific rules.

• Gassless transactions

• Yield Aggregators: funds are staked on the highest yield. Relayers must prove the optimal path was taken.

Ethereum, AA, and Intents

The current implementation of Account Abstraction’s implementation is based on EIP-4337. This approach doesn’t implement AA directly on the core protocol, but it’s abstracted one layer up as shown in the diagram below. This made it easier to implement since it didn’t require revamping the core type of accounts: EOA (Externally Owned Accounts) and Contracts. 

Instead of having Relayers as 0x, the matchmakers are called Bundlers. They grab a User Operations (an intent) from the Alt-Mempool to make the most profitable bundle, which is submitted to the network as a single transaction.

While this new architecture can be used to implement intent-based applications, it doesn't inherently enable the expression of intents. A Bundler’s logic determines when a transaction is included in the block, which could potentially create an avenue for Bundlers to censor transactions or prioritize based on factors outside the intent of the users. 

For blockchains to reach mass adoption, intents, and settlements should be maintained private. This isn’t a focus on the current architecture.

Cypherpunk intents

The Heliax team is developing an ecosystem of protocols to enable generic intents with embedded privacy. It’s refreshing to see some cypherpunk energy on the crypto scene. The main protocols to reach their goal are Anoma and Taiga. Let’s take a peek at each of them.

Anoma is an intent-centric protocol for declarative privacy, decentralized counterparty discovery, solving, and atomic multi-chain settlement. There’s a lot to unpack from that definition. To get a sense of what we are talking about, we can use Cosmos as an analogy but focused on privacy and intents. It’s multi-chain with homogeneous architecture and security. 

If we think about blockchains as settlement layers, we can think of three paradigms:

• Scriptable Settlement: Bitcoin which relies on UTXO.

• Programmable Settlement: Ethereum. Here parties know who they are and what they want. Signed messages for intent can’t be general purpose, each app develops its own.

• Intent-centric and settlement agnostic: Anoma. Intents are composable and general purpose. Many intents which satisfy each other can be bundled together.

The problem Anoma is trying to solve is counterparty discovery. In Ethereum, many apps solve this by either centralization or onchain logic through Smart Contracts.

Solvers perform counterparty discovery, which is similar to what we saw as matchmaking for Ethereum’s AA.

Many centralize part of their stack to perform counterparty discovery. Dapps like 0x Relayers, Opensea’s Seaport, and Flashbots fall into this category. Most of the time solvers can’t rug people, but certainly, they can exclude people (they aren’t permissionless). On the other side, many protocols make the logic fully onchain. This approach to matching supply and demand is more restrictive. AMMs are a good example of these since they fall into the imperative paradigm, which doesn’t allow for intent, 

Founders of Anoma, consider the protocol a L1.5, where final transactions still get settled on Ethereum. It’s intended for apps like Opensea (counterparty discovery), Gitcoin (many things), L2 (sequencers), etc. It opens the potential to decentralize a specific part of the application.

Private intents

Taiga is the protocol that enables the user’s intent to perform counterparty discovery. Intents can be transparent (public), shielded, or private. Technically, these are partially shielded. Since the requirement of the intent must be readable by solvers to be able to do their job, this part of the intent can’t be totally private. I will write more about how intents are realized in the follow-up post: “Intents Part II: Counterparty discovery”.

Where the result is settled will also define if the process is private (using Anoma or Aztec as settlement layers) or public (using any EVM chain). 

I imagine a future where a combination of ZK proofs and FHE can be computed and matched in a way that enables 100% private intents. But not in the near term.

Sources:

• https://etherspot.io/blog/everything-about-aa-erc-4337-bundlers-ethereums-re-staking-aa-on-bounce-iotex-and-entrypoint-0-6-0/

• https://www.paradigm.xyz/2023/06/intents

• https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4337

• https://zeroknowledge.fm/253-2/