In order to solve the "TVL rigidity" problem, dappOS launched intent assets, which are assets that can both generate interest and be available on the chain at any time.
introduction
The "TVL rigidity" problem currently faced by the crypto industry is essentially due to the lack of sufficient on-chain availability of various crypto interest-bearing assets, which makes it difficult to attract users other than simple airdrop incentives.
To solve this problem, dappOS launched intent assets, which are assets that can both generate interest and be available on-chain at any time.
dappOS is an intention execution network that has received investments from top institutions such as Binance Labs and Polychain. Its latest valuation is US$300 million, making it one of the leading projects in the current intention track.
1. Current industry issues: Traditional TVL model is deadlocked
TVL (Total Value Locked) is usually used to measure the total amount of assets locked in a project, reflecting the user participation and market trust of the project. It is a relatively effective indicator in past crypto market cycles, because TVL represents actual "real money", and its counterfeiting cost is much higher than other data indicators such as the number of addresses and social media attention. Therefore, projects with higher TVL have obvious advantages in marketing and attracting investors. In this context, many projects attract users by offering high yields and airdrop incentives to store assets on their platforms, thereby quickly improving their TVL data and demonstrating the strength and attractiveness of the project.
However, this practice has exposed some problems in this cycle: the TVL of many projects tends to decline rapidly after issuing coins and listing on exchanges. These TVLs are not contributed by a wide range of crypto users, but by a small number of large users or pre-negotiated partners who quickly increase TVL in a short period of time through "mining, withdrawing and selling" to realize cash out. This "rigid TVL" does not represent the true vitality of the project ecosystem, but a short-term data surge achieved through artificial manipulation. This phenomenon has triggered broader industry problems, such as some high TVL projects repeatedly postponing the time for airdrop distribution or user asset unlocking, because they are worried that once cashed out, these TVLs will be lost quickly.
As a result, the credibility and validity of TVL as a measure of the vitality of an on-chain ecosystem has also been questioned.
The reason for the rigidity of TVL is that for ordinary crypto users, the absolute benefits of participating in these projects are limited, and once the market fluctuates, the cost of withdrawing assets or converting them is high, or it takes a long time to wait, which may lead to missing market opportunities. In other words, the opportunity cost of participating in these projects is too high for ordinary users, so their willingness to participate is low, resulting in TVL often being dominated by large users and becoming a tool for them to cash out.
The intention asset launched by dappOS is designed to solve this problem.
2. dappOS Intent Assets: Make revenue assets available on-chain at any time
2.1 What are intent assets?
Intent assets are a new type of asset launched by dappOS. They are assets that have both high asset yields and are readily available. Whether users bring intent assets to exchanges as native assets, or purchase MEME coins, participate in lending, or pledge on the chain, they can use them directly. There is no need for additional steps, waiting time, or enduring high slippage.
At first glance, Intent Assets look a bit like previous financial products such as Yubibao, both of which have the characteristics of "interest-earning + fast deposit and withdrawal". However, in terms of usability, liquidity, security, etc., Intent Assets are far superior to previous similar products. In terms of usability, Yubibao cannot be used directly in dApp and need to be manually redeemed to the chain. Some interest-earning assets even require a long redemption waiting period; in terms of security, the use of Intent Assets is guaranteed by the OMS security mechanism of the dappOS Intent Execution Network. The underlying assets are decentralized and non-custodial, which is safer and more reliable than centralized and opaque "Yubibao".
2.2 Intent Asset Usage Scenario Cases
The first batch of intent assets to be launched include intentBTC, intentETH, and intentUSD.
Here are a few examples to illustrate how intent assets are used:
As shown in the figure, before dappOS, if you want to redeem your interest-bearing assets (such as xxETH), you can usually only choose between DEX and redemption on the project's official website. If you choose to redeem directly on DEX, you need to go through the xxETH-related dedicated liquidity pool, which may encounter problems such as insufficient liquidity, high slippage, and loss of a lot of funds; when you go to the official website to redeem, you usually need to wait for about 7 days according to the rules, which is very tricky once you encounter an emergency. In addition, after redemption, you also need additional manual operations to sell ETH for USDT.
After using dappOS, if you hold intentETH, you will find that in the DEX supported by dappOS, intentETH can be used directly as ETH and converted to USDT with one click. The liquidity pool used for exchange is a very deep ordinary ETH-USDT pool, without liquidity and slippage issues.
As shown in the figure, before dappOS, this seemingly simple operation actually required a lot of planning. For example:
Funds dispatch: consider which chain is more convenient for you to use funds on; some funds may still be in other protocols, which protocols should you use funds from?
Form conversion: Your funds may exist mainly in other chains in the form of other tokens. How to convert them into ETH? The conversion process usually faces the contradiction of severe wear and tear and waiting time. If the gas required for the conversion process is insufficient, how to replenish the gas and how to obtain the gas?
How to cross-chain: For example, directly use the cross-chain protocol on the chain, or deposit ETH into the exchange and then transfer it to the xxL2 chain
With dappOS, as long as you hold intentETH, you can go to the DEX supported by dappOS on xxL2 to buy tokens. You will find that your intentETH feels no different from ordinary ETH when buying tokens. In addition, you no longer need to plan various operation procedures, which allows you to use and allocate your on-chain assets more flexibly in the future. For example, you do not need to keep some funds on each L1 and L2 "just in case of emergency", you only need to hold intent assets to meet the temporary interaction needs of each chain.
In summary, when users hold intentETH, when using it (in non-interest-bearing scenarios), it feels exactly the same as native ETH, but they can also passively obtain considerable benefits.
3. How Intent Assets Work
3.1 Intent Execution Network
To explain how intent assets work, we first need to introduce the dappOS intent execution network behind intent assets. In dappOS, "intent" can be simply understood as the task that the user wants to complete.
As shown in the figure above, the architecture and functions of the dappOS network are as follows:
User: Publish intent.
Service providers: perform various intent services. After staking a certain amount of dappOS tokens as collateral, they can start receiving user intent and earning income.
Execution validator: Responsible for verifying the execution of the service node. If the service node fails to complete the task as required, the validator has the right to vote to punish the service node.
Matcher: Responsible for matching user intent with service providers.
Simply put, during the specific execution process, the user will send the intention to the matcher through front-end interaction, and then the matcher will ask the associated service provider to select the most favorable quotation and provide it to the user. The user can then sign the transaction and transfer the resources needed to realize this intention to the service provider, who will then execute the user's intention.
If someone finds that the task has not been successfully executed after the specified time of the task, they can challenge the network, and then the network's validators will reach a consensus through DPOS voting. If the consensus result is that the task has failed, the service provider will need to use the mortgage to compensate the user.
The core security mechanism of dappOS is Optimistic Minimum Staking (OMS), which allows service providers to provide services to users by staking only slightly more than the total value of unfinished intended tasks (minimum), while allowing service providers to continue to perform tasks before performing result verification (optimistic). When the verifier successfully verifies the service result of the service node, the service node can successfully obtain the task income; if the verifier finds that the task has failed, the system will punish the service node, and the user can also receive pre-specified compensation. The OMS mechanism hopes to achieve a better balance between user task efficiency, service provider funding efficiency and the safe operation of the entire system, while ensuring the successful completion of user tasks and reducing the capital cost of service providers as much as possible.
3.2 Intent Assets
After understanding the working principle of the intent execution network, the principle of intent assets is easier to understand. As shown in the figure above, when users have the intention of "I want to use the intent asset directly in a certain scene", they can use the intent asset directly with one click. The essence behind this is to hand over the use of the intent asset as an intent task to the dappOS intent execution network. Users use the intent asset as input, and the specific implementation of the expected results is solved by the service providers in the network. The complexity of various on-chain operations involved in the specific use of the intent asset will be handled by the service providers in the dappOS network. At the same time, due to the huge advantages of professional service providers in cost and speed and their mutual competition, the cost of executing the task of using the intent asset is low and the efficiency is high.
The underlying income of the intention asset comes from income assets such as LRT/Pendle PT (such as wstETH, sUSDe, sDAI, stBBTC), and the intention asset held by the user can be regarded as a voucher. In theory, in the absence of the Dappos intention execution network, users can choose to move assets between different chains on their own and seek ways to obtain income.
However, in practice, users often do not operate on their own, but choose the intention execution network because:
1. Users don’t want to think about the process and need the operation to be convenient enough
In current blockchain interactions, users usually need to think about and study many intermediate steps to complete an operation. However, with the Intent Execution Network, no matter how complicated the task process is, as long as its result can be clearly verified, the user only needs to confirm with one click to let a professional service provider execute it.
2. Intent Execution Networks can enable ordinary users to achieve institutional-level cost efficiencies
Ordinary users usually cannot compete with professional service providers in terms of cost and efficiency. In the dappOS network, competition among service providers will reduce prices to the optimal level so that users can profit. By empowering ordinary users with the operating channels of institutions and large users, ordinary users can get institutional-level costs and speed.
For example, to redeem an LRT asset, ordinary users can only choose between DEX and the official redemption period of about 7 days. However, because service providers provide a large number of services, they have many ways to optimize, such as: helping users advance assets and collecting interest; offsetting each other's inflows and outflows; merging transactions to reduce gas consumption on Ethereum; and even using scale advantages to have in-depth cooperation with issuers to achieve faster redemption. Similar examples include the task of purchasing tokens. Professional service providers have multiple purchasing channels such as exchanges, have rate advantages, and even have direct cooperation with project parties. Even when performing on-chain operations, service providers have more professional anti-MEV capabilities. These are things that ordinary users cannot do.
3. Intent execution network makes the security of intent assets more secure
Due to the OMS mechanism of the Intent Execution Network, when a service provider undertakes the task of "using intent assets" from a user, the user's assets are actually protected: either the task is successfully executed, or a pre-set compensation is obtained. In essence, the user transfers the risks involved in the asset redemption process to a service provider with a stronger risk tolerance.
4. Why Intention Assets Can Solve the Industry Problem of "TVL Rigidity"
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, "TVL rigidity" is a major problem currently facing the industry. The reason is that the assets of these TVL projects have low availability, resulting in excessively high opportunity costs for ordinary users. So why can Intent Assets do what many TVL projects cannot do, which is to allow users' income assets to have true on-chain availability?
In fact, various TVL project parties have realized the problem of availability and have made some optimization attempts, but the results are limited. There are two main channels provided by these projects:
Direct redemption: Users apply to the project to redeem assets and obtain native assets after a certain period of time.
Issuance of redemption certificates: The project party issues derivative assets (such as xxETH) and establishes a liquidity pool of derivative assets (xxETH) and native assets (ETH) in DEX.
Either way, to ensure a good user liquidity experience, there needs to be sufficient native asset support on the chain, which means that maintenance costs need to be paid continuously (because holding native assets may lose income). In Option 1, the project party bears the continuous maintenance costs, so users usually have to wait a long time to redeem their assets; in Option 2, the liquidity providers (LPs) in the DEX bear the continuous maintenance costs, so these pools are usually lower in depth and have higher slippage. Especially in highly volatile market conditions, there may be a price difference of more than 20% between derivative assets and native assets.
In the dappOS intent execution network, there is no longer a service provider that needs to provide ongoing maintenance costs, and the maintenance costs of availability are dynamically balanced with actual availability requirements. In addition, the maintenance costs of service providers are significantly lower in intent execution networks. This is because large-scale service providers have stronger professional service capabilities and more channels that ordinary users do not have. On the other hand, the OMS mechanism allows service providers to use the same funds to perform multiple different types of tasks at the same time. Due to the bidding mechanism, the cost reduction of these service providers will eventually be fed back to the user experience.
The innovation and charm of the dappOS intention execution network lies in its ability to solve problems that the current product architecture cannot solve.
V. Summary and Outlook
5.1 Summary of the Advantages of Intent Assets
Intent assets are a new type of complex image assets launched by dappOS. They have both high asset yields and are available on the chain at any time. The advantages of intent assets themselves are summarized as follows:
Allows users’ assets to generate interest and be available on the chain at any time
Users only need one-click interaction, simple operation, and can achieve institutional-level cost efficiency
Compared with other typical income-generating assets, intention assets also have obvious relative advantages, as summarized in the following table:
5.2 Prospects of Intentional Assets
Intentional assets can solve the current problem of "TVL rigidity" in the crypto industry, and make new optimizations and upgrades in terms of asset profitability, usability, and convenience. A better user experience is the key factor for the crypto industry to introduce more hundreds of millions or even billions of users and move towards mass adoption.
At present, the crypto industry is still in its early stages of development. As a deep user of the industry, you may have become accustomed to many "realities", such as: various L1/L2 chains that are not directly interoperable, each transaction requires gas and may fail, and there are many types of US dollar stablecoins that are not interoperable... However, in the Web2 Internet world, these things and even the concepts themselves do not exist. For new users entering the crypto industry, they don’t actually want to learn "what is the difference between L1 and L2" and "how should I cross the chain" and other "technical details" at the beginning, just like they don’t want to learn how the interbank clearing system works. What they hope is to be able to realize their own interaction needs more directly. This huge experience gap is exactly what dappOS, which is in the intention track, is constantly working to make up for.
At the same time, the development and growth of intentional assets have also received support from mainstream web3 products. Leading projects in various Web3 fields, such as Babylon, Benqi, Berachain, BounceBit, Ether.Fi, GMX, KiloEx, Manta, Puffer, Pendle, QuickSwap, Taiko, Zirkuit, etc., have all joined the intentional asset network promoted by dappOS, providing application scenarios and benefits.
As more and more mainstream products adopt the intent asset standard, a more unified, secure and user-friendly Web3 asset ecosystem will gradually take shape.