The Future of Protocol Interaction: From Users to Composers

Users no longer specify complex transaction steps; they declare a desired outcome. This shifts execution complexity from the user to a network of solvers.\n- Solver Competition: Networks like UniswapX and CowSwap use solvers to find optimal execution paths, often improving price by 1-5%.\n- Gas Abstraction: Users sign intents, not transactions, eliminating the need to hold native gas tokens on every chain.

Fragmented liquidity across L2s and app-chains is the primary UX bottleneck. New standards abstract chain boundaries.\n- Shared Security Pools: Bridges like Across and LayerZero enable atomic cross-chain swaps, reducing slippage from ~3% to <0.5%.\n- Composable Yield: Protocols like EigenLayer and restaking turn security into a fungible resource that can be leveraged by new networks.

Smart contract wallets (ERC-4337) enable programmable transaction logic, moving from reactive signing to proactive management.\n- Session Keys: Grant limited permissions to agents for seamless gaming or trading sessions without constant signing.\n- Automated Strategies: Wallets can automatically compound yields, rebalance portfolios, or execute limit orders based on predefined rules.

High on-chain data costs force trade-offs. Cheap, verifiable external DA unlocks new application designs.\n- Cost Reduction: Using Celestia or EigenDA can reduce L2 transaction costs by >90% versus Ethereum calldata.\n- Sovereign Rollups: Teams can launch app-specific chains with custom execution, inheriting security from a shared DA layer.

Maximal Extractable Value is being transformed from a dark forest into a transparent, auction-based market.\n- Order Flow Auctions (OFAs): Protocols like CowSwap and Flashbots SUAVE auction user transaction bundles to searchers, returning value to the user.\n- Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS): Separates block building from proposing, democratizing access to block space and reducing centralization risks.

ZK proofs enable trustless verification of state across any system, creating a unified layer for global composability.\n- State Proofs: Chains like zkSync and Polygon zkEVM can natively verify the state of other chains, enabling instant, trustless bridging.\n- Privacy-Preserving Composability: Applications can leverage user data (e.g., credit score, holdings) via ZK proofs without exposing the underlying information.

Manually bridging assets, swapping, and depositing across 5+ protocols like Aave, Compound, and Curve is slow and capital-inefficient. Each step incurs separate gas fees and exposes funds to execution risk between transactions.

• ~$500K+ in opportunity cost from idle capital during multi-step execution.
• 15+ minutes of manual monitoring and transaction signing.
• Slippage and MEV exposure on every DEX trade.

Instead of specifying how to trade, the farmer declares an intent: "Maximize my ETH yield across Arbitrum and Optimism." Specialized solvers from networks like UniswapX, CowSwap, and Across compete to fulfill it atomically.

• Atomic execution bundles all steps, eliminating inter-transaction risk.
• Solver competition drives down costs and improves price discovery.
• Gas abstraction shifts fee burden to the solver, paid from yield.

A shared settlement layer (e.g., Ethereum with ERC-4337, Cosmos, or a dedicated appchain) provides a neutral ground for intent resolution and dispute. This is where solvers post bonds, intents are matched, and results are finalized.

• Guaranteed atomicity via the settlement layer's consensus.
• Universal liquidity access, not limited to a single DEX or L2.
• Verifiable outcomes with cryptographic proofs for cross-domain state.

The farmer becomes a composer, not a user. They define high-level financial goals, and a new ecosystem of solvers, oracles, and risk engines (like Gauntlet or Chaos Labs) compete to execute them. The value shifts from manual execution to strategy design.

• Yield optimization becomes a service, not a manual task.
• New revenue models for solver networks and intent aggregators.
• Protocols compete on integration depth, not just APY.

They are a fundamental re-architecture of the transaction stack. By separating declaration from execution, they unlock new efficiency frontiers and market structures.\n- Key Benefit: Users express desired outcomes (e.g., "swap X for Y at best rate"), not low-level steps.\n- Key Benefit: Creates a competitive solver market, driving costs toward theoretical minimums seen in systems like CowSwap and UniswapX.

Execution becomes a commoditized service bid on by specialized agents. This shifts the competitive battleground from block space to solver algorithms and liquidity access.\n- Key Benefit: Enables cross-domain atomic bundles (e.g., a swap, bridge, and option purchase in one tx) via networks like Across and LayerZero.\n- Key Benefit: ~500ms latency for complex multi-step transactions, matching CEX speeds.

The value accrual moves from monolithic dApps to the generalized intent settlement layers that connect them. Smart accounts and passkey wallets become the universal interface.\n- Key Benefit: Developers build for a unified intent standard, not individual chain idiosyncrasies.\n- Key Benefit: Enables true "programmable liquidity" where capital automatically flows to the highest-yielding opportunity across any connected chain.

Trust in decentralized solvers requires robust cryptographic verification and economic security. The future is a hybrid of ZK proofs for correctness and crypto-economic slashing for liveness.\n- Key Benefit: ZK-proofs for state transitions (like zkSync circuits) provide mathematical certainty of execution correctness.\n- Key Benefit: EigenLayer-style restaking pools can underwrite solver liveness and slash for malfeasance, creating a $50B+ security marketplace.