Preamble
This is a Product idea for Anoma Galileo.
(For the curious reader I’ll provide some context before we get into the product idea, as I believe the intuition will be helpful for comprehension. Feel free to skip ahead).
Intents are game-changing technology
In plain english, intents are preferences and constraints. From the Intent machines report;
We formulate intents as a pair consisting of a transition function and a partial weighted predicate over state transitions.
I :=(S ➝ S) x (S x S ➝ U⋆ [0,1])The guiding intuition for this formulation is to separate control from desire. In the prototypical example of an intent, it will express a desire for some resource in exchange for another. The first component expresses a partial state transition where the intent may create/destroy what it has control over. This aids in composing intents. The second component expresses a kind of weighted predicate over transitions. If the transition satisfies the intent, then it returns an element between 0 and 1, representing a kind of utility.
Recall that one desirable property of matching commitments (intents) is to execute several commitments atomically. In an intent-centric world you care about wether the result of executing those intents (commitments) is satisfactory to all involved parties.
Ethereum is Game-changing technology
Indeed, Virgil Griffith presented a similar insight in his timeless article Ethereum is game-changing technology, literally. Griffith proposed that best use case for Ethereum or stateful blockchains is to take an existing game and warp the incentives by deploying smart contracts or commitments that make players play the game differently. For example take an existing game like the Prisoners Dilemma and then use Ethereum to warp it into a new game.
Griffith argued that Ethereum could be used to transform non-cooperative games into cooperative games with a technique called Game Warping - which stacks a new layer atop an uncooperative game to make cooperation rational. Griffith outlined four examples of games where using Ethereum as a credible commitment device changes the equilibrium of the game.
- Commitment device - provides enforcement and common knowledge of enforcement. Enforcement means commitments can credibly predict an agent’s behavior. Common knowledge of enforcements means the increased certainty can shift the equilibrium of the game.
If users instead of taking actions themselves, users use programs (intents) and commit themselves to a strategy, this provides a credible commitment.
Let’s consider a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with players A and B from the Program Equilibria literature. With a credible commitment device player A could encode a commitment like this.
If MyProgram = OtherPlayerProgram
DO(coop); else DO(defect)
- Example: Prisoner’s Dilemma
In the Prisoner’s Dilemma (a non-cooperative game), the rational strategy puts players in the worst possible position. Let’s say players A and B want to steal some art from a museum. Before they do they each deposit 1000 ETH into a contract on Ethereum which states if I publish a defect message my 1000 ETH gets burned.
Now let’s assume both A and B get caught and are put in separate rooms for questioning compelling a confession. With this contract in place as long as the authorities don’t offer a bribe worth more than 1000 ETH the rational prisoners will choose to cooperate and not snitch on each other.Without the commitment device the dominant strategy would be to defect and accept any bribe from authorities. The commitment device, warps the game.
Griffith’s conclusion was that Ethereum makes all game-warping practical by providing a deterministic, all-seeing, cheap, and expedient judge. Ethereum enforces commitments and provides common knowledge of enforcement.
Anoma’s intents
In our construction intents can act as binding conditional commitments. This especially useful in scenarios where multiple parties want to match intents but want to ensure with granularity that their preferences and constraints are enforced if satisfied. Intents can be particularly useful when you want to match counterparties whilst controlling exactly what information is revealed to whom. For example you may not want to reveal your identity to your counterparty even if a given transaction candidate executes.
Product Idea - DeFi TVL Marketplace
tl;dr
This is essentially a “dating service” for DeFi liquidity deals - helping founders efficiently match with liquidity providers while minimizing costs and maintaining privacy.
High-level idea
In this marketplace TVL providers and TVL acquirers could negotiate terms of off-chain opaque negotiations by expressing their deal conditions as intents. For example a provider can say
“I am willing to provide $25M of TVL for 1 year to your lending protocol if you transfer me .5% of your token supply. The token supply has to vest before venture capital unlocks begin.”
Notice that the provider specifies
- a dollar amount,
- a duration of time,
- and an expected compensation.
The acquirer may say. “I am willing to give 2% of my token supply with standard vesting and unlocks in exchange for $100M of TVL for a duration of 2 years.”
Clearly the provider and acquirer intents do not match here. However there are ways to create multiple rounds of intent submission from both parties where intents are refined. Note that one nice feature here is that neither party needs to reveal their identity which is important because both parties risk reputational damage for playing this game in the open even though it is a necessary evil of operating in the industry.
Below I’ll provide a detailed summary of the idea which was generated with the help of Claude opus 4.1 and raw notes from my conversation with ThogardPVP.
Problem space
Launching a DeFi token involves coordinating with multiple intermediaries (vault providers, risk curators, lending protocols, yield strippers, exchanges, market makers), each taking their cut. Founders struggle to determine fair rates versus excessive extraction.
Key Pain Points
- No transparency on actual hurdle rates needed to attract liquidity
- Stablecoin protocols flooding the market with incentives, forcing others to overpay to compete
- Complex incentive stacking through multiple layers (multipliers at each step)
- Risk-adjusted LPs need additional compensation for hedging and acquisition costs
- All negotiations happen through inefficient back-channels
Proposed Solution
A privacy-preserving intent-matching framework that:
- Acts as a blind auction system (participants only see details after deals close)
- Allows founders to backwards-negotiate from known hurdle rates
- Consolidates liquidity from various sources
- Minimizes value extraction across the stack
Business Case
- Addresses a universal founder pain point in DeFi
- Natural fit for Anoma’s technical capabilities (cross-chain, privacy, matching engine)
- Clear monetization path through TVL deals and potential expansion to exchange listings
- Low barrier to entry (free look for participants until deals close)
Challenges
- Trust - the reason many of these current deals take place in back channels is because they require a certain level of trust. You need to be tapped into the network for others to be willing to do business with you. (Schelling tests could provide a complimentary use case here).
- two-sided market places are notoriously difficult to bootstrap without incentives. So initially we’d probably want to provide this service for free.
- Customer validation would also be necessary, we’d need to have lots of conversations with potential participants
- This disrupts the way business is currently done, some special interests might be antagonistic or hostile towards this product
- We would need to build a Solving service / matching engine for this application.
Closing thoughts
One thing Thogard noted which is true is that we have good credibility with various crypto founders and so having a product which sells directly to them could allows us to leverage our credibility and connections. Another aspect to consider is that many of these TVL deals take time away from Founders as they have many entities or game players to negotiate with. This product could save them time. Finally, this product would be a great demonstration of intent matching, information flow control, and intent settlement within the Anoma network whilst providing a substantial service provider fee capture opportunity.