The Rise of the Intelligent Era: The Integration of Intent Trading and AI Agents

In today's rapidly evolving blockchain technology landscape, intent trading and artificial intelligence agents (AI-Agents) are becoming the focus of industry attention. Many experts in the field, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, believe that intent trading will be one of the important directions for the future development of blockchain applications. This article will explore the concept of intent trading and its potential, analyzing how this model simplifies user experience, enhances transaction security, and brings more innovative opportunities to decentralized applications. At the same time, we will discuss the role of AI agents, exploring how they can integrate with intent trading to promote the automation and intelligence of smart contracts, providing users with a smarter and more personalized blockchain interaction experience.

The Concept and Features of Intentional Trading

Intent trading refers to users executing blockchain operations in a goal-oriented manner. In this model, users only need to express their final objectives (such as time, transaction price, and other conditions) without worrying about the specific execution steps. Users sign a contract authorizing the "outsourcing" of transaction creation to a third party. The intermediate steps are handled by a third-party problem solver (which could be a person or a program). As long as the output falls within the range defined by the user's intent, the solver (also known as the "resolver") can freely implement the results. Users typically need to pay a certain fee to the resolver to complete the transaction.

Two core features of intention trading:

1. Use a "declarative programming approach" to directly declare the expected outcome of a transaction without specifying the execution steps.

2. After the user defines the trading intent, the actual construction process of the transaction is handed over to a third-party resolver, which is responsible for generating the traditional blockchain transaction necessary to achieve the expected results.

The establishment of an intended transaction relies on the identity characteristics of digital currency, meaning that all units are essentially the same, which is similar to the identity of fundamental particles such as electrons. This characteristic allows digital currency to exhibit consistency and interchangeability during transactions and usage.

Advantages and Applications of Intentional Trading

The main advantage of intent-based trading lies in simplifying the trading process and enhancing user experience. It can reduce trading details (such as purchasing tokens or other in-app purchases) and improve the user-friendliness of decentralized applications (dApps). This approach is applicable not only to regular trades but also supports recurring trades, allowing users to avoid the inconvenience of periodic manual operations. It can also support time-related or condition-based trades, such as automatic balance top-ups.

In helping new users, intent trading has facilitated the popularization of blockchain technology, allowing cryptocurrency newcomers to avoid cumbersome steps. Since intent trading only focuses on output, orders do not need to be executed immediately. The system's time flexibility allows it to execute orders at the most favorable market conditions, thereby reducing slippage during price volatility. The solver seeks the optimal path and can sometimes even aggregate orders of larger trades to further reduce slippage.

Potential applications for intent trading include: setting limit orders to buy tokens at target prices, defining acceptable slippage ranges, periodically purchasing tokens at set times, automatically transferring funds when balances are insufficient, and promptly buying or selling tokens based on significant events reported by oracles.

UniswapX: Practical Case of Intentional Trading

UniswapX is an innovative decentralized trading protocol that employs a permissionless, open-source auction mechanism, allowing users to trade among different automated market makers (AMMs) and other sources of liquidity. The core of the protocol is intention-based trading, where users only need to express their trading intentions without having to worry about the specifics of the execution process.

UniswapX includes three different types of reactors: limit order reactor, Dutch auction reactor, and exclusive Dutch auction reactor. After placing an order, users enter into a contract with Permit2, allowing the transfer of their tokens. Once the order is published, anyone can take the order and complete it. The exchanger just needs to indicate the quantity they are willing to trade and receive within a specified time, and the "filler" can complete the order.

This mechanism allows participants to focus on the goals rather than the specific transaction process. "Fillers" can use various methods to complete transactions, benefiting from multiple liquidity pools, including decentralized exchanges, centralized exchanges, cross-chain liquidity networks, etc., to ensure optimal prices.

The Integration of AI Agents and Intent Trading

AI agents are computer programs that can autonomously make decisions and execute tasks based on the environment, inputs, and predefined goals. Their core components include large language models (LLM), observation and perception mechanisms, reasoning processes, action execution, and memory and retrieval functions.

In intention trading, AI agents can act as intelligent personal assistants, understanding users' natural language input and helping to complete various tasks. By integrating LLM, users can express their needs without considering implementation details. AI agents can leverage their perception, planning, memory, and tool usage capabilities to interact with solvers, automatically executing trading strategies and optimizing the price and timing of trade execution.

Some companies are exploring the possibility of combining AI agents with intent trading. For example, Circle has developed a prototype called TXT2TXN that allows users to exchange and transfer funds on certain EVM chains. Users only need to input their intent, and the LLM will recognize and execute the corresponding actions.

Future Outlook and Challenges

In the future, we expect to see AI agents capable of performing more functions, such as purchasing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or tokens through decentralized applications. This will greatly increase their utility, allowing users to perform more tasks without relying on programmers to constantly update the interface.

However, the development of this technology also faces some challenges. For example, how to ensure that AI agents correctly understand user intentions, avoiding financial losses or legal issues caused by misunderstandings. In addition, the solver's mastery of a large amount of user intention information may pose a risk of data leakage and could even be used to manipulate the market to extract maximum extractable value (MEV). This could lead to market fragmentation and liquidity issues, affecting users' trust in the decentralized financial ecosystem.

Despite the challenges, the combination of intention trading and AI agents still shows great potential. With the continuous advancement and refinement of technology, they are expected to bring smarter, more efficient, and more personalized interaction experiences to the blockchain world, driving the entire industry forward.