Why is Enso an indispensable infrastructure in the DeFAI craze?

In the field of Internet travel, the key to Uber’s ability to change people’s way of travel in a short period of time lies in its clever integration of basic functions such as maps, payments, and messaging, rather than developing everything from scratch. Google Maps provides its location, Stripe handles payments processing, Twilio is responsible for message push, and Uber focuses on creating a first-class ride-hailing experience.

Similarly, for DeFi developers, the ability to efficiently “call” rather than “build” infrastructure becomes the key to determining the efficiency of innovation. However, there isn’t yet a mature and versatile infrastructure in the crypto space that is as mature and versatile as Stripe or Twilio. Developers are often forced to delve into the underlying logic of each public chain or protocol, write and maintain a large number of smart contracts, and pay high audit fees. Just like any project such as DeFi social trading, lending, automation, etc., the first step is to dig up protocol documents and write integration code, and developers should be focusing on creating differentiated features, but they spend a lot of time and resources in the endless “building wheels”.

In the process of exploring the DeFAI narrative, the author found that the “DeFi+AI” narrative also faces the same problem. Although AI Agents can discover arbitrage opportunities and design profit strategies, there is a huge gap between AI being able to conceive these strategies and actually execute them on the chain. The existence of Enso makes the DeFAI narrative more feasible.

Let developers no longer ‘build wheels from scratch’

Enso has become a dark horse in the DeFi infrastructure field, integrating 180 DeFi protocols in various ecosystems such as Ethereum and Berachain. Enso has also been launched in the form of API, and these functions will play a greater role after the network is officially launched.

As the leading narrative target of CowSwap, which has been openly supported by figures like Vitalik and Trump, the reason why it is able to complete complex DeFi execution paths and fulfill user requests with the lowest gas cost is that it integrates Enso’s API based on DeFi intentions, allowing CowSwap to focus on DeFi trading experience just like Uber focuses on ride-hailing.

Enso, as a DeFi middleware, did not initially have such a product implementation. Initially, Enso was only a social trading platform derived from the founder Connor’s “copy trading” demand, using “vampire attacks” to break through the market. Later, Enso integrated more than 50 DeFi projects and launched social trading functions, allowing anyone to create investment strategies and invite others to follow suit. During this period, Enso’s TVL once reached 8 to 9 million US dollars.

However, as user demand surges, the team needs to continuously integrate more DeFi protocols and conduct frequent code audits. Auditing just 12 protocols has cost over $500,000. ‘The DeFi market updates too quickly, and the maintenance costs make it difficult for us to keep up,’ this is the team’s most intuitive feeling. In order to break through the bottleneck, they decided to completely rebuild the underlying infrastructure, achieve a unified abstraction of various protocols, and launch an open API based on this.

Enso has previously demonstrated a typical case, vividly demonstrating the core value of its product to simplify complex processes into user-friendly interfaces. Developers only need to call Enso to easily connect to more than 40 DeFi protocols and complete a series of complex on-chain operations using 25 assets. The entire process appears simple, but actually involves over 100 steps of on-chain interaction.

Taking the exchange of ETH for hyUSD, wcUSDCv3, and sDAI by users as an example, funds need to flow through multiple protocols such as Curve.fi, Compound, Balancer, and Uniswap. Without Enso, the team would need to independently integrate and audit these protocols, which would be extremely time-consuming and costly.

The value of Enso lies in encapsulating complex on-chain operations into a unified development interface. Behind the scenes, Enso accurately designs the optimal path for exchange rates and Gas costs, and efficiently integrates multiple protocols. For developers, ‘exchanging ETH for a basket of assets’ is just a simple operation of calling the interface, with all the complex calculations and integrations being handled by Enso. This simplification not only reduces developers’ maintenance and auditing costs, but also highlights the core role of the middle layer API in accelerating the development of the DeFi ecosystem. Through Enso, developers can focus on product innovation while leaving the underlying technical details to this powerful tool to solve.

Enso’s technical implementation and network role allocation

To understand the application scenarios of the above products, we need to understand the concept of shortcuts proposed by Enso.

The so-called shortcut is essentially a pre-combination of a series of on-chain actions. A single action may only contain one transaction, or it may cover multiple steps that need to be completed continuously. For example, merging approval and enter vault into a deposit action, and if leverage is further added on this basis, it can be merged into a more complex functional module. Through this combination design, developers can greatly improve the efficiency of building on-chain applications.

Currently, Enso’s existing shortcuts include token exchange and DeFi routing, asset management, fund management tools and automation, DeFi protocol integration, smart contract interaction, and complex transaction packaging.

In addition, Enso is gradually evolving into a more open decentralized network, which means that all contributors are network participants, rather than just a team behind the product. In the future, anyone can contribute their abilities or resources to the underlying architecture of Enso, which avoids bottlenecks caused by insufficient resources from a single team and allows the network to iterate quickly through multi-party collaboration.

Enso also provides operators with three paths to participate, to meet the expertise and resource conditions of different types of developers.

1. Providers (Action Providers)

For developers with programming capabilities, they can contribute smart contract abstractions on the network, provide specific behavioral operational logic, such as defining how to borrow and lend on Aave. These providers of behaviors become core contributors to the network by proposing methods to address user needs. At the same time, they can earn profits through fee sharing, incentivizing more high-quality contributions of behavioral logic.

2, Resolver (Grapher)

Some participants focus on algorithms and data processing, similar to solving the ‘shortest path in a map’ problem. They listen to intent requests in the network and search for the optimal path by traversing all contributed actions. For example, there can be multiple methods to convert from USDC to aDAI on Aave, including multi-step paths or direct conversion paths.

The resolver’s duty is to find the best balance between Gas cost and final return through computation, and provide the final solution to the network. In this process, there may be competition among resolvers due to their different optimization goals (such as Gas saving or higher returns). These participants are usually experts in the fields of mathematics and algorithms, and they do not care about the source of the data, but only focus on how to efficiently use the data to complete the computational tasks.

3, Validators

Any contributions provided by the actor or paths proposed by the resolver need to be simulated and validated by the validator to ensure the security and effectiveness of the underlying logic and execution results. The responsibilities of the validator include checking whether the operation includes authorized actions, whether delegated calls are made, whether transfer operations are performed, and whether there are potential malicious behaviors, etc.

In addition, validators will also run the path call data proposed by the resolver, verify its output results, Gas consumption and other key parameters. For users with node operation experience, this is a relatively low-threshold role, but it is crucial for ensuring network security and execution accuracy.

It is worth emphasizing that as Enso gradually evolves into a network, these three types of roles will participate in the maintenance and operation of the network together. Any developer, algorithm expert, or node operator can join without barriers, contribute to the entire ecosystem, and receive incentives.

In addition to different contribution roles for developers, Enso also has different usage scenarios for users. Enso’s products provide three types of intent abstraction to meet different needs and preferences of users.

1. Explicit Intent: Users explicitly specify the operation protocol, such as implementing leverage in a specific protocol, for example, “I want to leverage on Aave.”

2. Semi-explicit intent: Users only define the target leverage or yield, allowing the system to automatically select the optimal path in protocols such as Aave, Maker, or GMX.

3. Completely abstract intention: AI automatically selects the best solution based on user’s historical behavior and market conditions, almost without the need for the user to provide explicit instructions, greatly simplifying the complexity of user involvement in this mode.

Discussion on the adoption and prospects of Enso

Currently, Enso has raised a total of 9.2 million US dollars in financing, with over 60 angel investors participating. From DeFi Summer to the present, Enso’s ability to iterate on products and integrate protocols across cycles has been widely recognized in the market.

For example, as mentioned earlier, CowSwap, Boyco from Berachain, and the recently popular DeFAI are all integrating and connecting with Enso at the underlying level. Currently, Enso has integrated with more than 180 protocols, and over 60 applications have adopted the Enso API.

We can use several specific cases to feel how Enso collaborates with other DeFi projects or protocols in the current market, in order to provide a better development environment for developers.

Royco Protocol is an Incentivized Action Market (IAM) protocol that allows anyone to create a transaction or series of transaction markets around any chain. Enso collaborates with Royco to jointly create an incentivized Boyco market pre-deposit fund for Berachain. The Boyco project supports project parties to access Royco Protocol and thus, directly obtain liquidity support from Berachain, focusing on project development and community operations.

The complexity of Boyco market varies, including both single token deposits and multi-token strategies. Without Enso support, the team would need to manually integrate multiple protocols, write custom code for specific market requirements, and invest a lot of engineering resources in testing and auditing, which is a very cumbersome process.

When users enter the Boyco market, traditional methods require them to leave the Boyco platform and perform multiple operations on other interfaces to obtain specific deposit assets. These operations include granting token usage permissions, submitting transactions, and then returning to Boyco, which may result in user loss. However, with Enso integration, Boyco allows users to stay within its platform and complete all operations in a single transaction. Taking USDC as an example, users only need to approve the usage permission for the required assets, and then exchange USDT for USDC and complete the deposit in a single transaction, without the need to switch between different application interfaces.

Enso also keeps up with the latest market trends and provides support for DeFAI projects through protocol integration. For example, BrianKnowsAI, which allows trading execution, resource search, and on-chain data retrieval through natural language prompts; SphereOne, which converts conversational commands such as ‘send,’ ‘exchange,’ or ‘cross-chain’ into executable transaction operations; and Velvet Unicorn, an AI-driven portfolio management tool.

Conclusion

‘Enso’ was originally a circular symbol in Japanese culture, symbolizing endless cycles, uniqueness, and the limitless creativity of the human mind. In the DeFi field, the core value lies in the composability between each other. However, to truly support large-scale innovation, developers first need an efficient and unified infrastructure. Enso is committed to being such a foundational pivot, providing developers with an abstract way to “build roads and bridges” in the increasingly fragmented multi-chain world.

If this step can be taken, it is of great significance to the industry and users. For DeFi protocol providers, it can quickly obtain user traffic and funds. Developers are freed from writing repetitive code and expensive audit fees, and can focus more on optimizing product functions and experiences. The end users also unknowingly enjoy the optimal benefits and optimal path brought by multiple protocol combinations, without the need to understand complex underlying logic.

In the field of blockchain, every seemingly ordinary call may involve a series of cross-chain and cross-protocol cumbersome operations. DeFi is hailed as the ‘no-permission financial innovation paradise’, but in order for true large-scale applications to emerge, developers and users must first feel the convenience of ‘leveling the playing field’. Only when the cost of ‘reinventing the wheel’ is significantly reduced can DeFi developers have the opportunity to create more possibilities. With the improvement of Enso’s modularity and intelligence, blockchain will also be one step closer to the ‘Uber-style minimalist experience’.