Become an on-chain interactive universal gateway: Enso builds blockchain development 'shortcuts' through Shortcuts

Author: TechFlow by Gate.io

Blockchain is a market that pursues efficiency to the extreme:

Public chains focus on TPS, aiming to bring faster transaction speeds; LST / LRT nesting layer by layer, dedicated to achieving higher capital efficiency; Meme super cycles emerge with various novel perspectives every day, with many projects going from bloom to fall in just 1 day.

However, this efficiency does not seem to be reflected in the research and development of blockchain products:

If you want to develop a product based on a certain blockchain, you must first undergo intensive learning of the chain, understand its consensus mechanism, account model, Gas design, development language, testing tools, and other important designs.

If you want to further improve your product functionality, such as introducing positioning and payment functions for hotel booking products, this is common in Web2. You can directly choose to integrate mature products such as Google Maps and Alipay. However, in the blockchain world, most of the time you need to build everything from scratch;

If you want to reach more ecological users, you need to support more chains, but each chain has its own rules, and the continuously decreasing threshold for launching chains has brought more chains to the industry. You must be like a general pioneering the frontier, conquering the city of each blockchain ecosystem one by one, to achieve greater integration...

At every step, the development efficiency is seriously slowed down, which significantly affects the presentation of product features and user experience, because developers always need to spend 90% of their energy to implement the most basic functions, and cannot focus on innovation.

Who can help the developers trapped in the repetition of making blockchain wheels?

Dedicated to abstracting on-chain smart contract interaction and building blockchain development shortcuts through Shortcuts, Enso is gaining more attention for its outstanding performance in reducing the threshold for developers and achieving intent interaction: according to official data, Enso currently supports 75+ projects and has achieved over 160 billion USD in on-chain settlements.

In addition, Enso has raised a total of $9.2 million, attracting attention from well-known institutions including Polychain Capital, Multicoin Capital, Cyber​​ Fund, Spartan, TheLAO, Ideo Ventures, Hypersphere, Selini Capital, and has also attracted support from over 60 industry leaders as angel investors.

Behind the choices of developers and institutions, facing the complexities, repetitions, inefficiencies, and high costs of blockchain development, how does Enso cure the root cause?

From the initial API product, to the Enso Shortcut Engine, to the upcoming decentralized network Enso Network built on Cosmos, let us together enter Enso to realize the abstract intent of chains through Shortcuts, and promote specific solutions for the large-scale adoption of blockchain.

Complete 7 months of development work in 1.5 days, intuitively experience the efficiency of Enso

Based on the huge advantage of Enso in eliminating the complexity of accessing and executing across multiple protocols, this amazing work efficiency comparison comes from the real development experience of Enso partners:

Plug is an intent-driven on-chain activity automation platform designed to build a Web3 version of Zapier, supporting users to manage, write, schedule, and execute all on-chain activities on its platform.

Before working with Enso, OnPlug spent seven months integrating the protocol, and the cumbersome and repetitive integration work consumed a lot of energy; after working with Enso, OnPlug rebuilt the entire integration layer, and completed the work of the past 7 months in just 1.5 days. The leap in development efficiency allows OnPlug to focus more on the automation of Web3 activities, bringing great convenience to users.

In addition to improving development efficiency, Enso is also very good at handling complex on-chain DeFi executions. The pre-deposit market Boyco launched by Berachain has triggered widespread community participation, and as a supporter behind Berachain Boyco, Enso has also received high praise:

We know that the demands in the Boyco market, from single token deposits to multi-token strategies, are very complex. Manually integrating protocols, creating custom code for specific market needs, and conducting extensive testing and auditing is undoubtedly inefficient and costly.

Therefore, Berachain has partnered with Enso to achieve fast integration with all major DeFi protocols, ensuring the compatibility of the entire ecosystem. Users can complete asset interactions with multiple protocols within the Boyco application through a single transaction, without the need to switch between multiple platforms or search for the best way to obtain the required assets, bringing a more seamless participation experience and laying a solid foundation for the mainnet launch of Berachain.

As of the time of writing, supported by Enso Shortcuts, Boyco TVL has exceeded 31 billion US dollars.

In addition, the automated cryptocurrency trading market Glider also provides users with powerful portfolio automation functionality through Enso; Enso is launched on ZKsync to help developers build faster and more efficiently; the multi-chain liquidity re-staking protocol Bedrock partners with Enso to bring users one-click exchange and deposit of assets in the uniBTC Berachain vault, etc.

Beyond the DeFi scene, the combination of Enso and AI is equally remarkable:

In the current wave of AI Agent, the rise of DeFAI narrative, and the continued popularity of DeFi, as the core pillar of the crypto world, DeFAI, which aims to simplify the complex DeFi operation threshold using AI, is widely regarded.

As AI Agent evolves towards a more intelligent direction, Enso is committed to helping AI Agent overcome the complexity of interacting with multiple protocols, bundled transactions, and managing operations, giving it stronger execution capabilities:

By integrating with Enso, BrianknowsAI can focus more on developing their intent recognition engine without having to worry about integrating with multiple blockchain protocols;

As an independent hedge fund management company, Velvet Unicorn quickly built advanced features such as neural network routing and multi-step yield strategies through cooperation with Enso;

Hey anon As an AI Agent focused on DeFi, interacting with 180+ protocols on-chain through Enso...

The list goes on and on.

It is reported that Enso has integrated 180+ protocols at present, among which 60+ Apps are using Enso to leverage these integrations, and the Enso ecosystem partnership landscape is rapidly expanding.

Behind the series of successful cases, many people are curious:

As a secret weapon that simplifies the development process for multiple projects, improves development efficiency, and brings a seamless experience, how does Enso achieve all this?

From API to Intent Engine to Shortcuts, step into the product evolution of Enso

As the saying goes, practice is the only way to true knowledge.

Enso did not initially determine the development strategy with Shortcuts as the core. After multiple attempts and adjustments based on product, as well as the team's long-term observation of the demand in the crypto market, Enso's specific solution for improving blockchain development efficiency gradually became clear.

Enso started with DeFi and previously launched a social trading platform where anyone can create social strategies to monetize their investments in DeFi and ERC20 tokens. However, in the process of integrating more DeFi protocols, Enso spent a lot of time and incurred high audit costs of over $500,000 for integrating 15 DeFi protocols.

After this experience, Enso found that the market needs services that can solve the development dilemma of DeFi more than specific DeFi products. Therefore, the team decided to rethink the product design, refactor the underlying logic of the product, and subsequently launched a series of APIs, including Route API, Bundle API, Metadata API, etc., aiming to provide tools for executing and obtaining all relevant metadata of DeFi protocols. This covers executing multiple transactions in a single atomic transaction, bundling multiple DeFi operations to create custom workflows, obtaining the best route based on a given expected path, providing all metadata related to DeFi protocols, and other key points. Developers can quickly embed on-chain operations into their products by simply calling the API, providing efficiency improvements for developers to build the next generation of DeFi.

After the API was a great success, Enso delved into reducing the development threshold: How to further help developers easily build products that can interact with any smart contract on any blockchain framework?

Based on this, in June 2024, the intent engine, Enso Intent Engine, was officially launched.

As a completely decentralized shared network state, Enso Intent Engine aims to simplify smart contract interactions on the blockchain and support the building of tradable data across various blockchain frameworks, which is achieved through mapping all smart contract interactions in the blockchain framework.

Simply put, metaphorically speaking, the blockchain industry is likened to the earth, with each blockchain being a country, and the applications within each blockchain are like cities in each country. Cities have various facilities such as schools, shopping malls, parks, and so on, while applications contain various operations such as lending, borrowing, exchanging, transferring, approving, depositing, and more.

In the past, there was no interaction between countries, that is, data between blockchains was not shared. If you want to integrate a chain or a smart contract, you need to learn and adapt to the laws of that country and city.

Enso aims to draw a global Map, recording the rules of all countries and cities (i.e. all blockchains and smart contracts), and present them in the form of standardized data formats, transaction formats, and execution formats, so that developers can achieve easy integration through the standardized layer built by Enso.

Therefore, in Enso, developers only need to express their intent, and they can automatically handle complex blockchain interactions. The intent request does not have to be explicit for just one use case; it can include multiple types of smart contract interactions across multiple blockchain frameworks.

For example, in this shared map, just as we can collect all the parks in this global map with the "parks" tag, we can use the "Lend" operation type to collect and analyze data in all lending protocols.

And based on the concept of the Enso Intent Engine shared map, combining different types of operations on demand can generate a series of Shortcuts that can significantly improve the efficiency of blockchain development, transforming complex on-chain operations into simple, verified, and reusable building blocks.

Simply put, standardized operation types are like building blocks of LEGO, and developers can assemble the blocks into the shapes they want according to their own needs. For example, LEGO blocks have been assembled into pre-built components such as doors, windows, and walls, and you can easily assemble these components into any building you like, such as a school, hospital, or shopping mall.

Similarly, developers can combine different types of operations to form various Shortcuts such as DeFi routing, asset management, automated execution, and integrate these Shortcuts into the functionality of various products.

Does this sound very simple and efficient?

Currently, Enso has the following Shortcuts:

Token exchange and DeFi routing

Asset Management

Financial tools and automation

DeFi Protocol Integration

Smart Contract Interaction

Complex Trading Bundle

At the same time, more Shortcuts are brewing. Multiple projects including Berachain, ZKsync, and Bedrock have greatly reduced the time and cost required for integration and maintenance through Enso, and have achieved over 160+ billion dollars in on-chain settlements, bringing more liquidity integration, bursting innovative functions, and high-quality user experience to the blockchain ecosystem.

Behind the exquisite product design is a project under the control of an elite team with 10 years of experience in the blockchain field.

As CEO and co-founder of Enso, Connor Howe has been working full-time in the blockchain industry since 2016 and has published one of the earliest Ethereum research papers in the UK. Before founding Enso, Connor worked at Sygnum, a fully licensed digital asset bank in Switzerland, where he established the blockchain department and was responsible for developing products such as fully collateralized stablecoins, tokenization suites, multi-signature, and managing an asset scale of over 5 billion USD using original HSM.

Another co-founder, Peter Phillips, is also the CTO of Enso and has been working full-time in the blockchain industry since 2016. Prior to joining Enso, Peter worked at a blockchain development agency with clients including DuckDuckGo and Mozilla, and has developed Aragon through Autark, bringing extensive experience in blockchain development.

Milos Costantini is the core developer and co-founder of Enso. Before joining Enso, Milos built validator infrastructure for Swisscom blockchain, the largest telecommunications company in Switzerland, and helped establish their blockchain department, making significant contributions to building the Enso network architecture.

It is worth mentioning that many community members have also noticed that the Enso Intent Engine currently provides services in a centralized manner, but Enso is centered around decentralization as its core vision, aiming to build an organic ecosystem where everyone can participate and benefit from it.

With the upcoming Enso Network, the final piece of the decentralized puzzle is falling into place, and the vision of the Enso decentralized network is accelerating towards realization.

Next Stop Enso Network: Towards Full Decentralization

As an independent L1 Tendermint blockchain, Enso Network is collectively driven by network participants, providing efficient execution and wide integration. We know that 'implementing intentions through Shortcuts' is the core concept of Enso, and the implementation of intentions consists of three key points:

Intent to express: The user specifies the desired outcome in the application.

Intent execution: The solver competes in the auction to determine the optimal solution for executing user intent.

Intent settlement: The solver obtains profits by providing the optimal solution.

Enso Network achieves the logical closed loop of its decentralized network by introducing four main roles.

Consumers are the demand-side, they need to state their desired outcomes and pay fees to submit requests to the Enso network.

Action providers are developers who abstract smart contract development on the chain. Based on the proportion of solutions generated using their smart contract abstractions, the network will reward developers as Action providers.

Graphers, on the other hand, provide solutions based on the needs of consumers, and whenever a new requirement arises, the Graphers will iterate through all the contributed abstractions in the Enso network and combine them in the optimal order to generate executable bytecode. Graphers will be rewarded for proposing the best solution.

Finally, Validators, as the core maintaining network security operation, are responsible for monitoring and broadcasting valid requests from consumers in the network, verifying the smart contract abstractions contributed by Action providers (only smart contract abstractions verified by Validators can be used by Graphers to generate solutions), and also determining the optimal solution in the solutions from Graphers and providing feedback to Consumers for execution.

We know that the design of the economic model plays a crucial role in the stable operation of the ecosystem. The Enso network incentivizes network participants to participate with the native token $ENSO and constrains the occurrence of malicious behavior.

As a key component of the Enso ecosystem, the total circulation of $ENSO is 100 million, with the following key functions:

Gas: The fee required to initiate requests and modify state on the Enso network;

Governance: Promote governance protocol upgrades through token voting;

Staking: Action providers, Graphers, Validators all need to stake a corresponding amount of tokens to participate in network contribution. When improper behavior is discovered, their staked $ENSO will be confiscated, while coin holders can also further maintain network security by delegating staking to network participants.

Based on this, the Enso ecosystem where everyone can participate, everyone can contribute, and everyone can benefit emerges vividly on paper.

Conclusion

Of course, although the Enso API is already very mature and widely integrated into dozens of well-known projects, the development of the Enso Network is still in the relatively early stage.

According to its whitepaper, the launch of Enso Network will be divided into two phases:

In the first phase, the centralized Enso service will coexist with the decentralized network, intending to become the action providers' developers can contribute to the centralized service hosted by Enso, and independent Validators will simulate bytecode solutions.

In the second phase, Enso Network will gradually evolve into a fully sustainable ecosystem. At the same time, the network will provide a completely permissionless environment for Action providers, Graphers, and other key contributors. In addition, Enso Network will expand from supporting only the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to include the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) and Move Virtual Machine (MVM) frameworks to further enhance the developer experience of the multi-chain ecosystem.

According to the official roadmap information, Enso Network is currently in the testnet stage and is expected to officially meet you in 2025.

It is particularly noteworthy that, although Enso has achieved remarkable results in applications such as DeFi and AI in the past, fundamentally, for applications that hope to interact with any smart contracts on any blockchain, they can all demand the best solution through Enso Network.

In other words, the Enso network has the ability to support any type of project, not only limited to improving the development efficiency and service quality of applications such as DeFi, but also has the potential to become a universal gateway for the interaction of all smart contracts on all blockchains. In the gradually clear future trend of multi-chain, Enso will be an effective way to help developers build a truly effective approach to achieve large-scale adoption of killer applications.

At a time when the number of public chains is surging, DeFi interactions are deepening and complex, and cross-chain demand is multiplying, Enso's narrative of improving development efficiency and becoming a universal gateway for all smart contract interactions on the chain is undoubtedly attractive, and its evolution from API to intent engine to Enso Network also allows us to see the attitude and thinking of the project's continuous improvement and continuous cultivation.

With the upcoming launch of the mainnet and the gradual implementation of various roadmaps, Enso may become one of the key driving forces in the road to achieving mass adoption of blockchain technology.