Epoch Protocol - Overview

The Web3 ecosystem has seen exponential growth in protocols, dApps, and chains in the last few years. For users, this has massively increased the complication of navigating dapps and for developers to integrate with protocols. Transactions often require multi-step processes involving different gas tokens, bridging and swapping, and protocol-specific interactions.

It has also resulted in fragmented liquidity and complex asset management across multiple networks. Multiple rollups, increasing protocols, and shifting paradigms will all add more to the problem and fragment the UX and liquidity even further.

Our Solution

With Epoch Protocol, Users and dApps can give their input using declarative Intents and state constraints, and leave them to purpose-specific intent solvers within Epoch Network to optimise for state flows and necessary state updates, talk to multiple homogeneous and heterogeneous consensus and execution environments, do the right counter-party discovery, co-ordinate internal and external solvers and ultimately make the final settlement on the desired settlement layers.

Epoch also lets users define conditions for execution with their intents, once those conditions are met, the most optimal state updates are figured out and executed within the constraints for the state set by the user.

Unique Approach and Features:

  1. A Complete Middle Layer for Abstraction: Epoch Protocol is a middleware layer consisting of Intent Solver Orchestrators, internal and external Intent Solvers, Observers(Hyperions), Transaction Bundlers, and Smart Accounts, that allow dapp and users to interact with web3 in an abstracted manner.

  2. Multiple Purpose-Specific Intent Solvers: Epoch Protocol allows querying multiple purpose-specific and external solvers to ensure users always get the most optimal settlement.

  3. Solver-Solver Coordination - By coordinating these purpose-specific intent solvers it is possible to solve for many complex intents and optimise the solution to a greater extent.

  4. Observers(Hyperions): Epoch Protocol has pluggable observers that can constantly monitor the chain to see if desired conditions are met for executing the intent.

  5. Liquidity Pools for bridging: Epoch's Liquidity Pools are a unique approach to bridging funds, where solvers take on risks of bridging assets and give users their assets instantly on the destination chain and after submitting a valid proof take the assets to be bridged from users on a different chain.

  6. Account Abstraction Power: The protocol's use of Account Abstraction unlocks advanced wallet permissions management, transaction automation, self-custody of funds, and more flexibility over a transaction getting executed. With the evolving state of Account Abstraction and the advent of ERC-7702 soon EOAs will be able to benefit as well.

  7. Pluggable for All: Be it users, dApps or protocols, the protocol provides a pluggable solution to cater to diverse needs in the Web3 ecosystem.

    1. DApps can get their users in the right state, get discovered, and be more creative in terms of UX and features to offer users.

    2. On the other hand, Users can be free of the cognitive hurdles of countless choices, complicated multi-step transactions and protocol discovery issues.

  8. State Constraints: Epoch adds an extra layer of security with on-chain verification of state with wallet-level constraints, so users can ensure the solution achieves the desired state updates.

  9. SAFE Module Integration: Seamlessly use SAFE vault actions, automate and/or intentify use of funds.

What can be done with Epoch right now -

  1. Automating transactions which are time or event-dependent across any dapp in web3 using SAFE smart accounts.

  2. Recording/Getting intentions from dApps using wallet connect and transaction hashes.

  3. Setting different on-chain event-based triggers for their intents.

  4. Deploying SAFE smart accounts for users and gasless transactions.

What's coming next -

  1. On-chain verification of execution constraints and conditions.

  2. Sub Intent Orchestrators, Hyperions V2 and Modular Intent Solvers - for managing co-ordination among solvers and to find the optimal solution for the declarative intents.

  3. Epoch Liquidity Pools for instant user-facing bridging of funds.

  4. Epoch Registry to allow updating context for future intents and transactions.

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