Particle Network V2: The first intent-centered Web3 modular access layer, a breakthrough in privacy and efficiency optimisation

The bear market builds and the bull market breaks out, which is the consensus of most Web3 practitioners.

But the question is, in an environment where the market is deserted, funds are withdrawn, and there is no essential innovation in the application model, how can sustained success be built in the next cycle? What other hot spots and narratives deserve attention?

Faced with this problem, we may be able to get inspiration from the recently hotly debated cutting-edge topics:

• At the beginning of the year, ERC-4337 was deployed to the main network, and the AA wallet based on account abstraction ushered in a breakthrough;
• A few months ago, Paradigm identified “intent-centricity” as one of the top ten trends the industry should be paying attention to;
• A few days ago, Vitalik proposed a solution called Privacy Pool in a new paper jointly released with the University of Basel, striving to use technical means to find a balance between user privacy and supervision…

The explorations of different people look unrelated. But if we connect these explorations, they imply common problems: How to make users’ privacy protection and interaction efficiency in Web3 higher？

Currently, the underlying blockchain protocols are striving to improve transaction performance; the infrastructure layer is creating more stable conditions to support specific types of application scenarios; and the application layer is focusing on polishing the user experience (UI/UX) of their products. However, as more L2 solutions emerge, L1 speeds increase, infrastructure becomes more robust, and the number of applications grows…

Are users experiencing a qualitative leap in terms of understanding costs, ease of operation, and privacy security when accessing Web3 today? The answer is negative.

Different layers are tackling certain experience and interaction issues in a dispersed and fragmented manner based on their respective business scopes and capabilities. Therefore, at the developer conference InfraCon @Token 2049 held on September 12th, Particle Network released V2, creating a user-centric, modular Web3 access layer. From the perspective of introducing convenience to users, efficient interaction, data autonomy, and modular adaptability covering the entire user interaction cycle, Particle Network V2 promotes the efficiency of user-chain interactions. In this issue, we delve into Particle Network V2, analyzing its iterative motivations, design logic, and future impacts, and sorting out its solutions for reference by more industry practitioners.

Particle Network V1: The Core Access Layer based on WaaS, Creating the Cornerstone for Efficient Interaction between Users and Chains

Particle Network officially launched its V1 product at the end of October last year, based on the Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) product powered by MPC-TSS (Multi-Party Computation with Threshold Signature Scheme). Upon the official launch of ERC-4337, it also went live with the MPC+AA (Multi-Party Computation + Account Abstraction) wallet service solution.

The benefits of this solution are that users can log in using familiar Web2 methods without worrying about understanding and safeguarding private keys and mnemonic phrases. Additionally, based on the secure key fragment management and execution environment of MPC (Multi-Party Computation) and the improved wallet experience based on AA (Account Abstraction), such as unified gas fees and batch operations.

From the perspective of end-user experience, Wallet-as-a-Service (referred to as WaaS) improves the efficiency of interacting with the chain. Because after using social login, all chain signatures also occur within the partner applications integrated with the WaaS solution, users do not need to perform any extra operations, reducing the sense of fragmentation in the experience and the exposure of underlying technical logic.

At the same time, from the perspective of Web3 projects, the WaaS solution has been widely favoured. In the 10 months since the launch of V1, hundreds of dApps of various types have integrated Particle Network’s products and services, including Xter.io, Hooked Protocol, ApeX, 1inch, and CyberConnect, covering all major projects in various fields.

This is a typical B2B2C cooperation model: Particle Network provides WaaS solutions, and the project partners jointly improve the end-user experience after integration.

In this model, open co-construction with partners and developers becomes even more important. Particle Network maintains great openness in the process of advancing its business and works closely with ecological partners such as Linea and BNB Chain. Moreover, by organizing developer conferences like InfraCon, it has connected with over 500 well-known builders within the industry.

Overall, Particle Network’s V1 product has solved the problem of high threshold for users to access Web3 and has begun to take shape and influence the industry.

Adhering to the Core Principles of Web3 and Building Future-oriented Infrastructure

The WaaS (Wallet-as-a-Service) solution has greatly facilitated users’ access and interaction while consistently adhering to the core principle of safeguarding user data and privacy autonomy.

Users retain control over access to their assets, data, and privacy. Under the self-custody design of MPC-TSS, solution providers, dApps, and other third parties cannot bypass users to gain control over their accounts.

However, there are still unresolved privacy and interaction efficiency issues in the WaaS industry. For example:

• The use of Web2 social logins creates a correspondence between Web2 social accounts and Web3 on-chain wallet addresses. This correspondence is both a privacy concern and a challenge for storage and management.
• All of the user’s on-chain transaction records are visible to everyone, and complete transparency brings privacy concerns. Not all users want others to freely view these records without authorization.

In fact, autonomy not only concerns the control of individual private keys but also the user’s control over their privacy throughout the entire Web3 industry.

As autonomy has a broader core and extension, how should future-oriented Web3 infrastructure evolve?

From 0 to 10 million users, and after 10 million users, considerations about the above issues may be completely different.

Therefore, this has also become a key consideration for Particle Network’s product iteration: how to ensure complete user privacy and data autonomy while lowering barriers; and how to enhance the execution efficiency of users’ real needs based on their interaction with the chain?

Particle Network V2: Integrating ZK and Intent Computation, a Fully Chain-Supported Modular Web3 Access Layer

The Particle Network V2 version released on September 12th addresses the above-mentioned issues.

Firstly, in response to data privacy concerns, the V2 version provides the solution of zkWaaS (Zero-Knowledge Proof Wallet-as-a-Service).

zkWaaS builds upon the existing MPC and AA of the V1 version by incorporating zero-knowledge proof technology to provide Confidential Login and Confidential Transaction capabilities. The former can conceal the connection between Web2 account login and on-chain wallet address, while the latter can address the privacy issue of fully transparent on-chain transaction records. The specific design methods will be detailed in the following sections.

Furthermore, in response to interaction efficiency issues, the solution provided by the V2 version is the Intent Fusion Protocol (IFP).

The main function of this protocol is to simplify the complex operation steps in current Web3 interactions (such as signing, cross-chain, gas transfer, etc.) into the simplest operation, directly completing the user’s initial intent without requiring the user to execute each step manually.

Particle Network refers to the above solutions collectively as an “intent-centric, modular Web3 access layer.” To facilitate understanding, we can break down this concept to highlight its key features:

• Support for All Access Interaction Scenarios: The current Web3 user access scenarios can roughly be divided into wallets, decentralized applications, and AI tools similar to GPT. The V2 version provides support for all these potential access scenarios.
• Non-Compromise on Privacy Autonomy: In the access and interaction processes of the above scenarios, no privacy or security is sacrificed (including the correspondence between accounts and addresses, and transaction records based on addresses).
• Minimized Operations: Complete the user’s genuine interaction intent most concisely and efficiently, rather than the current step-by-step signing, layer-by-layer authorization, and self-thinking about how to achieve a goal with multiple operations.
• Full Chain Adaptation: For both EVM and non-EVM chains, all the above features are supported.
• Modularity: Enhance decoupling and interoperability, significantly improving the composability between dApps or protocols and between them and the Particle Network.

If the technical concepts still seem too abstract, perhaps examples from the most intuitive perception of users can be used to understand the experience that applications integrated with Particle Network V2 can bring to users.

1. The user logs into a yield aggregator dApp on an Ethereum chain using their Google account, and without being aware, creates a wallet address without a private key or mnemonic phrase.
2. No one else can perceive the correspondence between their Google account and the wallet address.
3. The user wishes to invest their ETH into the best chain yield product on any L1/L2 and automatically redeem it when the earnings reach a certain amount, then stake it in Lido for risk-free returns.
4. The user inputs these requirements in text form, and the yield aggregator automatically understands, decomposes, and executes the user’s intent.
5. Throughout the process of investment, redemption, and staking, the transaction records generated on the chain are invisible to the outside world.

This scenario surpasses the current mainstream Web3 experience in both privacy and efficiency, and it’s precisely the zkWaaS (Zero-Knowledge Proof Wallet-as-a-Service) and Intent Fusion Protocol in the V2 version that support the realization of this scenario.

However, the above example is oversimplified and abstract. In practical terms, how are zkWaaS and Intent Fusion Protocol specifically designed and considered?

Confidential Auth: Pioneering Exploration to Hide the Correspondence Between Web2 Accounts and Addresses

Regarding hiding the correspondence between Web2 social accounts and on-chain addresses, the recent popular SocialFi application Friend. Tech can provide some insights.

There have been reports indicating that the Twitter ID and Friend tech user wallet relationship has been leaked. The reason is that Friend tech’s query API is public and directly exposed on the website, meaning anyone can query through the API and obtain the association between a user’s Twitter account and their Friend tech wallet address.

While some prominent figures may not mind their social media accounts being exposed on-chain, it doesn’t mean that everyone shares the same sentiment. The more serious issue is that, due to design flaws in certain products, all of this can be accomplished without the individual’s consent. Therefore, the entire Web3 industry needs a method that can conceal the correspondence between wallet addresses and Web2 accounts without sacrificing the convenience of Web2 account login.

The typical solution in the industry is to generate a Web3 version of the login credentials for the Web2 account. When verification is needed, this version is presented, and zero-knowledge proofs are used for comparison. Established solutions include Holonym, Polygon ID, and Chainlink’s CanDID.

However, the problem with this solution is that users need to save this Web3 version of the credentials, which can create psychological and execution burdens. Therefore, in Particle Network’s zkWaaS, a new exploration called Confidential Login is made: users can complete the anonymity of the relationship between their address and Web2 account without sacrificing the login experience and burden.

This zero burden means that the user is not aware of the technical details behind the scenes and the handling of their data. The specific implementation steps are as follows:

1. Users can still use familiar email/phone verification or social account login methods. After verification, a wallet corresponding to the Web2 login method will be generated.
2. During phone/email login or social account login, the verification code and token generated will be submitted to the credential issuer in the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) by zkWaaS.
3. The credential issuer verifies the authenticity of the verification code and token submitted by the user.
4. If the verification is successful, a Web3 token/certificate will be issued to the user to prove that the user has been authenticated through the Web2 method.
5. zkWaaS defaults to encrypting this Web3 token/certificate for storage.
6. The above steps establish the correspondence between the user’s wallet and the Web2 login method, but because the Web3 token/certificate is encrypted, this relationship cannot be perceived externally.
7. The user only needs to use the zero-knowledge proof to verify this relationship when necessary. However, in normal circumstances, due to encrypted storage, this relationship is not visible externally.

Except for the first step, the entire process from the second step onwards is seamless, with users having no additional cognitive burden or operations.

Confidential Transaction: When On-Chain Records Are No Longer Completely Transparent

The aforementioned privacy login solution allows the relationship between addresses and off-chain Web2 accounts to be hidden, but the on-chain privacy issue remains unresolved: based on the public nature of public blockchains, all transactions are publicly visible, searchable, and traceable.

Sometimes, transparency can be a double-edged sword. Based on public transparency, we can conduct on-chain data analysis to understand the movements of whales, providing insights for investment decisions. However, when it comes to consumer-grade or non-financial scenarios, all transaction records being fully transparent may raise concerns about privacy and user experience.

As early as January of this year, Vitalik expressed such concerns in his research paper “An Incomplete Guide to Stealth Addresses”: using Ethereum applications may involve exposing much of one’s life to the public eye.

In the face of such privacy issues, current solutions can be divided into privacy protection at the asset level and privacy protection at the address level.

Privacy protection at the asset level, such as the typical Tornado Cash and other coin-mixing protocols, involves obfuscating encrypted assets themselves. Users mix their funds with those of others to increase the difficulty of tracking fund flows. However, this approach provides opportunities for illicit activities like money laundering and can lead to regulatory scrutiny. The sanction imposed on Tornado Cash by the US Department of the Treasury is a testament to this.

As for privacy protection at the address level, one primitive solution is for a user to hold multiple addresses to isolate different transactions. However, this method increases the user’s management burden and does not fare well in terms of user experience. Moreover, holding multiple addresses does not completely solve the problem of address exposure.

Another approach, as explored by Vitalik in a previous paper, is to establish a Stealth Address system: users generate disposable temporary addresses for interactions and transactions. However, the issue arises when these temporary addresses have no balance and cannot pay gas fees to initiate transactions, leading to a chicken-and-egg paradox.

Particle Network’s zkWaaS takes a step further from Vitalik’s Stealth Address system and proposes the concept of Smart Stealth Address (智能隐身地址) to support confidential transactions (Confidential Transaction). The Smart Stealth Address utilizes the concept of stealth addresses but with the addition of a gas station to address the initial gas fee problem. This ensures that external observers cannot determine the specific address to which the assets are being sent.

The specific implementation process is as follows:

1. When Alice wants to send assets to Bob, Bob receives the assets but prefers that the entire world does not know he received them. While it’s possible to hide who the receiver is, it’s not possible to hide that the transfer occurred.
2. Stealth transactions offer a solution to this scenario. Bob can generate a stealth address based on a public-private key pair and provide it to Alice. Alice can then send assets to this address and verify that they belong to Bob, but only Bob can control these assets.
3. Through a Gas Station, another account can be willing to pay the gas fee for transactions involving the stealth address, allowing the transactions to be executed.

From a design and understanding cost perspective, the approach of privacy protection based on the address dimension is superior. This is because this approach does not incur additional work costs; there’s no need to write new contracts or modify consensus algorithms. It only requires wallet support for forms such as stealth addresses.

By using Particle Network V2, the capability of on-chain transaction privacy protection can be directly integrated, and dApps do not need to adapt themselves, resulting in significantly reduced costs while improving efficiency.

Intent Fusion Protocol: Focusing interaction on a single outcome rather than multiple processes

In July, Paradigm introduced its top 10 trends of focus, with the first item being “intent-centric” protocols and infrastructure. Subsequently, the concept of “intent” gradually came into focus.

However, behind this new concept still lies the old problem of low Web3 interaction efficiency: expressing what you want to happen in declarative form, rather than executing each step in a command-based manner.

To simplify this concept further, the interaction experience of Web3 should be: what you think is what you get. Currently, the interaction experience of most Web3 applications is centered around steps—achieving a final intent requires users to go through multiple processes, authorizing and signing each step one by one.

More importantly, users need to break down these processes themselves and plan the path to achieve the final intent. For example, if a user needs to interact on a new L2 to purchase an NFT, they must switch from wallet download to chain, cross-chain assets, pay gas fees, and authorize transactions. The entire process is lengthy and complex, demanding high levels of user knowledge and operation.

Therefore, we also need a method to automatically understand, break down, and execute the user’s ultimate intent, thus abstracting away the interaction process.

In reality, some DeFi protocols serve as pioneers in response to such demands. For example, limit orders in DEX are a typical design of “what you think is what you get.” When the price reaches the preset condition, token exchange can occur at a better price, thus achieving the ultimate intent.

However, this exploration is limited to the Web3 financial scenario, and intent design is not universal. For various demand scenarios, a more versatile intent processing solution is needed. This is precisely another direction explored in Particle Network V2: integrating possible intent patterns from different application domains through the Intent Fusion Protocol, automatically structuring, breaking down, and executing user intent.

It’s important to note that this integration of intent patterns is permissionless and universal. Intent Fusion Protocol solutions can integrate any intents, whether on-chain or off-chain, without excessive permission control design, and without discriminating against potential intent scenarios. Whether it’s DeFi, gaming, or socializing, the Intent Fusion Protocol forms a unified intent processing framework.

Breaking down this intent processing framework, we can see several common steps:

1. User expresses intent: Users tell the system what they want to do through specific applications or interfaces, such as dApps supported by zkWaaS, Wallets, etc. To smoothly identify user expressions, Particle Network provides corresponding tools on both the user and developer sides.

• Intent DSL (Domain-Specific Language): Specific language or format designed to make it easier for users to express their intent.
• DApps Intent Framework: A framework provided for developers to easily understand and structure user intent.

1. Break down intent: Structured user intent is sent to the “Intent Bidder Network,” which combines on-chain and off-chain bidders to optimally break down the intent into an encrypted object (Confidential Intent Object), containing detailed and explicit instructions on how to execute the user’s intent.
2. Execute intent: Users sign the encrypted object, and the Intent Solver Network ensures the correct and efficient execution of the user’s intent. There is a competitive mechanism in this network, where on-chain or off-chain solvers compete to implement the user’s intent and receive rewards. The more intense the competition, the higher the efficiency. Finally, the intent is executed, and the user obtains the expected results.

However, the Intent Fusion Protocol alone cannot solve the problem; the execution of the protocol also relies on supporting environments:

• Particle zkEVM: One of the core components responsible for providing multi-chain account abstraction to users. This abstraction allows users to sign once and execute on multiple chains. Additionally, zkEVM is responsible for a unified Intent Mempool, which, through IntentVM, can pass structured Confidential Intent Objects to solvers, enabling them to construct and execute transactions.
• Intent Mempool: Through IntentVM, it transfers structured “Confidential Intent Objects” to solvers, allowing them to construct and execute transactions.
• Staking Manager and Intent Registry: These two components form the basis of security and on-chain and off-chain consensus mechanisms. They involve reward mechanisms to ensure the smooth operation and collaboration of the entire system.

Overall, Particle Network V2 provides a complete set of intent protocol + execution environments. Users only need to focus on their intentions, and all technical and protocol details (such as the structuring, breakdown, and execution of intents) can be automated.

Ultimately, in terms of user experience, users can input what they want to do (such as purchasing an NFT on Base) just like chatting with ChatGPT in a chat window. The application, through understanding the intent, directly generates the desired results for users, who do not need to be aware of the intricate processes involved.

Web3 Access Layer: The New Engine Driving Web3 Towards Vast Blue Oceans:

Returning to the initial question posed in the article: How can we improve the user experience in Web3?

While users must gain proficiency through continuous access and interaction, we cannot expect every user to be a tech-savvy expert or to maintain a high level of sensitivity and vigilance towards privacy matters. The access and interaction experience in Web3 should cater to a broader audience, adhering to this principle is key to accommodating the next wave of user growth.

In conclusion, let’s summarize how the modular access layer pioneered and developed by Particle Network V2 is adapting to a wider range of users and scenarios:

• At the bottom layer (Network): Provided by Particle Network, it offers the capability of account abstraction and intent resolution network, laying the foundation for efficiency in transactions and interactions.
• In the middle layer (Protocols): Various privacy authorization, confidential transaction, and intent fusion protocols are present, with modular designs allowing projects to integrate either specific protocols or the entire suite.
• At the top layer (Applications): Various dApps, enabled by the integration of protocol layers and the provision of infrastructure capabilities, can directly utilize wallet-as-a-service through SDKs and frameworks, gaining access to zk and intent capabilities, ultimately achieving a more refined user access and interaction experience.

In such a design, the access layer resembles an engine driving collaboration among different levels of applications and protocols, collectively steering Web3 from an engineer-friendly financial industry towards a consumer-friendly industry.

Ultimately, when the entire industry is well-prepared to accommodate incremental users in terms of experience, Web3 will usher in unprecedented possibilities.

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