Intents

This page explains how intents and solving work within the Anoma protocol.

Intents, which are unbalanced transactions, can be become balanced transactions through composition with matching intents by other counterparties.

Anoma users submit their intents to an intent pool in the form of unbalanced transactions, which are received and processed by solvers that output balanced ARM transactions. These transactions are then ordered and finally sent to the executor node, that verifies and executes the transactions in the determined order, updating the state.

Below, we show examples of a balanced transaction that can directly be executed and an intent (unbalanced transaction) requiring counterparty discovery.

Transfer

Alice's balanced transaction

Consume	Create
1🍏 {Alice}	1🍏{Bob}

Alice consumes her apple resource and creates one with Bob as the owner. This transaction is already balanced and therefore requires no solving. It can be executed straight away.

(Names in curly braces indicate the resource owner.)

Basic Intent

Alice's unbalanced txn (intent)

Consume	Create
1🍏 {Alice}	1🥖{Alice}

Bob's unbalanced txn (intent)

Consume	Create
1🥖 {Bob}	1🍏 {Bob}

Balanced txn (obtained by composition of Alice's and Bob's unbalanced txns)

Consume	Create
1🍏 {Alice}	1🍏 {Bob}
1🥖 {Bob}	1🥖 {Alice}

After composing Alice's and Bob's transactions into one, the transaction is now balanced and can be executed. After execution, Alice has swapped her apple for a baguette, while Bob has done it the other way around. (Names in curly braces indicate the resource owner.)