Aperture Finance (APTR): The Next DeFi Evolution With AI-Powered Intents
The decentralized finance (DeFi) industry has progressed from its pre-2017 rudimentary form to today’s ecosystem of highly sophisticated apps and solutions. Numerous DeFi applications (DApps) on the market now allow for the most complex operations involving cross-chain liquidity farms, elaborate derivatives-based transactions and algorithmic yield strategies.
However, the growth in the sophistication of DeFi solutions has led to an increase in the complexity and time spent by users to determine the best course of action. Traders have all the tools at their disposal in the DeFi universe, but knowing which platform, pool or swap pair to pick can prove to be a time-consuming and error-prone process.
Aperture Finance (APTR) aims to help traders cut through the complexity using a natural language-based artificial intelligence (AI) solution. This multichain protocol allows users to express their desired trading outcomes using plain language. It then transforms the request and sends it to a network of solver nodes, whose job is to point the user to the optimal source within the DeFi landscape that best satisfies the user's intent. By offering novel, ChatGPT-style decentralized trading, Aperture Finance helps reduce the barrier to entry and makes the selection of a DeFi strategy an effortless process.
Key Takeaways:
Aperture Finance (APTR) is a DApp that allows you to specify your trading intents via an AI-powered chat tool, IntentsGPT, and offers the best options that satisfy those intents.
Aperture Finance also offers automated solutions for concentrated liquidity trading via its decentralized exchange platform, ApertureSwap.
Its native token, APTR, is used for governance, staking, protocol payment fees and revenue generation. APTR can be traded on Bybit as a Spot pair (APTR/USDT).
What Is Aperture Finance?
Aperture Finance is a multichain DeFi protocol on which users declare their trading intents and desired outcomes using natural language. The platform’s AI bot then provides suggestions for optimal investment opportunities available across a variety of pools and protocols.
Founded in 2021 and based in California, Aperture Finance is headed by Lian Zhu, Co-Founder and CEO. On May 31, 2024, the project debuted its native token, APTR, which it maintains on Ethereum (ETH), Arbitrum (ARB) and Mantle Network (MNT). The platform provides access to liquidity pools, swap pairs, strategies and other DeFi products through ApertureSwap, based on the Manta Pacific Layer 2 network. It’s also integrated with Uniswap (UNI) and PancakeSwap (CAKE), allowing those networks’ liquidity providers to leverage Aperture Finance's Intents tool to initiate and manage their liquidity positions effortlessly.
How Aperture Finance Works
Users on the platform provide their textual prompts, or intents, specifying what they want to achieve. For example, a user might state their intent as follows — "I'd like to earn the highest possible yield from an ETH-SOL pool for an investment period of no more than a week." Aperture Finance processes this intent, transforms it from the natural language format into a standardized format acceptable to DApps and passes the request to a network of solver nodes. These nodes scout the DeFi landscape, accessing a variety of platforms and available options from which the solvers then propose their solutions according to the user's request.
Aperture's ranking and execution engine assesses the solutions proposed by solvers and chooses the one that will best satisfy the user's intent, e.g., the one that provides the highest yield with the lowest fees.
To process user requests and communicate solutions via its IntentsGPT interface, Aperture uses large language models (LLMs) — an area that has become the poster boy of the AI industry ever since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT. All intent processing and evaluation are based on smart contracts.
Aperture Finance’s Architecture
Aperture Intents-Infra
The platform's architecture is made up of four main components:
An AI-powered user interface, IntentsGPT, which allows you to declare your trading goals using natural language.
The Intents Mempool, a repository where user intents are queued and processed. Solvers can collect intents from this repository.
A network of solver nodes that accept user intents and work on them to find and propose the best solutions.
An executor that assesses and ranks solutions proposed by solvers, and then executes the chosen option.
The first component, IntentsGPT, is powered by a domain-specific language (DSL) model that’s capable of translating textual prompts into commands relevant to DeFi operations. Instead of forcing traders to tweak a variety of levers and tick countless boxes to formulate their investment requirements, the DSL model deducts all the user preferences from natural text prompts. It might ask follow-up questions to clarify the requirements or narrow them down.
User intents are then accumulated in the Intents Mempool, where they’re organized and scheduled for processing. Queuing the intents in the Mempool is based on various factors, such as resource requirements and urgency.
The solver network, which we'll cover in more detail below, uses the Mempool to select and process intents. During this stage, solvers need to validate the data associated with certain intents, especially those relying upon off-chain data. Solvers use zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to validate the off-chain data without revealing its contents, ensuring accuracy and confidentiality.
Finally, Aperture’s ranking and execution engine selects the best alternative out of those proposed by solvers — taking into account the risks involved and benefits offered — and executes the request.
Solver DAO Network
Solver nodes on Aperture Finance are part of its Solver DAO Network. Unlike a traditional blockchain DAO, whose role typically involves enabling governance processes, the Solver DAO's most prominent function is to provide optimal solutions to user intents in a competitive fashion. Solver nodes compete with each other to find and present the best solution.
Solvers need to stake APTR and ETH to access user intents held in the Mempool. A solver node can offer a solution employing strictly on-chain methods such as smart contracts, or off-chain options such as scripts, in a variety of programming languages. The quality of the solution matters more than the method used to source it. Naturally, solvers who can access and research data across the widest possible range of sources are best positioned to win in the competitive battle against their DAO peers.
Aperture Finance Key Features
Aperture Finance also offers users a set of solutions to automate liquidity provision in concentrated liquidity (CL) pools.
LP Automation Tools
Automated Rebalance (Move Range)
The Automated Rebalance function lets you set up automatic triggers to rebalance your position, based on variables like pricing, specific time and pool ratio. This frees you from the necessity of manually adjusting all of these parameters when you need to rebalance your position.
Prescheduled Position Closure (Range Order)
Aperture Finance also allows you to close your position using the same parameters as above — pricing, timing and pool ratio. This functionality is particularly applicable to traders who use CL pools for range orders.
Auto Compound
The Auto Compound solution allows you to automatically reinvest your earnings from a liquidity pool to enhance your yields. Aperture Finance selects the best interval for reinvesting based on the current terms and conditions in the pool, taking into account factors such as projected earnings and gas fees involved.
Revenue Earning Limit Orders
Aperture Finance lets you earn revenue from single-asset limit orders using Uniswap v3 pools. Under this mode, you provide one-sided liquidity at a specific out-of-range price point. If the asset crosses your price point, the position is closed, and you earn the asset plus trading fees. You’ll only have gas fees deducted from your earnings.
ApertureSwap
In addition to intents-based trading tools, Aperture Finance offers its own CL-focused decentralized exchange (DEX), ApertureSwap, which operates on Manta Pacific — a zero-knowledge-based Layer 2 network for Ethereum. Much of the basic functional setup comes from Uniswap v3, the DApp that championed the idea of CL back in 2021. ApertureSwap also offers the novel liquidity pool automation, limit order and range order solutions covered above.
What Is the Aperture Finance (APTR) Token?
APTR is Aperture Finance’s native token. With a maximum supply of 1 billion, it was launched on May 31, 2024, and is based on Ethereum and Mantle Network. Additionally, APTR uses a bridge address on Arbitrum (ARB), a leading Layer 2 chain servicing the Ethereum blockchain.
APTR's token generation event (TGE) was also accompanied by the beginning of its airdrop. Of the 7% designated to airdrop, 4.2% is allocated to its INTENTional (Points) campaign, whereby you need to earn points through various methods, such as by making referrals, posting Aperture Finance–related tweets and using various functions of Aperture Finance's app. The remaining 2.8% is set aside for a snapshot for Uniswap liquidity providers and users who have delegated their UNI tokens.
The APTR token's key functions include:
Governance and staking: By staking APTR, you obtain the right to participate in on-platform governance processes.
Payment of platform fees: Any fees arising from the use of Aperture's products are paid in APTR.
Collateral provision by solver nodes: To act as solvers, nodes must lock collateral in APTR tokens.
Liquidity provision to risk-coverage pools: Liquidity providers are incentivized to stake APTR tokens in external risk coverage pools, which helps protect Aperture’s platform from potential hacks and failures. These pools are available through providers like Nexus Mutual, Unslashed and InsurAce.
Sharing of protocol revenues with eligible platform users.
Where to Buy the Aperture Finance (APTR) Token
The APTR token is available on Bybit's Spot market through a swap pair with USDT (APTR/USDT). You can also take advantage of Bybit's campaign dedicated to the token for the chance to earn a share of the 210,000 APTR prize pool. The campaign, which runs through Jun 14, 2024, 9AM UTC, consists of two events:
Event 1: Deposit to Earn (open exclusively to new users): Receive 50 APTR by completing the following two steps:
Sign up for a Bybit account and complete Identity Verification.
Accumulate a deposit volume of at least 1,500 APTR or deposit at least 100 USDT and trade 100 USDT worth of APTR in your first trade with Bybit
Event 2: APTR x Referral Boost: Earn 20 APTR simply by having a friend register with Bybit (using your referral code) and join the first event. You can receive rewards for up to five (5) successful referrals.
Closing Thoughts
The idea of trading intents championed by Aperture Finance opens up completely new opportunities for both beginning traders and hardened veterans of DeFi trading.
For newcomers to the world of DeFi, Aperture Finance app provides a great way for them to formulate their trading goals and execute them without setting up all the confusing technical parameters that traditional DeFi platforms require. And for experienced traders, the IntentsGPT tool can be a true time-saver. Instead of combing through the entire DeFi landscape looking for the best deals across numerous pools and protocols, these traders can succinctly specify their requirements and get the optimal deals suggested to them within seconds.
By introducing AI-powered, intents-based trading, Aperture Finance has opened up a totally new niche within the world of DeFi, in which its platform will wear the crown as undisputed leader — at least until competing protocols emerge to leverage this novel idea.
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