Wayfinder: In-depth Analysis of AI-Driven Decentralized Finance Popularization

TL;DR

• DeFi claims to be open to everyone, but its complexity makes it difficult for average investors to enter. From preparing Gas fees to understanding complex protocols, many users abandon promising investment opportunities due to complicated processes.

• Wayfinder is an on-chain dedicated AI agent system designed to address these accessibility issues. Users can simply converse with the agent to execute professional-level investment strategies, ranging from cross-chain trading to basis trading.

• Wayfinder will expand into API services in the future, expected to be widely used as infrastructure to simplify on-chain complexities in various Web3 projects. The Wayfinder API will improve the user experience across the cryptocurrency industry, making "accessible financial services for everyone" a reality.

1. Is DeFi really open to everyone?

Decentralized Finance aims to create an open financial ecosystem. However, it requires complex technical knowledge and advanced financial skills, creating a significant gap between ideals and reality.

Chain abstraction and account abstraction technologies have improved user experience, but there is a lack of standardization and limited supported protocols. The fundamental issue lies in the complexity of learning, which cannot be solved solely by technological improvements. Users still need to understand concepts unique to Decentralized Finance, such as AMM, liquidity pools, and impermanent loss. Therefore, DeFi has set a higher threshold than traditional finance.

The research from the Bank for International Settlements clearly indicates this. In Uniswap V3, only 7% of liquidity providers control about 80% of the TVL. These professional users have a return rate that is 20% higher than that of ordinary users. This gap indicates that accessibility issues affect the entire Decentralized Finance ecosystem.

The DeFi ecosystem faces clear issues. It forces existing users into an endless cycle of learning and decision fatigue, causing new users to completely give up on entering. The complex access processes deter users. As a result, DeFi is becoming the exclusive domain of professional users, which goes against the original intention of achieving financial innovation through decentralized technology.

2. Can AI solve the high entry barriers of Decentralized Finance?

Recent AI breakthroughs have brought new possibilities for lowering the entry barriers to Decentralized Finance. Agent-based AI technology has emerged, going beyond just providing intelligence, and is now capable of executing complex tasks. This could be key to the widespread adoption of DeFi.

For example, the user requests: "Bridge ETH from Base to Solana and purchase the Memecoin BONK." The AI agent analyzes various bridging options in real-time and provides clear choices:

• Wormhole: Fee $2.50, completed in 3 minutes, high security
• LayerZero: Fee $1.80, completed in 5 minutes, there is a risk of Gas fee fluctuations.

Users do not need to learn complex technical differences; they only need to use key information to make quick decisions. The agent automatically handles everything, as if having a personal asset manager available 24/7.

However, there are challenges in realizing this vision. Most AI technologies lack direct blockchain integration and cannot check wallet balances in real time. Even integrating blockchain nodes, understanding thousands of smart contracts is also a challenge. Secure interaction and verifying protocol security remain additional problems.

AI technology requires dedicated on-chain agent systems to create real value in Decentralized Finance. This is the positioning of Wayfinder.

3. Wayfinder: On-chain dedicated AI agent system

Wayfinder offers an AI agent system specifically designed for on-chain environments. Unlike general agents, Wayfinder agents are directly integrated with blockchain infrastructure to automatically execute on-chain tasks. The AI models are finely tuned for the blockchain environment, allowing for more efficient navigation and utilization of Decentralized Finance protocols than general models.

Wayfinder is derived from Colony, an AI-based survival simulation game developed by Parallel Studios. During the development process, it was discovered that AI agents could autonomously engage in activities on the blockchain, which could be extended to a Decentralized Finance environment, leading to the Wayfinder project.

Wayfinder consists of two core elements: Wayfinder Shell is the interface through which users interact with the dedicated agent; Wayfinder Graph is the navigation system that helps the agent find the optimal path in a complex multi-chain environment.

3.1. Wayfinder Shell: Your Personal Decentralized Finance Banker

Wayfinder Shell(Shells) is the interface for users to interact with dedicated intelligent agents, used to formulate and execute various on-chain strategies. Shells provide dedicated intelligent agents for specific roles, responding to user requests to collaboratively handle complex tasks. It supports major mainnets such as Ethereum, Solana, Base, and Avalanche, enabling multi-chain asset management.

The main feature of Shells is that the agent executes direct on-chain transactions through a built-in dedicated Web3 wallet. For example, when a user requests to diversify an investment of 100 USDC into recently rising trend tokens on Solana, the agent uses real-time market data to filter tokens, build a portfolio, and execute the investment directly.

The Wayfinder intelligent agent system includes:

• Trading Agents: Handling basic on-chain asset transfers and management
• Perpetual Contract Agent: Supports spot or perpetual contract trading
• Smart Contract Agent: Handles tasks related to smart contracts
• Autonomous Agents: Coordinating multiple agents to handle integrated roles

In the future, dedicated agents will be continuously added, such as yield discovery agents. Wayfinder utilizes a multi-agent system for mutual verification and collaboration, making decisions more stable and precise. For complex operations, agents run simulations on a virtual network before execution, predicting outcomes and preventing errors. Important transactions require user approval, maintaining full control over assets.

3.2. Wayfinder Graph: Google's map of Decentralized Finance

Wayfinder Graph is a navigation system that systematically organizes complex blockchain ecosystems. Just as Google Maps connects global roads and traffic information, Wayfinder Graph constructs the relationships between DeFi protocols, smart contracts, and assets across various blockchain networks, helping agents execute tasks via the most efficient paths.

The core of the mapping system is the "pathfinding path". Each path gradually defines specific tasks, recording detailed information such as required smart contract addresses, function call methods, expected fees, and more. The agent uses the verified route to quickly and securely complete tasks.

In the future, the pathfinding routes will be created and managed by the community. Submitters will stake PROMPT tokens as collateral, and the verified paths can be used by all Shells. Path creators will receive a share of the usage fees, while erroneous paths will result in the forfeiture of the staked tokens. This structure operates as a continuous quality management system, going beyond a simple reward mechanism.

Wayfinder ensures scalability through the community, flexibly responding to the rapid changes and complexities of the Decentralized Finance ecosystem.

4. A brand new Decentralized Finance experience brought by Wayfinder

With Wayfinder, complex on-chain strategies are no longer exclusive to experts. Automated agents handle strategy formulation and execution, allowing beginners to easily manage expert-level strategies, while experts can focus on more complex designs.

4.1. Complex cross-chain transactions become simple

The trading agent of Shells solves the complexity of Gas fee preparation through the BRAP engine. The BRAP engine explores multiple liquidity paths, finds the optimal route, and handles token swaps and bridging. Wayfinder supports unified handling of cross-chain Gas fees using only Base chain-based PROMPT tokens, so users do not need to prepare native tokens for each chain.

4.2. The repetitive investment process achieves one-stop operation

Wayfinder can execute complex investment strategies, such as leveraged DCA strategies. Users can set conditions once to continuously execute complex investment strategies. Autonomous agents analyze multiple lending protocols, choose the optimal solution, and then trading agents sequentially execute leveraged investment strategies. The agents execute the strategies within the risk parameters set by the user, continuously monitor conditions, and automatically adjust to prevent risks.

4.3. Professional-Level Trading for Beginners

The Wayfinder perpetual contract agent integrated with Hyperliquid's HyperCore enables ordinary users to easily utilize professional strategies such as basis trading. The agent can automatically execute basis trades based on user requests, continuously monitor funding rates, and close positions at the right time, without the user needing to understand complex trading mechanisms.

5. Accessible Future of Decentralized Finance

Wayfinder is expected to bridge the gap between on-chain market opportunities and ordinary users. Users can easily formulate and execute various strategies through conversation, from simple token purchases to yield farming and automatic rebalancing. This could be an important turning point for the industry, expanding the user base and driving market activity.

In the long run, Wayfinder has the potential to develop into an operating system for on-chain environments. By providing functionalities in the form of APIs, it enables various services to easily invoke complex on-chain tasks. This will allow each service to offer new features that go beyond existing limitations, improving the user experience across the entire cryptocurrency industry.

Ultimately, Wayfinder is expected to develop into an infrastructure that goes beyond Decentralized Finance and improves the user experience across the entire cryptocurrency industry, realizing the original intention of "financial services for everyone" in DeFi.