Top trading bots like Maestro, Banana Gun and Unibot have facilitated<\/a> over $4B in trading volume over the past year and a half. And over the past 30 days, Maestro and Banagun have burned<\/a> more gas than all but two Ethereum-based projects \u2014 Uniswap and the USDT stablecoin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Bots provide a key advantage over what was previously available to crypto traders \u2014 they use something called intents<\/a>, which are ways for users to indicate what they want and offload the \u201chow\u201d aspect to a bot.<\/p>\n For example, with a subset of Telegram bots called Snipers, users can paste an address of a soon-to-drop token and specify parameters like the minimum amount of an asset to buy, the amount of slippage, and whether to only purchase in the first block post-launch.<\/p>\n This level of control has proved useful, especially when memecoins \u2014 where buying the right coin early could mean millions in profits \u2014 took over<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n These Telegram bots\u2019 success has spawned countless competitors, but when Stephane Gosselin<\/a>, the co-founder of Flashbots, the leading organization involved in Maximal Extractable Value (MEV<\/a>), introduced<\/a> a new Telegram bot called Alfred last week, it sent a message that the sector may be here to stay.<\/p>\n At Devconnect, last week\u2019s Ethereum-focused event, Gosselin found that developers are just starting to understand why Telegram bots are meaningful. \u201cMost people have dismissed [bots] as this bear market speculation thing rather than a much better interface for crypto and DeFi,\u201d he told The Defiant.<\/p>\n Gosselin sees a direct throughline from his work on Flashbots to Alfred. \u201cI started Flashbots not to solve MEV,\u201d he said. \u201cI started Flashbots to improve the user experience on Ethereum.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Alfred builds on Flashbots\u2019 work by implementing MEV protection. This protects users from sophisticated bots that are programmed to take advantage of opportunities that arise from submitted but unprocessed transactions.<\/p>\n Flashbots and the work around mitigating the negative externalities of MEV essentially gave rise to intents, which an ecosystem of \u201csolvers\u201d enable.<\/p>\n Gosselin thinks the infrastructure around MEV and intents \u2014whose origins lie in developments from MEV research\u2014 has hit a new stage of maturity. \u201cIt’s the time to actually show the benefits of that to the end user at the interface level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Telegram isn\u2019t the only hot spot for innovation in crypto UX. Unibot, the third largest Telegram bot by volume, launched a web interface last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n BananaGun, the second largest, is also working on a web product, according to its pseudonymous founder, Just Another Guy.<\/p>\n These products, called terminals, are gaining steam as part of a blossoming \u201cinterface layer\u201d in crypto.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Jackson<\/a>, the founder of Thunder, another terminal which went through the highly selective Alliance accelerator<\/a>, is betting on that layer.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that eventually every single DEX, whether that\u2019s Uniswap, dYdX, Curve, should eventually become these faceless settlement layers, and then the interfacing layer needs to be built on top,\u201d he told The Defiant.<\/p>\n Jackson got his start creating programs which would purchase exclusive sneakers as soon as they became available online. The founder added that all of Thunder\u2019s engineers also have backgrounds in \u2018sneaker bots.\u2019<\/p>\n Jackson sees interfaces like Thunder as having a natural advantage over interfaces like Uniswap Labs\u2019, which introduced a fee<\/a> last month. The idea is that an interface which only facilitates trades through one protocol \u2014like Labs\u2019\u2014 won\u2019t be able to offer better prices than interfaces like Thunder, which source liquidity from across DeFi.<\/p>\n Gosselin thinks protocol-specific interfaces will still retain users but believes both the terminal and bot models can also find their niches.<\/p>\n The space isn\u2019t slowing down \u2014 BananaGun is picking up between 300 and 600 new users daily, Just Another Guy said.<\/p>\n Competition for interfaces may also come from aggregators, which, like Telegram bots and terminals, tap into many sources of liquidity at once. Aggregators differ, however, in that users must use a traditional crypto wallet to use them. Because of this, aggregators are typically more secure but don\u2019t offer the level of customization that bots do.<\/p>\n Looking forward, Gosselin noted that large language models (LLMs), which have propelled ChatGPT to become the fastest-growing consumer software product ever, will enable new interfaces which will be specific to each user.<\/p>\n To be sure, like all of crypto, the burgeoning interface layer comes with risks. In this case, users are giving up their private keys to use these solutions.<\/p>\n Kain Warwick, founder of the derivatives platform Synthetix, told The Defiant that he thought many Telegram bots have even worse security guarantees than centralized exchanges, which \u2014as seen with FTX\u2014 don\u2019t always work out.<\/p>\n Jackson, on the other hand, believes that giving up private keys is a design tradeoff worth making \u2014 Thunder uses a solution called Turnkey, which is used by companies like Coinbase to custody users\u2019 keys.<\/p>\n The founder admits that the idea of taking control of users’ private keys to almost give a centralized exchange-like experience is \u201cpolarizing.\u201d<\/p>\n While critical of Telegram bots, Warwick, too, has spoken about trying to take on centralized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase with his most recent<\/a> venture, Infinex.<\/p>\n Jackson and Just Another Guy both said they are looking into account abstraction, a design paradigm that simplifies UX while maintaining self-custody over assets.<\/p>\n The security concerns around Telegram bots aren\u2019t unfounded \u2014 hackers exploited<\/a> Maestro, the leading Telegram bot with over $3B in volume facilitated, for $500,000 in late August. Attackers hit<\/a> Unibot less than a week later.<\/p>\n For now, though, the interfaces popping up throughout crypto stand to change the business dynamics of the entire space.<\/p>\n Monetizing interfaces flies in the face of a famous thesis in the crypto space known as the Fat Protocol<\/a> theory \u2014 in 2016, Joel Monegro, then an analyst at Union Square Ventures, theorized that the blockchain space would differ from traditional web companies in that value would accrue at the protocol layer, rather than at the interface level.<\/p>\n![\"Banana](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F6oftkxoa%2Fproduction%2F10fdc4117e5827b172fdf5980cd104fedebcd371-866x594.jpg&w=828&q=75\")
Increasing Competition<\/h2>\n
![\"MEV](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F6oftkxoa%2Fproduction%2F5687e7a9847dfbfa6f26e3f9de6271ec1253be46-1280x720.jpg&w=828&q=75\")
![\"Transaction](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F6oftkxoa%2Fproduction%2F07ee41f40cf580d389bfeecc80ddf030f768837b-1280x720.jpg&w=828&q=75\")
From Bots to Terminals<\/h2>\n
![\"Unibot](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F6oftkxoa%2Fproduction%2Fc59149d32be3681b2d76c9d5714ee71d5ef7737e-1262x616.jpg&w=828&q=75\")
Neutral Interfaces<\/h2>\n
Security Concerns<\/h2>\n
Monetizing the Interface<\/h2>\n
![\"Fat](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F6oftkxoa%2Fproduction%2F616806875a1720d68c155058b8d553d90de63686-434x555.jpg&w=828&q=75\")