DeFAI Made Easy: The Role of AI in Declarative Smart Contracts

DeFAI Made Easy: The Role of AI in Declarative Smart Contracts

Smart contracts have long been a foundational pillar of blockchain, enabling decentralized applications to automate agreements without intermediaries. But as the ecosystem evolves, traditional imperative smart contracts—which rely on rigid, step-by-step instructions—are falling short. They struggle to scale, adapt, and meet the needs of modern, user-centric systems.

Enter declarative smart contracts. Instead of prescribing every step, declarative contracts focus on outcomes. Users define what they want (the desired end state), and the system determines how to achieve it—simplifying complexity while unlocking greater flexibility and scalability.

But what happens when AI enters the picture? Integrating AI into declarative smart contracts brings powerful possibilities: contracts that are adaptive, intelligent, and personalized. They tailor their behavior to real-time conditions and user needs, pushing the boundaries of what blockchains can achieve.

What You'll Learn

  • How declarative smart contracts work and how they differ from traditional models.
  • The role of AI in enhancing these contracts for smarter execution and user-centric design.
  • Why this matters for the future of blockchain innovation and DeFAI. 

Understanding Declarative Smart Contracts

Traditional smart contracts operate in an imperative programming paradigm, where developers explicitly define every step required to achieve a particular result. This rigidity can lead to inefficiencies and complications when conditions change or unforeseen scenarios arise. Learn more about declarative vs. imperative approaches.

Declarative smart contracts, on the other hand, operate in a declarative programming paradigm. Instead of specifying the "how," developers define the "what"—the end state they want to achieve. Our declarative contracts achieve state updates without execution. Instead of executing steps, Essential starts with a proposed atomic state mutation (a set of new state values). It then substitutes these values into a contract to check their validity. This approach reverses the typical order seen in imperative contracts.

Before we take a look at how declarative smart contracts look like in Pint (Essential’s DSL), it’s important to understand the key concepts of the declarative blockchain model. Declarative blockchains use a constraint-based model to achieve state updates without the need for execution. By defining constraints that govern allowable state changes, developers focus on what the system should achieve rather than how to achieve it. 

On Essential, these constraints are expressed using the Pint language. Instead of computing new states via transaction execution, declarative blockchains specify state updates directly in a block, verified against predefined constraints for validity. This executionless model enhances scalability and reduces computational overhead, as verifying constraints is far less intensive than imperative execution. While anyone can propose state updates, specialized solvers typically fulfill this role by discovering and proposing optimal solutions to user-submitted intents.

Check out our docs for more information on declarative smart contracts including explanations about predicates and constraints. 

An Analogy: Planning a Vacation

Imagine planning a vacation. In the traditional approach, you would create a detailed itinerary: book flights, reserve hotels, and schedule activities. If something goes wrong—a flight gets canceled or a hotel is overbooked—you’re left scrambling to adjust.

In an outcome-driven approach, you simply state your intent: “I want to spend a week in Paris and visit the Eiffel Tower.” A travel agency (or system) then handles the details, adapting to unexpected changes and ensuring your vacation meets your expectations.

Similarly, declarative smart contracts allow users to declare their wishes without worrying about the underlying steps, making blockchain interactions more intuitive and resilient.

Real-World Applications of Declarative Smart Contracts

In the summer of 2024, we released the Essential Tech Stack, which includes a constraint-based programming language called Pint, designed for developing declarative blockchain applications, a persistent devnet for early builders on Essential and developer documentation. An introduction to the Pint language can be found in The Book of Pint.

Declarative smart contracts have broad implications across blockchain use cases, let’s take a look at some of these written in Pint. 

* Disclaimer: This code is provided for illustrative purposes only. It is not intended for production use and requires modification to suit specific requirements.

1. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

  • Example Code:

Purpose: Facilitates token swapping for a user while ensuring they receive at least a minimum specified output.

  • Key Points:
    • user_balance_input and user_balance_output: Track the user’s balance for the input and output tokens.
    • constraint user_balance_input' == user_balance_input - amount_in: Ensures the input token balance decreases by the amount swapped.
    • constraint user_balance_output' >= user_balance_output + min_output: Guarantees the user receives the minimum specified output in the target token.
  • Outcome: The swap operation dynamically finds the best path to achieve the desired output while maintaining user-defined conditions.

2. Supply Chain Management

  • Example Code:

Purpose: Automates updates to inventory when products are delivered to a warehouse.

  • Key Points:
    • warehouse and product_id: Represent the entities involved in the delivery process.
    • state product_stock: Tracks the current stock of a specific product in the warehouse.
    • constraint product_stock' == product_stock + quantity: Updates the stock by adding the delivered quantity.
  • Outcome: Simplifies supply chain operations by ensuring accurate, automated inventory management.

3. NFTs and Gaming

  • Example Code:

Purpose: Handles the minting process for a unique NFT, ensuring proper ownership assignment.

  • Key Points:
    • creator: Represents the address of the user minting the NFT.
    • state nft_owner: Tracks ownership of the NFT token.
    • constraint nft_owner == nil: Ensures the token ID has not been minted before.
    • constraint nft_owner' == creator: Assigns ownership of the newly minted token to the creator.
  • Outcome: Guarantees that NFTs are minted with unique ownership, streamlining creation and reducing errors or duplications.

Adding AI to the Equation for Smarter Smart Contracts

The integration of AI into declarative smart contracts unlocks even more possibilities. AI agents dynamically optimize execution paths, reducing costs and maximizing outcomes such as yield in DeFi. Additionally, AI personalizes interactions by tailoring contract behavior to user preferences and risk profiles, while its predictive capabilities mitigate risks like market slippage and congestion. By leveraging AI, smart contracts written in Pint move beyond static constraints and become adaptive, intelligent, and user-centric.

Recently, we hosted the State of the Intents Nation featuring some of the brightest minds in the intents space. The panel explored how intents are redefining web3, and have the potential to be the foundational pillar of the DeFAI meta in 2025.

One key takeaway from the discussion was that intents are more than a tool, they’re the foundation for safe, effective and user friendly DeFAI and they act as guardrails for AI agents, ensuring AI actions are aligned with user goals (via constraints) while also reducing risk. 

Check out the recap here for more insight. 

AI-Enhanced Real-World Applications

Now, let’s take a closer look at the same scenarios but with AI driven execution. 

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

  • Scenario: A user specifies their intent: “Maximize yield on 1000 USDC for the next 7 days.”
  • How Pint Works:
    • Pint defines the rules and constraints for managing the user’s intent, such as ensuring the funds are allocated only to verified liquidity pools or that yield thresholds are met before reallocating.
    • The constraints guarantee that state updates (e.g., allocation changes) are valid and align with the user-defined outcomes.
  • How AI Enhances This:
    • AI analyzes liquidity pools, factoring in risks like slippage, gas fees, and potential returns.
    • AI dynamically determines the most optimal pools and strategies (e.g., staking, compounding, or rebalancing) to maximize yield within the parameters set by Pint.
    • Pint verifies and executes these AI-driven state updates, ensuring that every step aligns with the user’s desired outcome.
  • Outcome: Users achieve optimal returns, with Pint enforcing their conditions and AI delivering smarter, adaptive execution.

2. Supply Chain Management

  • Scenario: An enterprise declares, “Ensure on-time delivery of Product X while minimizing carbon footprint.”
  • How Pint Works:
    • Pint encodes the constraints for this operation, such as updating inventory levels only when verified deliveries occur, or ensuring carbon emissions stay within the predefined limits.
    • These constraints define the permissible state changes, ensuring that the system remains consistent and reliable.
  • How AI Enhances This:
    • AI evaluates potential delivery routes and vendor options, optimizing for time, cost, and sustainability metrics.
    • AI calculates the carbon impact of each route and selects the option that meets both the delivery timeline and environmental targets.
    • Pint validates the AI-generated state updates (e.g., inventory changes or route selections) to ensure compliance with the defined constraints.
  • Outcome: Businesses streamline logistics with Pint enforcing operational integrity and AI optimizing decision-making.

3. NFTs and Gaming

  • Scenario: A gamer states their intent: “Mint an NFT that evolves based on gameplay performance.”
  • How Pint Works:
    • Pint enforces constraints that ensure NFTs are minted only once and that ownership and metadata updates occur transparently and securely.
    • It governs the permissible state changes, such as assigning ownership or updating traits, ensuring the integrity of every interaction.
  • How AI Enhances This:
    • AI monitors gameplay metrics like achievements and milestones, translating these into changes in the NFT’s traits (e.g., rarity, utility, or appearance).
    • AI suggests dynamic updates to the NFT, ensuring it reflects the player’s progression in a meaningful way.
    • Pint validates these updates, ensuring they meet predefined conditions before being written on-chain.
  • Outcome: Players receive dynamic NFTs that are personalized and secure, with Pint handling state integrity and AI driving the personalization.

Benefits of AI-Enhanced Smart Contracts in Pint

  1. Enhanced Optimization: Pint ensures valid state updates while AI minimizes costs and maximizes efficiency through smarter decision-making.
  2. Personalization: AI leverages Pint’s constraints to deliver highly tailored, user-centric outcomes.
  3. Predictive Security: Pint enforces strict validations, while AI anticipates and mitigates risks, reducing vulnerabilities.
  4. Scalability: Pint’s declarative framework keeps the system lightweight, while AI offloads computational complexity through advanced optimizations.

The Future of Blockchain Development

As AI continues to evolve, it’s fascinating to imagine the role AI agents will play in blockchain innovation and how they will reshape the entire space. The fusion of declarative models and AI-driven strategies unlocks a new era of applications that are smarter, more efficient, and personalized to users' needs.

At Essential, we’re committed to staying ahead by exploring and integrating cutting-edge technologies like AI into our systems. Whether it’s enhancing our declarative blockchain with intelligent agents or pioneering new innovations, our goal is to remain at the forefront of blockchain evolution.

If you’re inspired to start building on Essential, explore our developer docs for a step-by-step guide on creating applications with Pint and deploying them to the pre-alpha devnet. The future is being built now—come build it with us.

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