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Autonomous services are a new type of software system. Developers can build them using the Open Autonomy framework and run them on the Olas on-chain protocol.

Autonomous services are unique in crypto and the broader software space. They have a unique set of technical features.  It is easiest to understand these features by comparing them with:
- Smart contracts
- Web services
- Custom decentralized services (e.g. price oracles)

## Smart contracts

Smart contracts run on blockchains like Ethereum, Avalanche, and Solana. These blockchains are run by groups of independent “node operators”. Node operators keep one another in check. This makes them very secure and can safely hold a lot of funds.

To keep them secure, blockchain architects made smart contracts limited. Smart contracts can’t do complex processing. The most cutting-edge computation is unlikely to ever run on a blockchain. Smart contracts can’t reach out and talk to other blockchains either. They are unable to pull in data from another API or interact with a crypto application running on another chain. They’re also limited in that they don’t run all the time. This means they can’t take action according to changes in their environment.


### Smart contracts compared with autonomous services

Smart contracts run on the blockchain (on-chain), whereas autonomous services do not (off-chain). Smart contracts are crypto-native. This means they can secure valuable assets and are composable, but they are unable to do more flexible computation. By contrast, Autonomous services are secure and flexible.

## Web Services

Web services power much of the internet as we know it today. Massive web services power things like Google Search, and the Facebook News Feed. They are not run on a blockchain, so we say they run “off-chain”.

Web services can do complex processing like advanced machine learning. They can talk to any website or application and they can run on an ongoing basis.

But web services are centralized. This means they’re run by individual entities. They’re also prone to downtime and their code isn’t open-source, so you can’t check it for quality and safety. This also means web services are not composable – developers can't combine them to create new products. Composability is a superpower – it enables systems to grow at an exponential rate.

### Web services compared with autonomous services

Autonomous services can do many of the complex things that web services can. The big difference is you can trust autonomous services to manage high-value assets. This is because they have the same crypto-native properties as smart contracts.


## Custom Decentralized Services

Groups of individual operators run custom decentralized services. They don't run on the blockchain, so again, we say they run “off-chain”.

Examples of such services are popular oracles on price feeds, like those run by Chainlink and Band Protocol. Other examples are keepers like those running on the Keep3r Network. The third big example is bridges, such as the Polygon Bridge.

Groups of individual operators run these services, which makes them decentralized. They often run through consensus or multi-sig operations, which make them quite robust. And their code is often open-source, so we can review it and consider it transparent.

Given that decentralized services do not run on a blockchain, they are usually able to do very complex processing. They can also talk to any website, app, or chain. They can also run on an ongoing basis.

### Custom decentralized services compared with autonomous services

There are two big differences between custom decentralized services and autonomous services:
- how they are built
- how sophisticated they can become

Decentralized services are often created with permission from a project’s core team. They are sometimes built by the core team. With Autonolas, services can be built, registered, and run without permission from the core team. Autonolas coordinates people via its on-chain protocol, rather than via its core team. This improves the speed and ease of building for developers.

Another difference is that decentralized services are often single-purpose. For example, oracles put data onto the blockchain for smart contracts to use. Developers cannot import the oracle into another off-chain service they're building. With Autonolas, devs can combine any code or service registered on the protocol. This enables a rich new set of possibilities for off-chain services. This property makes autonomous services composable. Learn more in Composability.

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Autonomous Services: Compared with Other Software

People can mean many different things when they use the term “autonomy”. At Olas, autonomy means primarily: 
- human autonomy
or
- technological autonomy

## Human autonomy

Human autonomy is about how much individual freedom a given person experiences. This could be in the portion of their life spent at work, which we refer to as **work autonomy**. Human autonomy could also be experienced in one’s personal life. We would refer to this as **personal autonomy**.

Work autonomy is about how much freedom someone has to contribute, in the way that they want, to an organization’s objectives. If someone can join an organization and be able to make an impact, this organization has high work autonomy. Olas aims to deliver more work autonomy through rich, decentralized protocols. These protocols coordinate the human effort in DAOs through the use of transparent structures.

Personal autonomy is about how much freedom someone has to pursue their own goals. Someone has low personal autonomy if their environment limits them from achieving those goals. Things in their environment that are limiting could be technological or political. Olas aims to improve personal autonomy by enabling new products. Autonomous services will power these new products.

## Technological autonomy

Technological autonomy is about how much software systems depend on humans to keep them running. We're talking about software systems that manage digital value. For example, tokens and NFTs.

In the wider tech world, technological autonomy has a different meaning. Here, it means self-driving cars, drones, and robot manufacturing systems. This is not in the current scope of Olas’ mission.

Software systems with low technological autonomy are dependent on human maintenance and intervention. For example, the software powering today's internet would break down if the organizations powering them went away. So we say they are low in technological autonomy.

In crypto, smart contracts need to be fed with data and have their functionality called at the right time. Services like custom oracles, keepers, and bridges have emerged to fulfill these roles. But the software behind these services is itself rarely autonomous. Humans operate the software, and the protocols coordinating nodes need heavy ongoing investment.

Seen through this lens, we can see that much of crypto is still low when it comes to technological autonomy.

## The “Autonomous” in Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)

As we have seen above, “autonomy” is a rich concept. As a result, many people have a different idea of what the “autonomous” in the term DAO actually means.

We can say that the autonomous in “DAO” refers to work and technological autonomy. As far as we know, personal autonomy has never been a stated goal of DAOs.

DAOs aim for more work autonomy through transparency, fewer managers, and more open governance processes. They've used blockchains to attract people in, pay them and allow them to make governance decisions.

DAOs are not yet autonomous enough. Data and processes live in opaque off-chain systems. The organizational structures are not conducive to productivity. Organizations anchored in smart contracts alone can't coordinate richer human activities. They are also unable to run parts of their operations in a crypto-native way. That’s because a crypto-native way didn't exist until now.

Autonolas gives developers the tools to develop software services that increase DAO autonomy.

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Essential Concepts: Autonomy

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1. Autonomous services on Autonolas are made of software agents. Agents are a bit like bots but unlike bots, they are social and can work together. With autonomous services, agents work together to deliver a service. There can be just a few agents in a service or many. Agents are open-source software.

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2. A different individual or company runs each agent. This makes autonomous services decentralized – no single agent can control the service. It also makes them robust, and capable of managing large amounts of capital. If one agent goes down, the rest can continue.

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3. Autonomous services run continuously. Agents can keep a service running indefinitely. This means services can spring into action when something happens off the blockchain. This is something smart contracts cannot do.

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4. Services pull in data from any source a developer chooses. For example
- an AWS storage bucket
- a crypto-native data source like IPFS, Ceramic or The Graph,
- or any other API.


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5. Autonomous services can do sophisticated computation, even machine learning.

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6. Services are reliable because agents must agree on what the service should do. A small number of agents cannot make the service do something bad. This is called consensus. A software library called Tendermint facilitates this consensus. Tendermint powers Cosmos, one of the biggest blockchain ecosystems.

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7. Once the agents have come to consensus about what the service should do, they can take action. This action could be submitting a transaction on Ethereum, Avalanche, a Cosmos chain, Solana, etc. Services can also take action on a traditional API. This means that services are not limited to acting in the world of Web3. Autonomous services can be a bridge between the traditional tech world and crypto.

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Autonomous Services: How they Work

As crypto attempts to “cross the chasm” into mainstream, real-world use-cases, a developer tooling problem continues to slow the pace of progress.  Developers are stuck with either:
- potent, but limited smart contracts or
- rich, but centralized web services

This leaves
- **end-users** with applications that are either complex to use or too opaque to trust
- **DAOs** with bloated operations and applications which are far too complex for the average user

Olas aims to solve this problem by giving developers a cutting-edge set of tools. Our tools allow developers to build with the potency of smart contracts and the flexibility of traditional web programming. This will enable new applications, unlocking Web3 through better user experiences and giving DAOs more structured and efficient operations.

Using our tools, developers can build autonomous services. The table below orients autonomous services in relation to the other types of software we see in crypto:

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As you can see, autonomous services combine the best of smart contracts, web services, and decentralized services. Learn more in [Autonomous Services: Comparison](https://www.olas.network/learn/education-articles/1).

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Autonomous services are made up of agents, each of which is run by a separate operator. They run continuously, can pull in data from any source, and can perform sophisticated processing like machine learning. They are secured by and take action via our on-chain protocol across different chains. They can also take action via off-chain APIs. Learn more in Autonomous Services: How they Work.

To build autonomous services, developers make use of our open-source framework, Open Autonomy. They register their code on our on-chain protocol. Some developers will develop full services, others just develop smaller pieces of code. Other developers can then combine those smaller bits of code into full, running services. This is helped by the protocol’s tokenomics. Learn more in Developer Experience.

DAOs can then consume these services, either to improve how they work or to deliver better products and services. Autonomous services can help DAOs:
- manage their funds and make decisions more efficiently
- build robust products, with far more power

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