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:

As you can see, autonomous services combine the best of smart contracts, web services, and decentralized services. Learn more in Autonomous Services: Comparison.

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