Exclusive Interview with dappOS Co-Founder: Navigating Industry Transformation—Where Should "VC-Backed Projects" Go?
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Exclusive Interview with dappOS Co-Founder: Navigating Industry Transformation—Where Should "VC-Backed Projects" Go?
Industry practitioners being in a state of confusion is not necessarily a bad thing—it can serve as a reshuffle, eliminating projects that merely hype concepts without delivering real value.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsInterviewee: Isabella Yang, Co-founder of dappOS
Interviewer: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
Cryptocurrency markets have continued to climb after the Fed's rate hikes, pushing previously hotly debated issues aside. But setting problems aside doesn't mean forgetting them. Unresolved issues often resurface repeatedly to trouble the entire industry. Therefore, continuous discussion remains meaningful. What exactly is behind the reluctance among VC-backed projects to support each other? The sharp post-launch price drops of high-FDV projects have sparked widespread community dissatisfaction. Where does the problem lie?
At its root, it's a series of endlessly repackaged stories and narratives reduced to mere listings, dumping, and gradual declines. No project genuinely considers how to solve user pain points. If this continues, long-term industry development and exploration will stall, creating significant negative effects—diminishing wealth effects, intensifying community hostility toward projects, and growing skepticism both within and outside the crypto space.
This time, Foresight News invited Isabella Yang, co-founder of dappOS, to discuss the concept of "intent" and her thoughts on industry development. Intent refers to a clearly defined outcome users are willing to pay for. The concept of intent is broader and more comprehensive than chain abstraction. Yang noted that the current state of confusion among industry practitioners may actually be a form of reshuffling—projects that only hype concepts without delivering real value will eventually be eliminated, while those with genuine users and solutions to real industry problems will survive and thrive in the long run.
Foresight News: Due to poor token performance of many well-funded projects in the first half of the year, many industry participants now view projects with multiple institutional funding rounds and high valuations negatively, even dismissing these 'VC projects' as 'VC pumps.' dappOS has also gone through multiple funding rounds. What’s your take on this industry sentiment?
Isabella Yang: dappOS is indeed a VC-backed project with multiple institutional investments. However, we don’t focus much on this label. Instead, we concentrate on user needs—iterating our product to attract real users and achieve longer-term, sustainable growth.
The reason retail investors dislike 'VC pumps' today is that many projects merely hype concepts, inflate metrics, rush to get listed, and then dump tokens—all without addressing actual user pain points. Some even manipulate or gaslight their users. This playbook might have worked before, but now users recognize these tactics and refuse to engage. Many industry players I’ve spoken with at events like 2049 feel lost precisely because this old model no longer works—they simply don’t know what to do next.
We’ve never supported the typical 'VC pump' approach. dappOS has always focused on meeting real Web3 user needs—lowering operational barriers and improving user experience. For Web3 to truly go mainstream, its products must become as easy to use as Web2—or even better. While the industry currently feels directionless, this uncertainty may actually serve as a shakeout. Projects that only chase hype and lack real value will be filtered out, while those serving real users and solving real problems will endure and move forward.
Foresight News: In the previous cycle, TPS was a major criticized issue—but it's been largely solved. Yet Web3 still hasn’t reached the masses, and user experience remains widely criticized. Why is that, and what’s the way forward?
Isabella Yang: While TPS issues have been addressed, user experience involves far more than just transaction speed. Even today, Web3 remains highly inaccessible to average and new users. This can be broken down into three main aspects:
1. Excessive knowledge required
Using Web3 products demands extensive foundational knowledge, especially around blockchain-specific technical details, which is difficult for ordinary users. For example, when withdrawing funds from an exchange to a wallet, users must select the correct chain—beginners may get confused or send funds to the wrong chain. Or, users sign a transaction but find it fails, requiring them to understand concepts like gas fees and network congestion. These technical hurdles make the onboarding experience unfriendly.
2. Lack of clear guidance leads to abandonment
Many Web3 products assume users already understand specialized terms like gas fees and slippage. But they often lack beginner-friendly tutorials or easy-to-understand documentation, causing users to get stuck during use—and eventually give up.
3. High cost and slow speed
Once new users start exploring, they often find Web3 operations slower and more expensive than their Web2 counterparts. During peak times, ETH gas fees can reach several dollars; Bitcoin miner fees can exceed $100. Swaps on some decentralized exchanges may incur slippage losses of several dollars. Some platforms require withdrawal waiting periods exceeding seven days. These inconveniences create negative impressions, leading users to abandon further exploration.
dappOS aims to make Web3 significantly easier to use so more people can seamlessly enter this world. Our goal is to simplify operations, reduce costs, and improve execution efficiency through a Web3 operating system. Users only need to specify their desired outcome and can quickly achieve it—without needing to understand complex blockchain logic step by step. This brings the user experience much closer to Web2, avoiding long waits or high fees in most cases.
Foresight News: In your view, what exactly is 'intent'? Could you explain using examples? I've also noticed another emerging concept—'chain abstraction.' Are they similar?
Isabella Yang: Intent primarily refers to the result a user wants to achieve—the clear outcome they're willing to pay for. Related to this is the idea of being 'intent-centric,' meaning designing Web3 product interactions so users can directly express their intent without worrying about intermediate execution steps.
Here’s an analogy: Imagine I’m already sitting in my car. My intent is simply where I want to go. The traditional interaction would require me to find navigation, shift gears, press accelerator and brake pedals, steer the wheel—doing everything myself. An intent-centric interaction is like hiring a driver: I tell them my destination, and they drive me there. I don’t need to worry about which roads they take or how they operate the vehicle.
As for chain abstraction, it's an adjective describing features where users don’t need to think about chain-specific details like gas or cross-chain transfers. So we see terms like chain-abstracted chains, accounts, or DApps—anything that hides such complexity qualifies. An intent-centric product naturally includes chain abstraction since it shields users from chain-level details. But intent-centric design goes beyond just hiding chain complexities—it also abstracts non-chain usage details and focuses on minimizing user costs.
In short, the concept of intent is broader and more comprehensive—it encompasses chain abstraction as one of its features.
Foresight News: dappOS is a great name—simple, memorable, and meaningful. The 'OS' suffix suggests the ambition to become an operating system for all kinds of dApps. Could you introduce the architecture and operational logic of the dappOS intent network?
Isabella Yang: Exactly. dappOS’s vision is to become the Windows operating system of Web3.
Our core product today is the intent OS—an intent-based operating system that allows users to manage assets and easily interact with various dApps across different chains and scenarios. Behind intent OS lies the intent execution network. Every task a user initiates within intent OS is converted into an intent and submitted to this network. Specialized service providers within the intent execution network then execute the user’s task—users don’t need to care about execution details. If a provider fails to complete the task successfully, the user receives compensation from the provider’s staked funds.
This way, we enable simple and efficient interaction between users and Web3 applications while ensuring security. This, to us, is what a true Web3 operating system should do. We’re continuously expanding our ecosystem and optimizing our product to deliver the best possible user experience.
Foresight News: I came across a vivid analogy comparing the user experience of dappOS’s newly launched intent assets to Alipay’s 'Yu’ebao'—smooth and seamless. So, what exactly are intent assets, and what are their real advantages?
Isabella Yang: dappOS intent assets allow users to earn yield while enabling seamless on-chain usage just like native assets—all under a decentralized, non-custodial framework. For example, if a user holds 1,000 intentUSD, they can directly use it to open a futures contract on GMX—no need for redemption, bridging, or other cumbersome processes required by other yield-bearing assets. When not in use, the user still earns over 10% annualized yield on their intentUSD.
You mentioned Yu’ebao earlier. The advantage of intent assets over existing industry offerings is similar to how Yu’ebao improved upon traditional money market funds. While regular funds offer instant returns, the funds inside cannot be used directly for spending or transfers—you must first redeem them, which may involve waiting periods and additional transfer steps. Money in Yu’ebao, however, earns fund-level yields while remaining instantly spendable or transferable. Some so-called “Yu’ebao-like” products in crypto are more like traditional funds—you must redeem before using. Intent assets, by contrast, are like the real Yu’ebao: they function as regular assets usable directly on-chain, just like spending from a bank account via Alipay.
Additionally, intent assets are fundamentally decentralized and non-custodial. Users can themselves mint or redeem through on-chain contracts—no permission from dappOS needed. The underlying yield-generating assets behind intent assets are fully transparent on-chain, unlike some centralized financial products where institutions control operations behind closed doors.
Foresight News: How do you ensure reliability in liquidity and security for intent assets? What role does the intent execution network play?
Isabella Yang: The security of intent assets is guaranteed by decentralized on-chain smart contracts. First, intent assets are backed by a basket of underlying assets and essentially act as withdrawal receipts. Users can independently call the contract to mint or redeem—no approval from dappOS required. This ensures free entry and exit, eliminating fears of being blocked from redemption. It also means that even if one underlying yield asset fails, the impact on users is relatively limited. Currently, our underlying assets are large-scale projects listed on Binance with TVL exceeding $1 billion—such as Pendle, Bouncebit, and ethfi.
The ability to use intent assets anytime, anywhere is powered by the dappOS intent execution network. When you redeem or use intent assets, you’re submitting a request to the intent execution network, which service providers fulfill. These professional providers often have superior execution methods—for instance, securing low-cost loans to front-run redemption payouts, aggregating sufficient yield-bearing assets, and redeeming in bulk as institutional clients to avoid slippage caused by low DEX liquidity. The dappOS intent execution network effectively empowers everyday users with institutional-grade execution capabilities, delivering a smooth and reliable intent asset experience.
Foresight News: How will your team maintain dappOS’s long-term competitiveness?
Isabella Yang: First, dappOS entered the intent space through technological innovation, and technical advantage will remain one of our key long-term strengths. Previous research and discussions around intent protocols often require service providers to break down execution into explicit on-chain steps. But this limits room for optimization—providers can’t offer much beyond what users could do themselves, resulting in little to no advantage in speed or cost compared to self-execution, sometimes even worse. Such approaches fail to truly meet user needs.
dappOS’s intent execution network takes an innovative architectural approach—we don’t decompose the execution process. We only care about the final outcome the user wants. This gives service providers greater flexibility in designing solutions, fostering competition that drives down execution costs and increases speed for users.
Beyond technology, dappOS benefits from first-mover advantage, building scale and network effects. Both the intent execution network and the Web3 operating system thrive on scale. As adoption grows, more ecosystem partners and service providers join, enabling users to perform any on-chain action they desire—with faster speeds and lower costs. This creates a positive feedback loop, incentivizing even more projects to collaborate with us.
While other intent-focused projects have recently raised funding, most remain conceptual with no product yet live. We, however, have already launched our product and built a meaningful ecosystem footprint. Over time, this gap will only widen.
Foresight News: AI is another hot topic in the industry. How do you see the relationship between AI and dappOS?
Isabella Yang: Service providers on dappOS can be individuals, institutions, bots following predefined rules, or even AI agents.
In fact, the dappOS intent execution network architecture complements AI agents perfectly. A major barrier to AI adoption today is users’ inability to understand AI behavior—leading to distrust and fear of loss. But dappOS’s security model is outcome-based, not process-based. If an AI agent fails to achieve the user’s intent and causes a loss, the user receives pre-defined compensation. This allows users to harness AI’s power without fearing downside risk.
As AI becomes more capable, the performance gap between AI-driven service nodes and manual user operations will grow dramatically—eventually making manual interaction obsolete and accelerating migration to the dappOS intent execution network.
Therefore, dappOS greatly facilitates AI integration into Web3—and will also benefit significantly from advances in AI technology.
Foresight News: Can you share your future roadmap?
Isabella Yang: Our future plans focus on two core directions:
First, proactively optimize and expand our product suite to more comprehensively and deeply meet user needs. We’ll identify underserved market demands and launch revolutionary core products based on the intent execution network—such as “intent assets.” This will gradually unlock the full technical potential of dappOS’s intent infrastructure and fundamentally transform user experience.
Second, strategically expand ecosystem partnerships and user base to build strong scale and network effects. We’ll continue attracting top-tier projects into our ecosystem while rapidly growing our user base, positioning our intent operating system as an indispensable foundation in the Web3 world—like “Windows for Web3”—so essential that every user relies on it daily, experiencing unmatched convenience and efficiency.
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