{"id":33596,"date":"2025-06-25T10:32:39","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T10:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=33596"},"modified":"2025-06-25T10:32:39","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T10:32:39","slug":"from-chaos-to-composability-ensos-connor-howe-on-rethinking-web3-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=33596","title":{"rendered":"From Chaos to Composability: Enso\u2019s Connor Howe on Rethinking Web3 Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Few startup journeys begin with a vampire attack, but for Connor Howe, CEO and co-founder of Enso, that chaos became a proving ground.<\/p>\n

What had started as a social DeFi platform quickly evolved through hard-won lessons into something that\u2019s currently far more ambitious \u2013 a unified intent engine for Web3, a DeFi super app, if you will.<\/p>\n

In this interview, Howe reflects on the pivots, the pain points, and the revelations that led to Enso\u2019s vision of radically simplifying on-chain development. He shares how intent-based design shifts developer thinking, what it means to build with abstraction in mind, and why Enso\u2019s recent $3B milestone is just the beginning.<\/p>\n

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From vampire attacks to intent engines \u2014 Enso\u2019s journey has evolved rapidly. Looking back, what was the pivotal moment when you realized shortcuts and intent-based development weren\u2019t just features, but the foundation for a whole new kind of infrastructure?<\/b><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been through two pivots to get to where we are and have experienced the hurdles of building in Web3 firsthand. We started with the vampire attack and a social trading product, where we integrated 15 DeFi protocols. That alone took months and over $500k in audits. Then we pivoted to a DeFi super app, which required even more protocol support. But in that process, we discovered a fast and secure way to integrate any protocol and standardized common onchain actions across smart contracts. When launching the DeFi super app, we supported 50+ protocols. Other builders noticed and started asking how we did it. So we spun up an API, and in the first week, it saw $11M in volume.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was the moment it clicked. Shortcuts aren\u2019t just a feature, but the foundation. We don\u2019t have too many apps in Web3, we have too few. And it\u2019s because building them is too hard. We lived through that pain, and built Enso to fix it. Not just for us, but for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the most persistent issues in Web3 is fragmentation across chains and protocols. Enso proposes a unification layer through intents, but what are the biggest architectural or governance challenges in maintaining that kind of composability across a decentralized landscape?<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the biggest architectural challenges is that every blockchain speaks a different \u201clanguage\u201d, i.e. different speeds, block sizes, and quirks in how contracts are written, deployed and executed. Composability becomes a nightmare when you\u2019re a developer trying to stitch together these fundamentally different systems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Enso acts as a unification layer that approaches this from the bottom up. Rather than forcing developers to think in terms of chain-specific implementations, Enso abstracts that complexity away. To make this scalable, the Enso network encompasses the full stack for reading data and executing onchain. It\u2019s a decentralized, open network where developers and AI agents can contribute data feeds and smart contract information, enabling fast, reliable execution across an ever-growing number of blockchains.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of intent-driven development sounds intuitive, even obvious, once you hear it \u2014 but it challenges decades of imperative software thinking. What do you think needs to shift in developer mindsets (especially from Web2) for shortcut engines to feel natural?<\/b><\/p>\n

Developers need to shift from thinking in actions to thinking in outcomes. In Web2 and traditional Web3 development, the focus is on defining every step manually. But in an intent-driven model, you define what you want, not how to get there, and let the engine handle finding the best route. That requires trust in orchestration layers, but more importantly, a philosophical shift: abstraction is not a loss of control, it\u2019s a gain in efficiency. Web2 devs already work with high-level APIs and compilers. Blockchain shortcuts are just the next evolution in Web3: reliable, proven paths of execution that fulfill intent requests.<\/span><\/p>\n

Graphers and Action Providers form the core of how Enso generates and optimizes on-chain solutions. What have you learned from watching these roles in action?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The Enso network is powered by three core participants:<\/span><\/p>\n