The problem Raid solves

We want to build the web3 automation stack

Thesis:

• Web3 is in it's static phase. Contracts are not dynamic. You call a contract, it performs an action and it stops. This is similar to the read-only version of web2. Web2 became dynamic with the advent of APIs and webhooks. Apps could call each other, share events and trigger actions. This is missing in web3.
• Since this is missing in web3, the potential usecases of smart contracts are restricted. If you want to perform an on-chain action based on a trigger/event, it's extremely hard and expensive right now.
• This is a larger infrastructure problem but there are hybrid combinations of on-chain/off-chain technologies that can be used to start working towards a solution.

Product:

• Our core product is a trigger-based automation framework. dApps/developers can come to Raid, define a trigger, define an on-chain action and link them together. Simplest way to explain this is using some examples.

  • Let's say you're a payroll tool. You need to execute 100 transactions every Friday on the Ethereum mainnet. Depending on the gas prices, this costs you/your users a lot of money. Here's how you can save money with Raid:

    • You build/pick a trigger that figures out the lowest average gas price for the past three days.
    • You define an action that monitors the trigger and executes your transactions whenever the gas price is the lowest average.
    • You deploy this automation securely on Raid!

  • Let's say you're a DeFi dApp and you're covering gas for your users. You use a Relayer to pay for gas and you manually fill gas in the Relayer. There's no way you can monitor the Relayer and it keeps running out of money (your transactions start failing) and you need to refill the Relayer.

    • You build a trigger the monitors your Relayer for when it's balance dips below a defined threshold.
    • You build an action that automatically loads money into the Relayer when the trigger is called and deploy it on raid

Challenges I ran into

The most interesting hurdle to solve was to make cross-chain interactions smooth. We're currently onboarding our first set of partners to start using Raid. We have software ready for both EVM and Solana and our design makes it incredibly easy to support more chains in the future.