How it works
A new standard for automated blockchain operations
Introduction
Imagine building blockchain-powered applications without ever worrying about smart contract deployment, oracle integrations, RPC reliability, gas management, or transaction timing. With Mimic Protocol, developers write simple, expressive logic in code—and the network handles everything else. No onchain boilerplate, no custom automation flows, no operational overhead.
Mimic has evolved into a programmable execution layer that lets builders define what should happen onchain and when, without touching Solidity or maintaining infrastructure. Through years of iteration and hands-on experience with the limitations of trustless environments, Mimic is designed from the ground up to eliminate the friction of traditional blockchain development.
Instead of orchestrating transactions, monitoring conditions, or wiring together oracles and relayers, developers express intent-level behavior while Mimic provides the scheduling, data sourcing, and secure execution. Complex multi-step flows become unified, reliable automations—with built-in task planning, decentralized data access, and fail-safe guarantees.
The result is a new way to build onchain logic for apps, agents, and protocols: programmable, composable, and fully managed by the network, so you can focus on your application—not the machinery behind it.
Key Takeaways
Automation: Simplify repetitive tasks, enforce conditional logic, and handle cross-chain operations without manual intervention.
Trustless and Deterministic: Built on cryptographic proofs and a network of independent actors (oracles, relayers, and solvers), so you don’t have to trust any single party.
Flexible: Define exactly what you need—data sources, triggers, conditions—then pay only for executions that happen, not for ongoing maintenance.
Easy-to-use: Write code in a familiar environment, compile it to a deterministic form, and deploy it. The protocol’s tooling and documentation make integration straightforward, even for complex logic.
How does it work?
Mimic is built in three layers, each focusing on a distinct part of the automation pipeline, ensuring transparency, reliability, and modularity:
Planning Layer
Here, you define tasks—logical units of automation. A task describes what data is needed, how to interpret it, and what conditions must be met to create intents. An intent represents an actionable instruction on the blockchain.
Oracles supply trustworthy signed data (e.g., block info, contract states, or prices), while relayers execute your defined logic to decide whether intents should be generated.
Execution Layer
Once intents are created, it’s handled by a coordination engine called Axia.
Axia broadcasts the intent to a network of solvers that compete to fulfill it under optimal conditions (lowest fees, fastest execution, highest reliability). The best solver is chosen to carry out the action on-chain, ensuring a competitive and cost-efficient environment.
Security Layer
Finally, the Settler contracts enforce that everything was done correctly. It verifies the solver’s actions, ensures that user-defined restrictions are respected, and finalizes the transaction outcome.
This layer ensures no half-finished states, no replay attacks, and no deviation from the intended behavior.
A developer’s perspective: Defining a task
You write logic that runs whenever conditions are met. The following snippet shows a hypothetical scenario: checking if the token balance of an account has reached a certain threshold in order to transfer tokens or not.
What’s happening here?
Your code runs inside the Planning Layer.
It fetches data from oracles (prices and blockchain state) and checks a condition.
If the condition holds, it creates an intent to perform a transfer, effectively handing off to the Execution Layer.
Later, the solvers network picks this up, executes the best route, and the Settler finalizes the transaction on-chain.
Manifest configuration
Your code is paired with a manifest file YAML defining:
Task descriptive metadata
Which trigger alternative will be used for the task.
External parameters like the threshold (which can be adjusted without changing code).
Publishing your task
Once you’re happy with your logic and configuration, you can compile it into a WebAssembly module and deploy it to the network.
# Compile the task
mimic compile
# Deploy the task
mimic deploy --key YOUR_DEPLOYMENT_KEYBy deploying, you announce your task is ready to be tracked by relayers, who will start executing it automatically under the conditions you set. For more details on the CLI commands, see the CLI documentation.
Next steps
Begin experimenting by following our step-by-step guides to write, compile, and deploy a basic task. This hands-on experience will help you understand the workflow, get comfortable with the tooling, and prepare you for building more complex, production-grade automations.
Dive into additional use cases and real-world scenarios to spark ideas and discover how you can leverage Mimic for your specific needs. From automated contract maintenance to cross-chain data orchestration, exploring more examples will inspire you to craft tailored automation strategies.
For a comprehensive understanding of the underlying architecture, trust models, consensus mechanisms, and incentive structures that power Mimic, start with the whitepaper. It provides the technical depth and formal proofs to help you fully grasp how the protocol works and why it’s secure.
Explore the Mimic team’s roadmap to see how the protocol will evolve over time. The roadmap provides insight into upcoming features, iterative enhancements, and the pragmatic steps planned to broaden Mimic’s capabilities. Stay informed and help shape the future of on-chain automation.
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