The Future of On-Chain Checkouts: Guaranteed Price Execution

Replaces on-chain AMM swaps with off-chain order flow auction. It outsources routing to a network of fillers competing for MEV, guaranteeing the best price.

• Guarantees: No slippage, no gas fees for failed transactions.
• Architecture: Dutch auction system that settles on-chain only after optimal routing is found.
• Scale: Processes $10B+ in volume, abstracting complexity from end-users.

Users and dApps must manually bridge assets and swap across chains, exposing them to execution risk, slippage, and complex multi-step transactions.

• Cost: Bridging + swapping can incur >5% total slippage and multiple gas fees.
• Risk: Front-running, failed tx due to price movement, and liquidity fragmentation across 50+ L2s.
• Friction: UX is a deal-breaker for mainstream adoption.

Uses a unified liquidity pool and a competitive relayer network to fulfill cross-chain intents with guaranteed execution and speed.

• Mechanism: Users post intents; relayers fulfill instantly and are later reimbursed from a single liquidity pool via a slow bridge.
• Guarantee: Fixed input amount for a guaranteed output, with ~2-5 min finality.
• Efficiency: ~90% cheaper than canonical bridges by optimizing capital efficiency.

Provides the foundational infrastructure for intent-based systems, separating declaration (intent) from execution (solver competition).

• Architecture: A decentralized network of solvers competes to fulfill complex intents (e.g., "Swap X for Y across chains").
• Flexibility: Enables applications like CowSwap and UniswapX to abstract execution.
• Future: The base layer for a $100B+ intent economy, moving beyond simple swaps.

Users state what they want (e.g., "Get 1 ETH on Arbitrum for 1800 USDC on Base"), not how to do it. A decentralized solver network handles the complexity.

• Guarantee: Atomic success or revert; users get their outcome or pay nothing.
• Efficiency: Solvers exploit MEV for user benefit, creating a negative cost execution.
• Abstraction: Removes the need for users to understand bridges, DEXs, or gas tokens.

Push the intent paradigm to its logical conclusion: a fully intent-centric blockchain (Anoma) and a decentralized block builder for all chains (SUAVE).

• Anoma: Every transaction is an intent, with a native coordination layer for multi-chain atomic settlement.
• SUAVE: A universal mempool and block builder that privatizes and optimally executes intents chain-agnostically.
• Vision: Complete separation of concerns, breaking the monolithic transaction stack.

The core mechanism relies on a competitive network of solvers. If a few entities (e.g., large MEV searchers) collude, they can extract value by submitting minimally-improving bids, destroying the user's price guarantee. This turns a user-centric system into a rent-seeking cartel.

• Risk: Centralization of solver power (>60% market share) creates systemic fragility.
• Mitigation: Requires cryptoeconomic slashing, permissionless entry, and verifiable solver competition proofs.

Guaranteed execution systems like UniswapX and Across depend on deep, aggregated liquidity from DEXs and bridges. If major liquidity providers (LPs) withdraw due to unfavorable economics or perceived risk, the system's ability to fulfill guarantees collapses.

• Risk: TVL flight triggers higher slippage, breaking price promises.
• Example: A >30% TVL drop in a core source pool (e.g., a Uniswap V3 ETH/USDC pool) can cripple execution for large orders.

Final settlement and guarantee validation often depend on off-chain price oracles (e.g., for cross-chain intent fulfillment). A manipulated price feed at the moment of settlement allows a malicious actor to claim guarantees fraudulently, draining the protocol's insurance fund.

• Attack Vector: Flash loan to skew a DEX pool price, then trigger settlement.
• Defense: Requires decentralized oracle networks (Chainlink, Pyth) with robust attestation periods, creating a ~2-5 second latency penalty versus pure on-chain resolution.

By acting as a meta-aggregator and not a direct liquidity taker, these systems may seek regulatory ambiguity. A decisive ruling (e.g., classifying guaranteed orders as securities or requiring broker-dealer licenses) could force a costly architectural pivot or shutdown.

• Precedent: Howey Test scrutiny on promised returns (the 'guarantee').
• Impact: Forces protocols like CoW Swap and 1inch Fusion to implement KYC/AML for solvers, killing permissionless innovation.

To backstop failed transactions or price deviations, protocols must maintain over-collateralized insurance pools (e.g., in stablecoins). These are capital-inefficient and must generate yield to offset dilution. In a bear market or during high volatility, the fund can be depleted faster than it accrues fees.

• Capital Lockup: $10M+ TVL sitting idle, competing for yield.
• Failure Mode: A black swan price move across multiple chains triggers simultaneous claims, bankrupting the fund and destroying user trust permanently.

Guaranteed execution depends on a fragile stack: specific rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism), bridges (LayerZero, Axelar), and oracles. A critical failure or upgrade in any underlying layer (e.g., a sequencer outage) breaks the cross-chain guarantee, leaving users in limbo. The protocol inherits the weakest link's risk.

• Dependency: ~5+ external protocols per cross-chain intent.
• Real Example: A Solana validator outage would freeze any intent routing through Jito bundles, regardless of the guarantee system's health.

Traditional swaps are a promise to try, not a guarantee. Users submit a transaction and pray the price doesn't move before inclusion, leading to slippage, frontrunning, and failed transactions. This is the core UX failure of DeFi.

• ~$1B+ in annual MEV extracted from user slippage.
• >15% of DEX trades fail during high volatility.
• Creates a hostile environment for mainstream adoption.

Users declare a desired outcome (e.g., 'I want X token for Y price'), not a specific transaction. A competitive network of solvers (like in CowSwap, UniswapX) races to fulfill it, guaranteeing the result or refunding.

• Guaranteed price or revert eliminates user-side risk.
• Solver competition drives execution efficiency, capturing MEV for user benefit.
• Abstracts gas, bridging, and multi-hop routing into a single signature.

For a true checkout, the guarantee must be atomic across chains. This requires generalized intent settlement layers that coordinate solvers, liquidity, and verification.

• Across, Socket, Chainlink CCIP are building cross-chain intent layers.
• LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Tokens (OFT) enable native asset movement.
• Anoma, SUAVE are researching intent-centric architectures.

Guaranteed execution flips the MEV economic model. Value extraction shifts from adversarial searchers to permissioned solvers who compete to give the best price to the user.

• Fee-for-Service model for solvers, paid from saved slippage.
• Protocols become marketplaces for execution quality.
• Enables novel primitives like limit orders and TWAPs natively on-chain.

Blockchain design moves from managing state transitions to verifying fulfillment of declared outcomes. This requires new verification layers, reputation systems for solvers, and intent expression standards.

• ERC-4337 Account Abstraction is a prerequisite for signature-less intents.
• Solver reputation becomes critical capital (see CowSwap's coincidence of wants).
• ZK-proofs will be used to privately prove fulfillment conditions.

The final checkout is a single click that abstracts the entire crypto stack. The user gets a guaranteed receipt; the protocol handles the rest via a decentralized backend of solvers, oracles, and bridges.

• Fiat on-ramps integrate directly into intent flows.
• Wallets become intent signers, not transaction builders.
• Mass adoption hinges on this abstraction layer being bulletproof.