Why True Ownership Demands Executable Intent, Not Just Signatures

Signing a transaction grants a contract unlimited authority over specific assets. This creates systemic risk, as seen in ~$3B+ annual MEV extraction and countless approval exploits.\n- User Burden: Must understand gas, slippage, and complex execution paths.\n- Security Risk: Blind signing enables sandwich attacks and wallet drainers.

Users submit a signed statement of outcome (e.g., 'Swap X ETH for at least Y USDC'). A network of solvers (like in CowSwap, UniswapX) competes to fulfill it optimally.\n- User Benefit: Guarantees outcome, abstracts gas, and finds best price across venues.\n- System Benefit: Turns toxic MEV into a public good via solver competition.

Intent-centric design inverts the stack. The user's chain is irrelevant; a solver network (Across, Anoma, Essential) becomes the execution layer. This requires new infrastructure: intent mempools, solver markets, and verification oracles.\n- Key Benefit: Enables cross-chain atomicity without canonical bridges.\n- Key Challenge: Requires robust solver decentralization and censorship resistance.

These are the production vanguards. They don't execute user transactions; they broadcast intents to a permissionless network of fillers. UniswapX abstracts cross-chain swaps, while CowSwap uses batch auctions for MEV protection.\n- Proven Scale: Billions in volume processed via intents.\n- Critical Insight: Liquidity becomes a solver input, not a user concern.

Today, liquidity is trapped in individual DEX pools and chains. A user's intent to get the best rate requires manual aggregation across Uniswap, Curve, 1inch, and 10+ L2s.\n- Inefficiency: Leaves significant value on the table.\n- Friction: Forces users to become full-time execution analysts.

The endgame is a single intent for any DeFi action, fulfilled by a global solver network accessing all liquidity sources. Projects like Anoma and Essential are building the coordination layer. LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Tokens (OFTs) hint at this composable future.\n- Ultimate Benefit: One-click access to the sum of all blockchain liquidity.\n- Key Metric: Solver competition drives efficiency to theoretical limits.

Your intent to swap is broadcast, but your agency ends at the signature. A searcher front-runs your trade, manipulating the price you pay and stealing your value.

• Cost: Extracts ~$1B+ annually from users.
• Impact: User gets a worse price than their signed intent allowed.

Shift agency from signing a specific transaction to declaring a desired outcome. A solver network competes to fulfill it optimally.

• Mechanism: User signs an intent, not a tx. Solvers like CowSwap or Across execute.
• Result: MEV is internalized as user savings, not extracted.

Agency is now delegated to a network of solvers. This creates a new attack surface: cartel formation and censorship.

• Threat: Dominant solvers (e.g., in UniswapX) can collude to offer worse prices.
• Vector: The solver auction becomes a single point of failure.

Intents spanning chains (via LayerZero, Axelar) reintroduce trusted intermediaries for execution. Your agency is only as strong as the relayer's honesty.

• Failure Mode: A malicious or compromised relayer can censor or mishandle your cross-chain intent.
• Example: A bridge intent relies on an off-chain Wormhole guardian network.

Replace trusted relayers with verifiable proofs. The user's agency is preserved because execution can be cryptographically verified after the fact.

• Tech Stack: ZK-proofs (like in Aztec) or validity proofs for bridging.
• Outcome: Users can trust the state transition, not the actor.

If the intent specification language is ambiguous or incomplete, solvers can legally fulfill your request in a suboptimal way you didn't foresee.

• Attack: 'Best price' intent fulfilled on a low-liquidity, manipulated pool.
• Need: A formal, unambiguous domain-specific language (DSL) for intents.

Signing a transaction is binary and context-blind. Users delegate full control, enabling MEV extraction and rug pulls. This is the root cause of ~$1B+ in annual MEV losses and countless approval exploits.

• Vulnerability: Single signature can drain entire wallet.
• Inefficiency: Requires manual, per-transaction interaction.

Frameworks like UniswapX and CowSwap's CoW Orders allow users to declare a desired outcome (e.g., 'get the best price for X token'). Execution is delegated to a competitive solver network.

• User Sovereignty: Define rules, not raw transactions.
• Efficiency Gains: Solvers compete, improving price and reducing gas costs by ~20-50%.

A new stack is emerging to compose, route, and settle intents. This includes intent expression languages, solver networks like Across, and shared settlement layers.

• Composability: Intents become portable assets across dApps.
• Market Structure: Creates a $10B+ TAM for intent matching and execution.

While intent expression is fragmented, settlement is a natural monopoly. Protocols that become the canonical layer for intent resolution—like Anoma or specialized L2s—capture the fundamental value.

• Moats: Network effects of solvers and users.
• Revenue: Fees on matched and settled intents.

The winning UX doesn't ask for signatures; it asks for goals. Build applications where the user's 'transaction' is a declarative statement, with execution handled by a dedicated, competitive backend.

• Product Shift: From 'Connect Wallet & Sign' to 'State Your Goal'.
• Tech Stack: Integrate intent SDKs from UniswapX, CowSwap, or Across.

Delegating execution to a solver network creates a new centralization vector. If a few solvers (e.g., via LayerZero or Across) dominate, they become the new rent-extracting intermediaries.

• Mitigation: Requires robust solver decentralization and cryptographic proofs of optimal execution.
• Watch Metric: Gini coefficient of solver market share.