A Comprehensive Overview of Intent-Centric Design and Project Progress
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A Comprehensive Overview of Intent-Centric Design and Project Progress
An intent-centric system provides a pathway to build a composable blockchain landscape that values user needs, efficiency, and transparency.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Adam Arreola
Translation: Tudd Cai & Henry Zhang
Introduction
At present, conducting transactions using blockchain solutions is overly complex for ordinary users. While users may know what they want to achieve, the complicated steps involved hinder their ability to fulfill their intent. Recently, a solution known as “intent-centric design” has drawn attention from the community. With intents, users can describe the outcome they desire rather than listing every step required to reach that goal. For example, if a user wants to receive a certain amount of Ethereum (ETH) and is willing to pay a certain amount of Bitcoin (BTC) in return, an intent-centric system could realize this exchange without requiring the user to specify each detailed cross-chain transaction step.
This article will explore the emerging field of intent-centric design and how it simplifies blockchain interactions. It will examine the lifecycle of intents, current implementations, and future applications. Beyond evaluating risks and challenges associated with intent-centric systems, the article will also analyze value flows, offering a comprehensive look at this rapidly evolving innovation reshaping the blockchain landscape.
Users Need Simpler Blockchain Interactions
The complexity of blockchain transactions creates an uneven playing field, where only the most sophisticated users stand to benefit. Market makers, high-frequency trading firms, and MEV searchers leverage advanced tools, systems, and algorithms to compete for maximum profit.
Intent-centric designs help level the playing field by simplifying how users conduct on-chain transactions while improving overall capital efficiency. For experienced participants, becoming a solver in an intent-centric system isn’t a major shift, as they already possess the necessary capabilities. Intent-centric systems offer improved UI, optimized Gas fees, better slippage handling, and enhanced composability.
By simply describing the desired outcome, users can effortlessly achieve their goals. They don’t need to understand or manage the underlying processes—only knowing the intended result is sufficient. This makes on-chain transactions more accessible to average participants. By providing a more intuitive interface, demand for blockchain systems increases, boosting overall liquidity and strengthening the ecosystem.
Delving deeper, intent-centric systems eliminate common pain points users face when dealing with Gas fees and slippage. In traditional blockchain transactions, users must pay Gas fees—an unfamiliar experience for newcomers accustomed to financial systems where such costs are abstracted. Account abstraction (introduced via ERC-4337) allows users to pay Gas fees with any ERC-20 token or enables protocols to sponsor Gas fees on behalf of users, making payments more flexible. This not only simplifies interaction but also enhances transaction control. Intent-centric systems can optimize Gas usage per transaction to achieve the desired outcome without forcing users to estimate Gas manually. Similarly, users often struggle with slippage estimation. Intent-centric systems can abstract and optimize slippage settings and execution timing to minimize price impact.
The Lifecycle of an Intent
While intents simplify the user experience, the technology behind them is complex. Multiple teams are building intent systems, but the general flow for intent-centric transactions follows these steps:
Image from Flashbots’ article “MEV Supply Chain: A Glimpse into the Industry’s Future”
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Off-Chain Submission: Users submit intents using their wallets.
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Entering the Mempool or Sending to Block Builders: Transactions can either enter the mempool or be sent directly to block builders to speed up execution. Whether to use a private mempool, public mempool, or bypass it entirely depends on the specific requirements of the intent. For instance, high-value swaps—especially those following the ERC-4337 standard—are often designed to completely bypass the public mempool to mitigate risks related to frontrunning and sandwich attacks. Instead, these transactions are sent directly from bundlers (often acting as block builders), ensuring faster and more secure processing.
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MEV Searchers Seek Opportunities: If transactions enter the mempool, MEV searchers scan the data to find optimal paths to fulfill intents and generate profit. They may choose to execute the trade themselves or sell the information to solvers. In most cases, MEV searchers act as both discoverers and solvers.
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Solvers Compete for Best Execution and Bundle Intents: Solvers act as market makers, competing to provide users with the best possible execution. Users naturally seek the cheapest and fastest solutions, and solvers who deliver earn fees. Solvers aggregate multiple intents into bundles, enabling execution within a single transaction, which are then forwarded to block builders for inclusion in upcoming blocks.
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Block Building and Validation: Block builders select bundles and package them into blocks, which are then sent to validators for inclusion on the blockchain. This stage represents the final assembly and validation of intents, ensuring correct execution and recording on-chain.
Existing Intent-Related Projects
Early forms of intent-centric design are already visible in existing applications and blockchains. Notable projects include:
Cow protocol + Cow swap
Cow protocol is a permissionless trading protocol that uses batch auctions to discover prices. By identifying opportunities for “coincidence of wants” (where two users each hold assets the other desires) and aggregating all available on-chain liquidity sources, Cow protocol maximizes liquidity. Unlike traditional trading protocols, Cow protocol solvers compete to offer users the best way to achieve their intents.
Cow swap is the front-end interface developed by the same team behind Cow protocol. As a decentralized exchange (DEX), it uses an intent-centric approach to help users find the lowest trading prices across all DEXs and aggregators. Additionally, Cow swap protects users from frontrunning and other harmful MEV. New features like Cow Hooks allow developers and advanced traders to write custom actions (such as trading, cross-chain transfers, staking, deposits, etc.) that execute before or after a trade—all within a single transaction—fully embodying the concept of intent.
Soul wallet
Soul wallet (one of NGC Ventures’ portfolio companies) is an upcoming user-friendly smart contract wallet leveraging account abstraction to enhance flexibility in Gas fee payment and sponsorship. It also supports social recovery—a secure mechanism for recovering crypto wallets without seed phrases. Most (e.g., 3 out of 5) trusted contacts (called “guardians”) can sign a recovery request to help restore access. In addition to social recovery, Soul wallet offers dual verification, allowing users to designate another wallet to approve transactions. Furthermore, Soul wallet abstracts underlying blockchain mechanisms to provide a seamless experience across Ethereum and its various Layer-2 solutions. Its One-Click Secure Swap feature leverages account abstraction to let users trade securely without worrying about token approvals or security risks.
UniswapX
Uniswap’s new product, UniswapX, addresses some of the most pressing challenges in DeFi through its intent-centric architecture.
One goal of UniswapX is solving fragmented liquidity. By aggregating diverse liquidity sources—such as Uniswap V2 and V3 pools across various asset pairs—UniswapX fulfills each user’s intent by finding assets and offering the best available prices. This is driven by third-party fillers who utilize liquidity from these pools or their own private liquidity to execute trades.
UniswapX further simplifies the user experience by having fillers cover Gas fees and include them in the quoted price. This eliminates the need for users to pay for failed transactions or hold native network tokens for Gas, streamlining the process even further.
UniswapX’s intent-centric design also helps defend against harmful MEV. For example, UniswapX reduces user losses by returning surplus value generated from orders back to users through price optimization. Additionally, its design protects users from arbitrageurs’ frontrunning and sandwich attacks by using Permit2 and Reactor Contract to align trades with user expectations and adjust non-compliant ones. UniswapX employs Dutch auction orders with time-dependent execution, encouraging competition among fillers and minimizing harmful MEV.
Looking ahead, UniswapX plans to launch additional features aligned with its intent-driven philosophy. Upcoming support for Uniswap V4 is noteworthy, but even more groundbreaking is the introduction of gasless cross-chain transactions. Users will be able to specify the assets they wish to receive on a target chain, avoiding the high fees and delays typically associated with cross-chain transfers.
Upcoming Intent Protocols
Anoma
Anoma (another NGC Ventures portfolio company) is a multi-purpose intent solution being developed by Heliax, enabling conditional transactions. The protocol aims to find optimal matches for user intents across different blockchains, ensuring completion based on specified conditions. This is achieved through a decentralized counterparty discovery mechanism, eliminating reliance on centralized third parties and reinforcing alignment with blockchain decentralization principles.
Through distributed solutions, Anoma enables solvers to compete in fulfilling user intents. Decentralized counterparty discovery fosters direct, trustless interactions between parties, while distributed solving leverages collective computational resources of solvers to efficiently realize user intents.
Additionally, Anoma’s multi-chain atomic settlement capability optimizes cross-chain digital asset transactions by compressing the entire process into a single transaction. This eliminates the hassle of manually executing a series of transactions, enhancing efficiency and overall user experience.
SUAVE, Backed by Flashbots
SUAVE (Single Unified Auction for Value Expression), developed by Flashbots (another NGC Ventures portfolio company), separates the roles of mempool and block builder from existing blockchains, offering highly specialized, decentralized plug-and-play alternatives. SUAVE aims to decentralize block building to reduce censorship and abuse of power within the blockchain ecosystem. As of the week ending August 25, 2023, the top five Ethereum block builders constructed approximately 90% of blocks, and around 48% of built blocks complied with OFAC sanctions. This raises concerns about centralized censorship, contradicting Ethereum’s foundational values of decentralization and resistance to censorship.
SUAVE is developing MEVM, a specialized version of EVM that enables developers to create MEV applications as smart contracts in a flexible, expressive programming environment. MEVM consists of three main components: the Universal Preference Environment (UPE)—a chain and mempool designed to express and aggregate preferences (intents) across different chains; the Optimal Execution Market (OEM), where solvers compete to provide the best execution for user-submitted intents; and a decentralized network of block builders that bundle encrypted user intents into blocks. This architecture simplifies building new MEV applications, encourages competitive intent resolution, and decentralizes the MEV supply chain.
SUAVE’s roadmap—divided into three phases: Centauri, Andromeda, and Helios—outlines its plan to reshape the MEV landscape through intent-centric design. During the Centauri phase, SUAVE introduces privacy-aware order flow auctions, allowing users to reclaim MEV generated by their transactions. In the Andromeda phase, SUAVE’s mainnet launch will enable users to express intents in SUAVE’s execution market, using SGX-based mechanisms to improve auction and block generation efficiency and privacy. The Helios phase will further decentralize the builder network and lay the groundwork for cross-domain MEV solutions. This intent-centric approach aligns with SUAVE’s mission to create a neutral home for users, searchers, builders, and validators across different blockchains.
Essential
Essential is developing intent-based infrastructure consisting of three products: a domain-specific language (DSL) for intent expression, a new intent-centric ERC standard for Ethereum and EVM, and a modular intent layer.
Currently, intents lack a standardized language for communication across blockchain systems. This could lead to misinterpretation of cross-chain intents, resulting in unintended outcomes like incorrect token swaps. Essential aims to solve this by creating a DSL for intents, enabling effective communication between systems and accurate interpretation by solvers.
According to the project team, Essential’s new ERC standard differs from ERC-4337 by assigning solvers the task of constructing valid transactions to satisfy user intents. As of August 25, 2023, the team has not shared further details about the proposed standard’s mechanism. This new solution will bring the benefits of intent-centric design to EVM-compatible blockchains, extending intents beyond Ethereum and creating a smoother experience for the broader blockchain ecosystem.
Finally, Essential aims to go further by creating a modular intent layer. Intents will be grouped into batches, and the modular intent layer will handle each new block as a batch of solved intents. Through a unified network of solvers, the modular intent layer will route all order flow, promoting transparent aggregation and ensuring access to as much information as possible for optimal execution. By fostering competition among solvers to deliver the best implementation of user intents, the modular intent layer will resist harmful MEV inherent in transaction-centric systems. Its modularity will allow integration into various ecosystems, enabling efficient cross-chain intent execution.
Future Potential Intent Applications
Numerous novel intent applications are under development and will soon become available to users:
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Conditional intents will enable operations to execute based on specific conditions, such as governance decisions or price thresholds.
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Continuous intents will allow repeated execution of operations through a single intent, enabling tasks like cost averaging or market making.
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Multi-step intents will enable a sequence of operations triggered by a single intent, with each completed step prompting the next in order.
Intent-centric designs can also integrate with other unique technologies like artificial intelligence. For example, combining intent-centric design with AI through account abstraction could offer users personalized and automated investment strategies. This would give every user a tailored blockchain experience, simplifying on-chain operations and opening doors to innovative applications and services. Additionally, AI could enhance solvers’ capabilities, helping them optimize trade execution and adapt more effectively to market conditions.
Another interesting potential application of intents is integration with real-world assets (RWA):
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If users want to convert traditional financial assets into tokenized blockchain assets, intents can bridge traditional finance and DeFi.
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Intents can be used in lending protocols where users express intent to use RWAs as collateral for DeFi loans. The protocol can tokenize the assets and use them as collateral without requiring users to specify every intermediate transaction.
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When users wish to earn returns from tokenized real estate, intents can help generate RWA yields. The protocol can invest in properties on behalf of users, earning income from rent or property appreciation.
Moreover, intent-centric design could extend beyond blockchain, transforming many aspects of daily life. For example:
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Intent-centric solutions could aggregate ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft, letting users express travel intentions and automatically finding the best ride option across platforms.
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When booking flights, intent-based systems could analyze user preferences—like travel dates, preferred airlines, and budget limits—to find and book the best flight options.
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With intent-centric design, users could find the best prices across multiple online stores, enhancing the online shopping experience.
Unlike traditional aggregators like Expedia that merely compile options, intent-centric systems interpret and address users’ underlying needs. While aggregators offer fixed choices based on predefined criteria, intent-centric systems actively fulfill each user’s unique preferences, dynamically adjusting to deliver more personalized solutions.
Risks and Challenges
Despite optimizing user experience, intents introduce several risks and challenges. First, intents rely on outsourcing decisions to third parties—solvers and block builders—requiring users to place a degree of trust in these entities and the systems connecting them. Users must guard against solvers and block builders abusing their power by charging excessive fees or prioritizing higher-paying intents. This could lead to inflated costs and inefficient systems. Similarly, if a small group controls most intent executions, the system risks centralized control over terms, pricing, and transaction censorship—potentially reducing competition, increasing user costs, and undermining decentralization. To prevent these issues from stifling innovation and degrading user experience, the crypto community must demand system designs that resist centralization and incentivize good behavior through transparency and cryptoeconomic mechanisms, fostering trustworthy, neutral ecosystems.
Users interacting with intent-centric systems also face risks of intent misinterpretation, potentially leading to unintended consequences due to incorrect execution. Developers should carefully build standardized communication formats (such as the universal domain-specific language Essential is developing) to mitigate this risk.
Finally, new security threats may emerge with intent-centric systems. Examples include accidentally granting unauthorized accounts access, data leaks exposing user privacy, and information leaks enabling frontrunning or market manipulation. Expecting solvers to behave fairly and ethically is unrealistic. Just as today’s MEV searchers exploit the system for profit, solvers in intent-centric systems will have incentives to cheat if profitable. Therefore, architects of these systems bear the responsibility to build frameworks that deter malicious behavior while promoting outcomes most beneficial to users.
Evolving Value Flows in Intent-Centric Systems
In intent-centric architectures, the interests of MEV searchers, solvers, block builders, and validators align with the fulfillment of user intents. Currently, value in intent-centric blockchain systems primarily flows to MEV searchers, solvers, and block builders, as they collaborate to deliver the best possible results for users and profit from the process.
Clearly, MEV searchers and solvers accumulate value. They are the first to see intents and identify the greatest value—whether in isolated intents or in groups of potential intents they can batch process. Solvers essentially act as market makers, competing to deliver the best transaction outcomes for users. Users want to fulfill their intents in the cheapest and fastest way possible. Providing optimal fulfillment is not just a service—it’s a profitable opportunity for these actors, incentivizing them to deliver the best results. Aligned incentives among users, MEV searchers, and solvers promote efficient, transparent system operation, fostering a competitive environment beneficial to all participants.
A significant portion of value also flows to block builders. Responsible for assembling and sequencing blocks, block builders play a crucial role in realizing user intents. As searchers, solvers, and users depend on block builders to execute intents, the builder’s role becomes especially valuable as the system grows in complexity.
However, as competition intensifies among searchers, solvers, and builders, value is expected to gradually redistribute to validators, stakers, and ultimately users—reflecting the evolving nature of the MEV ecosystem.
Validators and stakers will benefit significantly from intensified competition. As more solvers, searchers, and builders enter the MEV space, individual profit margins will shrink. As intent-centric architectures grow more transparent and participants adopt similar algorithms, Gas fees may eventually erode most of the profits solvers aim to capture. Importantly, value does not vanish—it shifts toward validators and stakers. This redistribution is vital for long-term network stability. Well-compensated validators increase the network’s security budget, while higher staking rewards encourage further participation, enhancing overall network security.
Additionally, as systems grow more efficient and competitive, users—the initiators of transactions—also benefit. Lower solver profits and reduced Gas fees enable users to execute intents at lower costs. Moreover, intensified competition among solvers to deliver optimal execution paths brings users better prices and faster transactions.
Conclusion
The shift toward intent-based paradigms is not merely a technical advancement but a fundamental reorientation of values. Project teams should focus on fulfilling user intents rather than managing complex operations. Intent-centric systems pave the way for a composable blockchain landscape that prioritizes user needs, efficiency, and transparency. Enhanced user experiences can accelerate adoption of crypto applications, bringing complex blockchain technology closer to everyday usability.
Research into intents offers a glimpse into the future: aligned interests among users, MEV searchers, solvers, and block builders can simplify blockchain interactions and drive the evolution of the entire crypto ecosystem. By placing the fulfillment of user intent at the center, developers are laying the foundation for a fairer, more user-centric blockchain world—one where value flows are intrinsically tied to the realization of human intent.
The rise of intent-centric design marks a transformative moment in blockchain history—a new era that transforms complex technological mazes into user-focused frontiers.
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