Tech talk: Intents – what they are and why they’re important

Intents are about to usher in a new age for consumer crypto.
But unless you're a dev, you probably have no idea what they are or what they do.

Basically, intents let users state goals without specifying the exact steps to achieve them. The focus is on what the user wants to accomplish rather than how it should be executed, leaving the execution details to be handled by other parties or mechanisms in the system.

This is a shift from traditional transaction models, where users explicitly define every detail of a transaction (e.g., "send X amount of token A to address B").

As a user, if I'm swapping USDC for ETH, I care more about getting the most ETH possible than I care about the routes taken to get the ETH.
If I'm bridging from Ethereum Mainnet to Polygon PoS, I don't care what bridge is used (typically), I just want to use the bridge that has the lowest fees.

Intents means the user doesn't need to manually find the best exchange, calculate gas fees, or optimize the route – it just gets them the best possible outcome.

But how do they work?

Once an intent is declared, its processed by a network of solvers, fillers, or automated protocols that compete or collaborate to fulfill the intent efficiently. This means the end user gets best experience possible as all the complexity of blockchain transactions get abstract to achieve the optimal outcome.

The trade-off risk basically boils down to centralization & trust required. Users rely on solvers or third parties to execute intents fairly, so if there are bad actors, the system breaks. However, since the solutions are open sourced and still onchain, bad solvers get exposed rather quickly.

I wouldn't be surprised if reputation protocols start popping up to evaluate solvers and mitigate the bad-actor risk.

Intents make life easier. State your goal, and let the solvers work their magic.