Opinion by: Alex Shevchenko, co-founder of Aurora
Attempt to make a easy buy with crypto at present. You might be pressured to wrangle pockets extensions, decipher lengthy hexadecimal addresses, choose networks, signal transactions, calculate unpredictable gasoline charges and repeat all of those as a result of your transactions get caught or fail.
Typically, you additionally must bridge belongings throughout chains. It is a gauntlet that solely a technically savvy consumer can full.
In the meantime, in conventional finance, Apple Pay completes a transaction in a single faucet.
That is the bar. In crypto, the consumer expertise stays caught within the dial-up period.
An easier paradigm: Simply say what you need
Fairly than forcing customers to be taught the mechanics of swaps, bridges and signing flows, intent-based structure shifts the psychological mannequin totally. Intents let customers categorical their objectives merely, “I wish to pay $5 for this espresso,” and let the system work out the remaining.
The time period “intents” refers broadly to outcome-driven interactions throughout crypto — not simply atomic crosschain swaps, however a foundational paradigm for simplifying all consumer actions.
Beneath the hood, intents are fulfilled by high-speed, trust-minimized infrastructure the place trades are executed by designated actors, usually market makers, fairly than conventional solver networks.
Customers provoke outcome-driven requests, and the back-end handles routing, execution and settlement with out exposing wallets, gasoline charges, or chain complexity. The result’s a seamless, intent-driven expertise that hides infrastructure whereas preserving decentralized ensures.
Crypto turns into outcome-driven, not action-driven.
Break away from the pockets mould
The wallet-centric paradigm has lengthy outlined how customers work together with crypto, and it additionally constrained it.
A brand new mannequin that removes the necessity for wallets totally is already rising. Passkey-based techniques now permit customers to authenticate with acquainted instruments like Face ID or Contact ID, eliminating seed phrases, personal key administration and passwords.
Extra importantly, an intent-based strategy is chain-agnostic. Customers do not must be onboarded to a particular blockchain to transact or take part. Sending crypto turns into so simple as sharing a signed hyperlink. No app installs, no pockets setup.
This intuitive, transportable interplay is finally key to driving mainstream adoption.
Replicate acquainted monetary experiences
Centralized exchanges like Binance conquered the market as a result of they prioritized consumer expertise. Trendy intent-based infrastructure follows that acquainted route of deposit, commerce and withdrawal move with comparable settlement speeds however with essential variations.
Latest: Intent-based options can repair DeFi liquidity
With intents, sensible contracts function the custody and settlement layers, sustaining safe onchain ledgers of consumer balances, and most crucially, publicly out there proof-of-reserves. Extremely-low charges of scalable blockchains make decentralized buying and selling sensible for the primary time.
This structure can be not only for merchants — it is constructed to supply Web2-style cost rails however with scalable, sharded, onchain infrastructure to be used circumstances starting from DeFi swaps to reserving flights.
Intents and AI are a pure interface
The place intents are the brand new execution layer, AI assistants turn out to be the brand new interface layer.
Contemplate telling your assistant, “Ship $50 in BTC to my brother,” or “Stake my SOL for the perfect yield.” You are not managing wallets, signing transactions or worrying about MEV — you are expressing a purpose. The assistant parses your request, the solver community fulfills it by way of intents, and the result’s seamless.
Collectively, AI and intents reimagine crypto UX from the bottom up, lastly matching (and exceeding) the magnificence of conventional finance whereas sustaining the core tenets of decentralization.
Intents are particularly crucial infrastructure for an more and more agent-driven, microtransaction-based AI economic system. Persons are lazy and haven’t got time. That is why microtransactions enterprise fashions failed, whereas subscription-based companies thrive: It is difficult to authorize funds on a regular basis, and it is easy to overlook to cancel the subscription if you now not use the service (particularly with companies deliberately complicating the UX to do it). This establishment will not final.
AI brokers assume a lot quicker. They’re going to be capable of optimize for worth and costs, which is a straightforward, tangible operate to automate. As soon as AI brokers attain a sure degree of adoption, companies providing microtransactions will flourish just because all brokers will select them over subscriptions.
That is the second for blockchains to shine: Conventional cost techniques like Visa and Mastercard aren’t constructed for high-volume and conditional microtransactions. Intents will allow higher-level primitives for these monetary interactions — direct funds, escrowed agreements, streamed funds, forex trade and way more.
Past funds
Whereas funds are the plain first utility, intents aren’t restricted to retail. They summary away complexity from quite a lot of multi-step transactions:
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Executing multi-hop swaps throughout chains
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Managing crosschain asset portfolios
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Inserting gas-efficient restrict orders in DeFi
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Automating yield methods based mostly on dynamic circumstances
That is infrastructure for the subsequent era of crypto apps, designed not for degen energy customers however for everybody.
The trail ahead
Crypto’s unnavigable UX has been the elephant within the room for years. Intents lastly characterize a turning level in our business’s maturation. They mark a shift from protocol-centric design to interfaces that prioritize consumer intent.
Intents are outcome-driven, intuitive, and replicate the best way customers really wish to transact, notably in an AI-driven future.
The true success of blockchain will not come when customers perceive the way it works — it is going to come once they do not even notice they’re utilizing it.
Opinion by: Alex Shevchenko, co-founder of Aurora.
This text is for normal data functions and isn’t supposed to be and shouldn’t be taken as authorized or funding recommendation. The views, ideas, and opinions expressed listed here are the writer’s alone and don’t essentially replicate or characterize the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
