The Economics of Intent-Based Transactions

For years, digital interactions, particularly those involving , have compelled users to behave like robots. They had to specify the exact steps, contracts, and parameters for every transaction. This complexity leads to errors, high costs, and a poor user experience. 

The rise of intent-based transactions shifts the focus from the detailed process to the desired outcome. However, behind this upgrade in simple user experience lies a complex economic system where profit-viewking compete to execute your wishes, infrastructure costs shape market structure, and emerging incentive mechanisms determine who wins or loses. 

Key Takeaways

• Intent-based systems create competitive marketplaces where solvers earn fees by finding optimal execution paths, with competition driving better prices and quicker settlement for users.
• As more solvers join the system, execution quality improves through specialization, but high entry barriers risk concentrating power among a few sophisticated players.
• Revenue models vary from explicit user fees to implicit value extraction through price spreads, with auction mechanisms determining how profits are distributed between users and solvers.

Understanding the Intent-Based Model

Traditional blockchain transactions work like detailed recipes. If you want to swap 100 USDC for ETH, you must specify which platform to use, how much slippage to tolerate, which liquidity pool to access, and how to handle Transaction fees.

Conversely, intent-based transactions are initiated by forwarding a signed message from a user declaring a desired outcome. For example, instead of manually executing from “Token A on Chain 1” to “Token B on Chain 2” through two diverse protocols, the user states the intent: “I want to receive at least 100 units of Token B on Chain 2, and I am willing to spend up to 105 units of Token A on Chain 1.”

The components of the system handling the complexity include:

• Intent: The user (principal) signs the declarative goal. 
• Solver network: At the heart of intent economics are solvers, a decentralized network of profit-viewking agents who execute user intents. Solvers analyze liquidity, network congestion, and fees across multiple protocols and chains to construct the single, most efficient transaction bundle that satisfies the user’s constraints. 
• Settlement layer: The solver who finds the optimal path executes the transaction on the and is compensated for their service.

Effects on the Blockchain Network

As the market for intent matures, it exhibits strong network effects. As more solvers join, execution quality and speed improve, attracting more users, creating self-reinforcing positive feedback loops.

Instead of viewing the emergence of specialized roles, such as pricing experts who find the correct prices across chains, liquidity providers holding vast inventories for quick cross-chain transactions, and execution specialists focused on particular blockchains.

Protocols such as Khalani enable collaboration among solvers, in which complex intents could be fulfilled by a collection of specialized solvers working together.

Economic Benefits for Users

The competitive solver market delivers tangible benefits:

• Better pricing: Competition among solvers typically results in better execution than users could achieve independently. CoWSwap’s solver network, which accesses over 33 liquidity sources, consistently finds better prices than individual users manually routing trades.
• Cost savings: Optimized transactions incur lower Transaction fees. Intent systems can batch multiple user requests together, spreading gas costs across participants.
• MEV protection: Users are secureguarded against sandwich attacks and frontrunning. Since users only sign their intent rather than broadcasting a public transaction, malicious actors have less opportunity to extract value.
• Time efficiency: Intent-based cross-chain systems enable quick transfers by having solvers front liquidity rather than waiting for traditional bridge confirmations.

Risks and Challenges

Despite these benefits, intent-based economics face several challenges.

Centralization pressures

Research warns that intent systems could concentrate power among a small number of sophisticated solvers. The high costs of running professional solver operations create natural barriers to entry. Like traditional finance, where a few wholesalers dominate retail order flow, intent markets risk becoming oligopolies.

This concentration has the potential for market abuse. A dominant solver might subsidize fees ahead to drive out competitors, then raise prices once it has control of the market.

Quality variation

Not all intents receive equal treatment. For actively traded token pairs, solvers compete aggressively, resulting in excellent execution for users. But for less popular tokens or complex multi-step intents, solver interest may be limited. Some users might receive orders executed at maximum allowable slippage or worse than they could achieve through traditional methods.

Verification issues

Verifying optimal execution across multiple chains and dozens of liquidity sources is technically hard. Users must largely trust that competitive pressure keeps solvers honest.

Bottom Line

Intent-based transactions introduce a new settlement layer between users and blockchains, where profit-viewking solvers compete to provide optimal execution. This creates a marketplace where users get better prices, lower costs, and simpler experiences, while solvers earn fees for their expertise and infrastructure. However, the economics favor players who can bear high setup costs, thereby creating a risk of market concentration. Success depends on thoughtful mechanism design that balances competition with accessibility, ensuring the solver remains decentralized enough to serve user interests. As blockchain ecosystems fragment across multiple chains, these economic dynamics will largely determine whether intent systems fulfill their promise of making decentralized technology truly accessible to mainstream users.