What are Crypto Intents?

Crypto Intents let you specify what you want to achieve onchain—like swapping tokens or bridging assets—without worrying about how it happens. Relayers compete offchain to fulfill these Intents efficiently, leading to faster, cheaper, and more reliable transactions. This approach simplifies user experience and enhances crosschain interoperability. Across is a pioneer of crosschain Intents, providing Ethereum’s fastest bridge, supplying crosschain tools for builders, and co-developing ERC-7683 with Uniswap.

Imagine using crypto without needing to understand bridges, gas fees, or token approvals. You just intend to do something—like buy an NFT, swap tokens, or vote on a DAO proposal—and it just happens. No complicated routing. No switching chains. Just results.

That’s the idea behind Intents.

Crypto Intents are reshaping the way users interact onchain, shifting the paradigm from manually executing transactions to simply declaring outcomes. For users, this new model unlocks simpler, more intuitive experiences. For developers, it opens the door for composable, automated infrastructure that’s built around what users want—not how they get there.

In this post, we’ll break down what crypto Intents are, how they work, why they matter, and how Across is already enabling fast, secure, and capital-efficient fulfillment of crosschain Intents.

A crypto Intent is a user’s declaration (signed message) of what they want to accomplish onchain, without dictating how it gets done. As the user, you simply state your end goal, and offchain agents known as relayers (or solvers) compete to fulfill it on your behalf. The result? Less friction, fewer failed transactions, and a UX that feels more like using an app than managing a blockchain.

For example, if you want to swap $ETH on Arbitrum for $USDC on Base, an Intents-based system allows you to express that intention. Relayers then compete to find the most efficient way to process your intent and provide you with your desired amount of $USDC on Base. You don’t have to worry about approvals, gas tokens, or bridging. The UX is simple and seamless.

To put it simply, Intents shift user interaction from how to what. This approach flips the model from imperative (“do this, then that”) to declarative (“this is what I want”). It’s like the difference between hailing a taxi and ordering an Uber. With a taxi, you need to explain the route, handle the payment, and deal with the unpredictability. With a rideshare app, you just type in your destination, and everything else is abstracted away. That’s the type of experience crypto Intents aim to recreate for DeFi.

Under the hood, Intents follow a simple flow:

Most of the magic happens offchain. Relayers simulate fulfillment paths, price routes, and source liquidity offchain before pushing execution onchain. This "offchain matching, onchain settlement" model reduces gas costs, increases efficiency, and creates a smoother user experience.

Importantly, users only pay for success. If no relayer can fulfill the Intent under the given constraints, nothing happens. This revert-free UX is a huge leap forward for reliability and efficiency.

Crypto Intents unlock powerful benefits for both users and developers by simplifying onchain interactions, improving execution, and enabling new design patterns.

This is the beginning of outcome-oriented UX competitive with web2 experiences—and it’s already proving to be a game changer.

The Intents ecosystem is evolving quickly, with protocols, infrastructure teams, and standard authors all racing to define how users interact with blockchains in the future. What started as a UX improvement is now becoming a full-fledged architecture shift.

A number of projects are pioneering Intents-based systems across DeFi:

There’s also a fundamental design divide in how these systems approach Intents. Some projects, like Across and Essential, baking Intents straight into their architecture as core building blocks. Others, like UniswapX and 1inch Fusion, layer Intents onto existing transactional systems, enhancing rather than replacing the old model.

Both paths are pushing the space forward, but the protocols building Intents as a native primitive may unlock deeper composability and expressiveness in the long run. These systems vary in design, but all reflect the same core trend: Intents are becoming the dominant interaction pattern across web3.

Intents-based innovation isn’t just happening on the project level—it’s also happening at the ecosystem level. Several emerging standards are shaping how Intents are expressed, fulfilled, and settled:

While approaches vary, these standards all share a common goal: to unlock Intents-based interoperability across protocols, chains, and applications. Among them, ERC-7683 is currently the most practical and adopted option for developers looking to plug in and start building with crosschain Intents.

Crosschain Intents take the concept a step further. Instead of expressing outcomes within a single chain, users can now request results across chains. For example:

“Send 1 $ETH on Optimism and receive as much $MATIC as possible on Polygon.”

To make this work, relayers (solvers) must bridge assets, perform swaps, manage gas on the destination chain, and ensure everything settles correctly. This requires sophisticated tooling and infrastructure, especially around security, latency, and cost.

The result: smooth, one-click crosschain experiences that abstract away all the complexity.

Across has been building the foundation for crosschain Intents since day one. Live since 2021, Across provides one of the fastest and cheapest crypto bridges in the Ethereum ecosystem, fulfilling user Intents across chains in seconds for cents. No fragmented liquidity. No clunky crosschain UX. Just fast, secure, and capital-efficient crosschain execution.

Here’s why Across is perfectly designed for Intents:

The best part? Across is more than just a bridge—it’s the crosschain engine for the Intents-powered future.

Anyone can “plug into” Across and build native crosschain features directly into their applications. The Across SDK makes it easy for you to integrate fast, cost-efficient, and secure crosschain transfers without needing to manage liquidity or write custom bridging logic.

Whether you want to integrate native bridging or embed crosschain actions directly into your application, Across has you covered. Your users simply define their Intents, and Across handles the rest. With built-in support for ERC-7683 and a growing ecosystem of relayers, you can focus on building great apps, not bridging headaches. Plug in once. Reach every chain. Let Across do all the heavy lifting.

Whether you’re a dApp, a solver, or just a user looking for the smoothest experience, Across makes it easy to move, transact, and build across chains without compromise. And we’re not doing this alone. We’re working closely with teams like Uniswap and the broader developer ecosystem to help bring Intents mainstream.

Crypto Intents mark a powerful shift in how users interact onchain—moving from manual, multi-step workflows to seamless, outcome-driven experiences.

They abstract away technical hurdles and unlock a UX that’s finally ready for the next wave of adoption. But Intents need robust infrastructure to be realized at scale—and that’s where Across comes in.

We’re already fulfilling Intents live today. We’re contributing to the standards that will define the space. And we’re building the fastest, most capital-efficient path to turn Intents into reality.

Want to integrate Intents into your app or protocol?