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Perspective by: Alex Shevchenko, co-creator of Aurora
Attempt to carry out a straightforward acquisition with crypto today. You must navigate wallet add-ons, interpret lengthy hexadecimal identifiers, choose networks, approve transactions, compute erratic gas costs and repeat all these steps since your transactions get halted or unsuccessful.
Occasionally, you also need to transfer assets across networks. It’s an obstacle course that only a tech-savvy individual can triumph over.
In contrast, traditional finance, Apple Pay finalizes a transaction with a single tap.
That sets the standard. In crypto, the user engagement remains mired in the dial-up age.
A more straightforward model: Just express what you seek
Instead of compelling users to grasp the intricacies of swaps, bridges, and signing procedures, intent-centered frameworks entirely alter the thought process. Intents permit users to state their aims easily, “I want to pay $5 for this coffee,” allowing the system to handle the rest.
The term “intents” broadly denotes outcome-directed interactions in crypto—not just atomic crosschain swaps, but a fundamental concept for simplifying all user activities.
Beneath the surface, intents are realized through swift, trust-minimized infrastructure where trades are conducted by appointed agents, often market makers, instead of conventional solver networks.
Users initiate outcome-centric requests, and the backend manages routing, execution, and settlement without revealing wallets, gas costs, or chain intricacies. The outcome is a fluid, intent-focused experience that conceals infrastructure while retaining decentralized assurances.
Crypto shifts from being action-driven to outcome-oriented.
Break away from the wallet-centric approach
The wallet-focused model has long dictated how users engage with crypto, and it also restricted it.
A novel paradigm that entirely eliminates the requirement for wallets is already beginning to surface. Passkey-oriented systems now enable users to verify their identity with familiar tools like Face ID or Touch ID, removing the need for seed phrases, private key management, and passwords.
More significantly, an intent-based methodology is neutral to the chain. Users are not required to be familiarized with a specific blockchain to transact or engage. Sending crypto becomes as easy as sharing a signed link. No application installations, no wallet configurations.
This user-friendly, mobile interaction is ultimately vital for promoting widespread adoption.
Emulate recognizable financial experiences
Centralized exchanges such as Binance dominated the sector because they emphasized user experience. Modern intent-based infrastructure adheres to that familiar path of deposit, trade, and withdrawal flow with comparable settlement speeds yet with essential distinctions.
Recent: Intent-driven solutions can resolve DeFi liquidity
With intents, smart contracts act as the custody and settlement layers, keeping secure on-chain ledgers of user balances, and most importantly, publicly accessible proof-of-reserves. Extremely low fees of scalable blockchains make decentralized trading feasible for the first time.
This architecture isn’t just for traders — it’s designed to offer Web2-style payment systems but with scalable, fragmented, on-chain infrastructure for applications ranging from DeFi swaps to flight bookings.
Intents and AI serve as a natural interface
Where intents represent the new execution layer, AI assistants become the fresh interface layer.
Imagine instructing your assistant, “Send $50 in BTC to my brother,” or “Stake my SOL for the highest yield.” You’re not managing wallets, approving transactions, or fretting about MEV — you are articulating a goal. The assistant interprets your request, the solver network executes it via intents, and the outcome is effortless.
Together, AI and intents reimagine crypto UX from the ground up, ultimately meeting (and surpassing) the sophistication of traditional finance while retaining the core principles of decentralization.
Intents are crucial infrastructure for a progressively agent-driven, microtransaction-focused AI economy. People seek convenience and lack time. This is why microtransaction business models faltered, while subscription-based services thrive: It’s cumbersome to authorize payments frequently, and it’s easy to forget to cancel the subscription when you no longer utilize the service (especially with services deliberately complicating the UX to do it). This state of affairs will not endure.
AI agents think much quicker. They will be able to optimize for price and fees, a straightforward function to automate. Once AI agents achieve a certain level of acceptance, services offering microtransactions will flourish solely because all agents will prefer them over subscriptions.
This is the moment for blockchains to excel: Traditional payment systems like Visa and Mastercard aren’t designed for high-volume and conditional microtransactions. Intents will enable superior primitives for these financial interactions — direct payments, escrowed agreements, streamed payments, currency exchanges, and much more.
Beyond payments
While payments are the apparent initial application, intents are not restricted to retail. They simplify complexity across various multi-step transactions:
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Performing multi-hop swaps across chains
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Overseeing crosschain asset portfolios
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Placing gas-efficient limit orders in DeFi
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Automating yield strategies based on changing conditions
This is infrastructure for the next generation of crypto applications, designed not for degen power users but for everyone.
The road ahead
Crypto’s convoluted UX has been the elephant in the room for years. Intents finally symbolize a pivotal moment in our sector’s evolution. They indicate a transition from protocol-focused design to interfaces that prioritize user intention.
Intents are outcome-driven, intuitive, and reflect how users genuinely wish to transact, especially in an AI-influenced future.
The genuine triumph of blockchain will not occur when users comprehend how it functions — it will occur when they don’t even realize they are utilizing it.
Perspective by: Alex Shevchenko, co-creator of Aurora.
This article serves informative purposes only and should not be construed as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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