How Intent-Based Trading Works

Explaining how intents reshape DeFi trading by enabling automation, execution competition, and goal-driven UX.

Why DeFi Trading Feels Broken

DeFi promised a self-custodial, permissionless alternative to traditional finance. But for most users, the actual experience feels fragmented, fragile, and fundamentally inefficient.

Executing a simple trade often involves multiple approvals, manual bridging, and juggling wallets across chains. Each step introduces friction: waiting for confirmations, switching UIs, signing transactions, and managing gas. At the same time, users are exposed to MEV extraction and slippage, all without meaningful recourse or transparency.

These issues aren’t isolated, they’re structural problems. DeFi’s current architecture assumes that users are operators. To move funds, earn yield, or rebalance portfolios, users must know how to interact with a range of apps, smart contracts, protocols, and chains. The burden of execution sits entirely on the user.

As the complexity compounds, so does the gap between power users and everyone else. Institutions remain hesitant to enter DeFi’s waters. New users drop off early. And even experienced degens are forced to settle for suboptimal outcomes because DeFi still prioritizes composability over usability.

The underlying problem isn’t just poor UX, it’s the assumption that users need to define how things get done. 

Intents flip that model. Instead of prescribing execution, users describe their desired outcome and agents compete to fulfill it.

This shift from imperative to declarative, from transactions to intents, is the foundation of a new trading architecture. One that’s more efficient, more accessible, gets better outcomes, and is better aligned with how people actually want to use DeFi.

What Are Intents?

In the context of DeFi, an intent is a signed message that defines what a user wants to achieve, not how that outcome should be executed.

This contrasts sharply with how most DeFi apps operate today. When a user submits a transaction on a DEX like Uniswap, they are issuing an imperative command: swap this token for that token, at this pool, using this specific route. The execution path is locked in from the moment the transaction is broadcast.

An intent, by contrast, is declarative. It states the desired result, such as “I want to swap 1 ETH for at least 3000 USDC,” but leaves the specifics of how to achieve that result open. The user signs this message off-chain, and a decentralized network of agents competes to fulfill the request under the defined parameters.

This design opens up significant advantages:

• The execution path can be optimized in real time, using both onchain and offchain liquidity sources

• The transaction does not expose the user to frontrunning or failed gas fees

• It creates a clear separation of concerns: users define outcomes, agents handle execution

From a technical standpoint, intents enable a new kind of composability. Rather than stitching together contract calls and bridging steps manually, the user expresses a single, high-level goal. The underlying architecture, whether powered by Velora Delta, Anoma, or Across, handles routing, batching, settlement, and risk.

Caption: https://across.to/blog/what-are-crypto-intents

Intents also unlock broader UX innovation. Because users don’t need to submit a transaction themselves, there is no requirement to hold native gas tokens. Trades can be submitted from multisig wallets, hardware wallets, or even abstracted interfaces that batch actions and delay signatures. Signing becomes the only user action, execution is delegated.

In short: intents decouple what the user wants from how it gets done. And that shift lays the groundwork for better pricing, lower friction, and a radically better user experience.

How Intent-Based Trading Works

Intent-based trading begins with a simple change: users no longer initiate transactions, they submit signed messages expressing desired outcomes. The execution is then handled by an external party called a solvers or agents.

Here’s how it works in practice:

1. The user signs an intent.
   This message includes the trade parameters (sell 100 DAI for at least 99 USDC) and is signed off-chain. The user doesn’t need to pay gas or broadcast a transaction.

2. The intent is relayed to a coordination network.
   Velora Delta, for example, uses the Portikus network, which acts as a decentralized coordination layer. It broadcasts the intent to available agents and initiates a competitive auction.

3. Agents bid to fulfill the intent.
   Agents are autonomous solvers that scan liquidity sources and submit a proposed execution path for the trade. These bids are evaluated based on price, latency, and fulfillment guarantees.

4. The best agent is selected.
   Once a winning bid is chosen-usually based on the best price or surplus returned-the agent executes the transaction onchain on the user’s behalf. If the trade is crosschain, settlement occurs via preconfigured messaging and bridging infrastructure. The user never has to initiate a second transaction or manage the bridging process.

5. The trade is executed and settled.
   The agent pays gas, absorbs MEV risk, and delivers the output token to the user. In many implementations, like Velora Delta, the entire process is gasless and single-step for the user.

This model enables a fundamental shift in how DeFi trades are structured. Instead of users triggering transactions and hoping for good outcomes, agents compete to deliver the best result. This creates a more adversarial environment among execution agents, but a more protective and efficient experience for users.

Caption: https://li.fi/knowledge-hub/with-intents-its-solvers-all-the-way-down/

Intents also enable new types of flows. Agents can batch multiple user intents together to unlock P2P price improvements. They can route through offchain liquidity like market maker inventory or CEX order books. And they can adapt execution paths dynamically based on current conditions across chains.

At its core, intent-based trading introduces a two-sided market for execution. On one side are users expressing goals; on the other are agents competing to fulfill them. This unlocks a new layer of optimization, modularity, and automation, all without compromising on principle blockchain values of decentralization or control.

Why Intents Improve Trading Outcomes

Intent-based systems don’t just simplify execution, they fundamentally improve the economics and security of every trade. By decoupling outcome from process, users gain access to better prices, fewer fees, and less exposure to risk.

1. Competitive Execution = Better Prices

Traditional DeFi trades are executed deterministically. The user picks a path-often through an AMM or DEX aggregator-and receives the quoted price, regardless of what better options may exist at the moment of execution.

With intents, that execution path is wide open. Agents compete to fulfill each request, scanning across chain AMMs, CEX inventory, and peer-to-peer matches. The result is price discovery at the execution layer, not just during quoting. Velora, for example, initiates an auction through the Portikus network where agents bid to fulfill an intent. The best price wins.

This competition aligns incentives: the user gets the optimal output, and the agents earns a margin only by outperforming the market.

2. Reduced Complexity with Gas Abstraction

In most DEXs, users are required to hold native gas tokens, like ETH or MATIC, to approve, swap, or bridge assets. That requirement adds operational overhead and often blocks participation entirely.

Intent-based systems abstract this complexity. With Velora, users don’t need to hold gas tokens or manage approvals. They sign a single off-chain message, and execution is handled by agents. Gas isn’t paid upfront or in a separate step, it’s automatically deducted from the output token during settlement.

This improvement removes a major point of friction and opens the doors to onboarding the next wave of adoption. Whether a user is trading from a cold wallet, multisig, or embedded wallet with no native token balance, the flow remains intact. Execution doesn’t fail due to missing gas, and users don’t have to think about which chain they’re on. It’s a direct path from intent to outcome.

3. MEV Protection by Design

MEV bots exploit transaction ordering in the mempool to frontrun, backrun, or sandwich trades. These attacks leak value from users and distort execution outcomes.

Intent-based systems mitigate this by removing user transactions from public mempool visibility. Agents receive off-chain signed messages and handle execution internally. Because execution is delegated, MEV risk is shifted from the user to the agent, who can price it into their bids.

Velora’s Delta architecture further enforces this through batch auctions and uniform clearing prices, neutralizing common forms of MEV exploitation.

4. Composable, Multi-Step Automation

Intent-based trading is not limited to single-token swaps. Because execution logic is flexible, intents can represent multi-step, crosschain flows.

A single intent could:

• Swap USDC on Base

• Bridge it to Optimism

• Deposit into a Aave yield vault

• Return aLP tokens to the user

This would normally require 3–4 transactions across multiple interfaces and wallets. With intent-based crosschain swaps powered by Across Protocol, it’s a single signed message. Execution complexity disappears behind a clear outcome.

Caption: Across Protocol Crosschain Swaps

In sum, intents create a structurally better execution environment. Lower cost. Lower risk. Higher performance. All while reducing friction for the end user.

How Agent Networks Work

Agent networks are the execution engine behind intent-based trading. When users submit an intent, they’re not sending it to a single protocol, they’re broadcasting it to a market of agents who compete to fulfill it. This competition is where the intent model finds its strength.

What Is a Agent?

An agent is an autonomous actor, often run by a market maker, trading firm, or node operator, that listens for user intents, evaluates how to fulfill them, and submits a bid to do so. If selected, the agent executes the trade onchain on behalf of the user.

Agents typically:

• Monitor coordination layers (Portikus, CoW Protocol relayers)

• Scan onchain and offchain liquidity sources

• Optimize for price, slippage, latency, and MEV impact

• Execute intent settlement transactions and pay associated gas

How Agents Compete

When a user signs and submits an intent, it’s relayed to a agent coordination layer. In Velora’s case, that layer is Portikus. Portikus runs an auction for each intent, inviting agents to submit bids for fulfillment.

Caption: Portikus modular, composable infrastructure

Each bid includes:

• The execution path (which pools or offchain sources to route through)

• The expected output amount

• Any surplus or margin

• Time to execution

Once the auction closes, the intent is matched with the best bid, usually the one with the highest output or most surplus returned to the user. The winning agent then finalizes the trade onchain via the protocol’s smart contracts.

This is fundamentally different from how most DEX aggregators work. Aggregators query available routes and return quotes, but the user still executes the transaction directly and bears the risk. With intents, agents bear the risk, execution is only triggered if an agent takes the order and commits to fulfillment.

Sources of Liquidity

Agents are not limited to AMMs. Their advantage is that they can access:

• Onchain liquidity from protocols like Uniswap, Curve, Balancer

• Off-chain liquidity from CEX inventory or market makers via RFQs

• Internal order flow, including P2P matching across user intents

This breadth of access improves execution quality and expands what’s possible. 

Fairness and MEV Resistance

The auction format, especially when paired with batch processing and uniform clearing prices, removes incentives for agents to reorder trades or frontrun each other. All intents in a batch settle at the same price, neutralizing priority gas auctions and MEV games.

In Velora’s system, this design is embedded in Delta’s smart contracts. Every trade executed by an agent through the Portikus auction process is subject to best execution rules, MEV minimization, and gas abstraction.

Agent networks transform trading from deterministic routing into competitive, modular execution markets. They drive better outcomes not by locking in control, but by unlocking competition.

Velora: Intent Architecture in Action

Velora’s implementation of intent-based trading—Velora Delta—demonstrates how this architecture can be applied in a real-world, crosschain, gasless environment. Built on top of the Portikus Intent Network, Delta turns fragmented DeFi workflows into single, goal-driven actions.

Crosschain by Default

With Velora Delta, users can swap assets across chains, like trading USDC on Base for ETH on Optimism, without bridging or needing gas on either network. The user simply signs an intent and settlement agents handle the rest.

The process is fully abstracted:

• No need to bridge manually

• No approvals or wallet switching

• No native tokens required for gas on the destination chain

This is crosschain as it should be: fast, simple, and intent-driven.

📚 Learn how to make your first crosschain swap on Velora. 

Agent Auctions via Portikus

When a user signs a trade intent on Velora, it’s sent to Portikus, the coordination layer for agent-based execution. Portikus runs an auction to select the best-performing agent. The agents bid competitively, and the winning one executes the trade via Delta smart contracts.

This mechanism ensures:

• Best execution through price competition

• MEV protection by avoiding mempool exposure

• Gas abstraction with all fees absorbed by agents

Gasless UX

Velora Delta eliminates the need for users to hold or manage native gas tokens. Users authorize a token once (via a gasless permit), and all subsequent trades are executed without requiring them to pay gas upfront. Instead, gas fees are automatically deducted from the output token during settlement.

This unlocks access for a wider range of users, including those using hardware wallets, multisigs, or embedded wallets that don’t hold native tokens. By abstracting gas at the transaction layer, Velora ensures that execution succeeds even when users don’t know (or care) which chain they’re on.

It also simplifies onboarding. A user can go from wallet connection to successful crosschain swap without touching ETH, managing approvals, or navigating bridges.

Execution Integrity

Velora’s contracts enforce settlement at the best available price, minimize MEV exposure through private execution and batch auctions, and route through both onchain and offchain liquidity. Combined, these mechanisms give users a level of execution quality and protection that is difficult to achieve on legacy DEX architectures.

Velora Delta isn’t a redesign of the frontend, it’s a redesign of how trades are executed. The experience feels effortless because the architecture beneath it is optimized for intent, not action. That’s what makes Velora a defining case study in the shift toward declarative DeFi.

Intents vs. Traditional DEXs

Intent-based trading challenges the assumptions baked into legacy DeFi infrastructure. In a traditional DEX model, users are responsible for assembling transactions, managing approvals, and navigating chain-level mechanics. The system is reactive and brittle: if the user doesn’t perform each step correctly, execution fails.

Intent-based systems flip that burden. Execution becomes a service, not a task. Instead of routing tokens through predetermined paths, users express goals and the network figures out the best way to fulfill them.

Here’s how intent-based trading stacks up against traditional DEXs:

Intent-based systems don’t eliminate DeFi primitives like AMMs or order books, they reorganize how those primitives are accessed. The result is a market architecture where users no longer need to micromanage execution to benefit from DeFi.

This isn’t theoretical. Velora users today can execute crosschain swaps without gas, bridging, or failed transactions, outcomes that would take five steps and multiple wallets in a traditional model.

The Future: Agents and AI as DeFi Frontends

Intents are not just a trading primitive, they’re also the foundation of a broader shift in how users will interact with DeFi.

Today, intents are submitted through intuitive apps like Velora. Tomorrow, they’ll be issued through AI agents, autonomous frontends that interpret user goals and convert them into actions across the chain landscape.

The direction is clear: LLMs and agent frameworks will become the primary interface layer for DeFi. Instead of navigating protocols, users will describe outcomes:

“I want to earn the best yield on my stablecoins.”
“Stake my ETH for the best yield.”
“Rebalance my portfolio across Base and Optimism.”

These aren’t transactions, they’re prompts. Behind the scenes, an agent interprets them, signs intents, and delegates execution to a agent network. The result is automation with control, intelligence without custody.

This model doesn’t just improve user experience, it redefines roles:

• Users become strategists, not operators

• Agents become execution infrastructure

• Agents become co-pilots, surfacing opportunities and protecting value

Velora is already architected for this world. Its agent-based system, gasless execution, and agent auctions create a foundation for intelligent, multi-chain automation. As LLMs become more capable, and as account abstraction spreads, the opportunity grows: seamless trading, dynamic strategy execution, and intent-driven governance, all with a single input.

Intents are not a niche. They’re a shift in perspective: from action to outcome, from process to purpose.

From Operator to Strategist

Intent-based trading marks a fundamental evolution in DeFi infrastructure. It shifts the responsibility of execution away from the user and opens up a system where performance, protection, and precision are delivered through competition, not coordination overhead.

Velora’s Delta architecture puts this model into practice today, enabling users to trade crosschain with a single signed message—no gas needed, no bridging, no multi-step workflows. Execution is automated, transparent, and auditable. 

As DeFi matures, users will expect more: smarter systems, less friction, and clearer outcomes. Intents offer a framework for meeting those expectations without compromising decentralization, control, or market dynamics.

The future of DeFi won’t be defined by who can execute the fastest. It’ll be shaped by protocols that design systems that understand what users actually want and build the infrastructure to deliver it.

Velora is doing both.