I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it 🎶”

The famous words of Ariana Grande.

Sadly, we could never sing such when it comes to using a blockchain. You can't just see an NFT you like and get it.

It's more like “I see it, I like it, I want it, I check what chain, I connect wallet, I bridge funds, I try to buy, the transaction doesn't go through cause of slippage, I adjust slippage, I ignore the low estimated output because I have no other option, after 3 tries, I got it”

Catch how stressful that is?

The user experience onchain is nothing to write a song about (pun intended).

The best user experience we can get is when you say your desired outcome and get it without labour or surprises and this is what LI.​FI Intents is all about.

WHAT ARE INTENTS AND LI.​FI INTENTS?

Intents are users' requests that express the desired outcome without specifying how they want it done.

Now, LI.​FI Intents is a mechanism that creates the 7 Rings by Ariana effect (You want it, You get it Effect) in the blockchain ecosystem.

Users describe their outcome and get results without following multiple steps on their own because these steps are delegated to a network of Solvers committed to doing the work for you.

Solvers are entities that pre-publish rates and routes and fulfill users’ intents using its own capital and liquidity.

LI.​FI has built a marketplace for these Solvers where they can be matched to existing intents to help wallets and applications execute same-chain and cross-chain token transfers through a solver network. Solvers have their pre-publish standing quotes (price curves for routes and rates) and an Order Server matches the intents to them.

THE INTENT BEHIND LI.​FI INTENTS

- To reduce and remove user experience complications in web3.

- To prioritise user experience over technical infrastructure and advanced money rails for once.

- To create an onchain economy where users aren't bearing all execution risks.

This solution matters even more now because if we're being honest, the onchain economy cannot move forward without this crucial change.

HOW LI.​FI INTENTS WORK

1. The user expresses an intent: The user defines his desired outcome e.g Swap $500 usdc Arb to Tron after depositing his tokens into an input settler or escrow.

2. Intent is distributed: As the deposit is confirmed, the escrow generates a proof of deposit and notifies the Order Server and Solver network.

3. Intent is matched: Instead of the Order Server to request for live quotes from each solver, it matches the intent against the existing pre-published solver quotes which makes the transaction faster.

4. Solver delivers: The matched solver executes the transaction on the destination chain using its own capital and liquidity.

5. Verification and settlement: Once the Solver delivers, the Output settler sees it, records it and generates evidence of it. The oracle verifies the delivery while the input settler releases the locked funds from Step 1 to the solver.

All within seconds and everyone is happy.

THE ARCHITECTURE BEHIND WHAT WORKS

There are 3 key players behind the workings of LI.​FI Intents which are The Input settler, Oracle and Output settler. This examines what they are.

1. The Input Settler: It manages and holds users' funds on the source chain and only releases it to the solvers when it has been verified that the solver has fulfilled the users’ intent.

2. The Output Settler: It ensures the assets are delivered on the destination chain and supports any virtual machine.

3. Oracle System: Oracles serve as a bridge that confirms the desired outcome has actually occurred.

Originally, these three were intertwined which presented scaling and flexibility challenges, however LI.​FI used a modular approach to this architecture allowing each component to stand on its own and be modified without affecting the other two components. LI.​FI intent is designed to be highly composable, with different components capable of being swapped out as needed, hence teams integrating it can freely pick and choose which components to use for which swaps, ensuring intent issuers maximum flexibility to describe their desired end state.

WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH LI.​FI INTENTS?

This section centers on who can use LI.​FI intents, what is achievable with it and the end result for integrators.

Every enterprise bringing financial products onchain can integrate LI.​FI Intents to enjoy the following use cases:

1. Stablecoin Payments: It ensures exact output stablecoin swaps or transfers with no shortages, zero slippage, gasless flows and global cross-chain coverage. This is what makes stablecoin payments viable because real financial infrastructure like a neobank or payment processor can build on this and guarantee their users that what they send is exactly what arrives. No more estimated outputs. No more unpleasant surprises.

2. Access to real-world assets: Unified access to tokenised assets like RWA, gold, etc from licensed market makers. Instead of an app integrating every RWA issuer separately with different APIs, different compliance processes, months of engineering work per asset, one LI.​FI Intents integration unlocks the entire RWA universe. Ondo tokenised assets and xStocks are both available through this today.

3. Compliant Liquidity: Access to solvers that are KYB compliant with OFAC screening built into every transaction. This is the one that opens the door for regulated institutions like: banks, licensed payment companies, institutional desks who legally cannot route through anonymous DeFi liquidity. LI.​FI Intents gives them verified, screened counterparties meaning the entire regulated fintech world finally has a path into onchain finance.

These use cases and overall functionalities of  LI.​FI intents creates the following end results/benefits for integrators and eventually the end users.

1. Exact output execution that is gasless by default: Users get their exact outcome and their funds don’t stop being theirs until they get what they want.

2. Global Cross-chain Coverage: LI.​FI intents have an active solver inventory of over 15 chains, including non-EVM chains like Tron and Solana.

3. Flexible architecture: With LI.​FI intents, integrators have total control of the flow. You can switch oracles from Chainlink to Pyth, improve the lock standard or interface, it's fully customisable and ultimately user friendly.

4. Competitive pricing: LI.​FI intents literally operates as a competitive marketplace where orders are matched against solver standing quotes and routed to the best available fill path.

5. Fast settlement: Transactions powered by LI.​FI intents are not plagued by low latency issues because Solvers have pre-published quotes and use their own capital to deliver assets on the destination chain before settlement completes.

WHY IS LI.​FI PROTOCOL THE BEST PROTOCOL TO BUILD AN INTENT SOLUTION?

LI.​FI protocol is the universal market access layer for digital assets. So, for instance, instead of a wallet integrating every single Dex that exists to access a wide variety of assets, they can simply integrate LI.​FI for complete access to the digital assets ecosystem. LI.​FI has partnered with 1000+ partners, including: Metamask, Phantom, Binance, etc to transfer over $80 Billion+ in transfer volume across 100M+ total transfers.

LI.​FI is the reason you can make swaps on some of your fav wallets basically, and after years of helping protocols access liquidity and thousands of assets to enable swaps, bridging, liquidity provision and cross-chain activity, you can tell they have had first-class seats to view how wrecked the status quo is and know the best ways to solve it, which is via LI.​FI Intents.

Also the LI.​FI Intent/Solver Marketplace is the official foundation of the Open Intents Framework (OIF), an open-source initiative led by the Ethereum Foundation for permissionless interoperability.

THE RIPPLE EFFECT

If a solo project, Dex or blockchain built an intent solution, I wouldn't be this excited, because their solution would be confined to those that use the Dex, chain, protocol, etc.

But with LI.​FI building this solution, it instantly pushes this solution to 1000+ protocols. This is what we call the ripple effect. Intent-based payments will become the status quo simply because a protocol gets integrated with LI.​FI.

Intent will no longer be something that a blockchain offers because it's in their docs, every protocol building a solution in the onchain economy can plug in to this, creating a ripple effect that will automatically transform the user experience in crypto.

Tbh, it's the ripple effect that excites me the most, because the real win here isn't LI.​FI shipping a great product, it's that one integration decision by 1000+ protocols could quietly make the current onchain user experience a thing of the past. That's not a feature launch, that's infrastructure that changes how the entire space used to feel.

Launching your integration with LI.​FI will enable access to the most comprehensive multi-chain DeFi liquidity stack. For every enterprise building the future of the onchain economy, start by integrating LI.​FI intents today.

Start here: Li.fi intents

If you’re an end user reading this, do you think LI.​FI protocol intents can make the poor user experience dilemma a thing of the past?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

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