Intent Based Settlements

Preamble

This research served as one of the most formative analyses informing ORBT’s architectural blueprint and long-term vision. It examines how the emerging intent-based model, a declarative system that abstracts “how” actions occur on-chain into simple expressions of “what” the user wants and lays the groundwork for an intent-based financial system. The study’s conclusions reinforced ORBT’s core design philosophy: to build a chain-agnostic settlement protocol that harnesses the intent paradigm not just for token swaps, but for real financial flows, uniting yield, settlement, and liquidity into a single declarative layer.

Background: From Imperative Transactions to Declarative Intents

For most of blockchain’s history, user interaction has been imperative, a process where participants manually define every transaction parameter, from routing and gas fees to liquidity paths. This design has produced transparency and control, but also friction, risk, and technical complexity that limit mainstream adoption.

The intent-based or declarative paradigm reverses that model. Instead of defining how a transaction occurs, users define what they want to achieve, such as “swap 0.3 ETH for MEME tokens on Avalanche” and allow the system to determine the most efficient, secure, and cost-effective path to fulfillment. This abstraction layer, powered by competitive networks of solvers, transforms blockchain interaction from a manual, command-line process into a goal-driven user experience, enabling both simplicity and scalability.

Much like how domain names abstracted IP addresses or GUIs replaced command-line interfaces, intents are the next logical step in blockchain’s usability evolution. This architecture aligns naturally with human intent and creates the conditions for Web3 mass adoption.

Architecture and Core Components

The intent-based financial system relies on a modular architecture of off-chain and on-chain components that operate cooperatively:

• Intent Layer: Users sign and submit a high-level message: an expression of desired outcome with constraints like minimum output or maximum fee.

• Solver Network: Competing third-party solvers (professional market makers, algorithms, or protocols) analyze the market across chains to determine the most efficient execution path.

• Settlement Layer: The winning solver executes the transaction on-chain, finalizing the outcome transparently and atomically.

This structure eliminates reliance on a single intermediary, and shifts trust to a competitive, incentive-aligned solver marketplace. Security is derived not from centralization, but from economic game theory - collateral requirements, slashing penalties, and transparent settlement logic.

Market Landscape and Value Proposition

The intent-based model directly addresses the major pain points in Web3 today:

• User Simplicity: One-click, goal-based execution replaces manual, multi-step transactions across wallets and bridges.

• Gas Abstraction: Solvers can batch or absorb transaction fees, creating a “gasless” experience for the end user.

• MEV Protection: Private or competitive solver mempools shield user transactions from front-running and sandwich attacks.

• Cross-Chain Interoperability: Solvers unify fragmented liquidity and enable seamless multi-chain actions.

This creates a self-reinforcing efficiency flywheel: simpler UX attracts more users, more users create more intents, more intents drive higher solver competition, and greater volume reduces costs for all participants.

Notable protocols shaping this landscape include:

• UniswapX: Dutch auction model with off-chain fillers providing MEV-protected, gasless swaps.

• 1inch Fusion: Bridge-less, resolver-based system enabling cross-chain swaps and retail accessibility.

• CoW Swap: Batch auction model optimizing for peer-to-peer matching (“Coincidences of Wants”).

• Anoma & dappOS: Foundational infrastructure projects building universal intent execution layers.

• Shogun & Essential: Early-stage, venture-backed projects creating generalized intent systems, both securing multi-million-dollar rounds in 2025.

Together, these systems mark the declarative paradigm’s emergence as a foundational layer of Web3 infrastructure.

Challenges, Risks, and Regulation

Despite rapid progress, the model introduces new challenges:

• Centralization Risk: Solver networks could concentrate around a few large players, undermining decentralization.

• Opacity of Execution: Delegating “how” to solvers creates a “black box” effect that can obscure pricing or path transparency.

• Governance and Legal Ambiguity: Token classification, DAO liability, and AML/KYC compliance remain largely undefined under current regulatory regimes.

Projects mitigate these risks through:

• Collateralized bonding and slashing mechanisms to discourage malicious behavior.

• Decentralized governance balancing professional solver participation with community oversight.

• Hybrid compliance models blending permissionless execution with identity and screening standards for institutional access.

The paradox of this evolution is clear: regulation may prove to be the catalyst that matures the intent economy, unlocking institutional participation while enforcing accountability.

The Future: AI Integration and the Agentic Web

The next chapter of the declarative paradigm will be defined by the convergence of intents and artificial intelligence. Future solvers will evolve into AI agents: autonomous, adaptive systems capable of interpreting nuanced goals, optimizing execution in real time, and managing multi-strategy portfolios.

In this Agentic Web, intents become the shared “language” through which human users and AI systems transact, coordinate, and allocate capital.

• A user could issue an intent such as “maximize yield with minimal risk across protocols”, and AI solvers would autonomously execute dynamic strategies to achieve that goal.

• Blockchain serves as the execution and verification layer, ensuring transparency, ownership, and settlement integrity.

This symbiosis of AI and intent-based architecture defines a new intent-driven digital economy, where human strategy and machine execution merge to create continuously optimized financial systems.

Relevance to ORBT

The insights from this research directly influenced ORBT’s evolution from an idea to an institutional-grade protocol. Where most intent systems focus on swaps and payments, ORBT extends the declarative model into settlement and yield orchestration turning the intent-based design into a backbone for real-world financial infrastructure.

• ORBT’s architecture treats every transaction as a declarative financial intent: a statement of outcome across chains, assets, and institutions.

• Its solver-equivalent infrastructure coordinates pre-funded liquidity, risk, and settlement execution under unified governance.

• Its AI-ready architecture anticipates the rise of autonomous solvers, aligning perfectly with the market’s projected trajectory toward agentic systems.

By transforming intents from a user-interface innovation into a systemic design philosophy, ORBT positions itself as the institutional bridge for the intent-based financial system - a world where liquidity, yield, and settlement converge into a single, intelligent layer of programmable finance.