NEAR Intents

NEAR Intents is a cross-chain swap protocol built on NEAR blockchain that replaces the traditional bridge-and-route model with an intent-based architecture: users specify what they want, a network of professional market makers competes to fulfill that request, and the result settles atomically through a smart contract on NEAR. The protocol launched in late 2024, when Aurora Labs' Defuse Protocol was adopted as core NEAR Protocol infrastructure, and has grown to over $10 billion in all-time swap volume across 15.7 million transactions serving 1.6 million unique users.

How It Works

Every swap follows a three-step model: Express, Solve, and Settle.

Express. A user or AI agent broadcasts an intent — a signed declaration of desired outcome, such as "swap 1 ETH for BTC at the best available rate" — to the solver network via WebSocket relay. The intent describes the input asset, output asset, acceptable amount range, and expiry. Critically, it does not prescribe how the swap should be executed; that decision is delegated to the solvers.

Solve. Multiple independent market makers, called solvers, evaluate the intent in parallel. Solvers source liquidity from wherever it is cheapest: centralized exchange orderbooks, OTC desks, on-chain AMMs, and cross-chain arbitrage opportunities. They return competing quotes, and the best rate is presented to the user. Fees on popular pairs run as low as 1 basis point (0.01%), with competitive pressure among solvers driving spreads down.

Settle. Once the user accepts a quote, the swap executes atomically through the Verifier smart contract deployed at intents.near on the NEAR blockchain. The contract enforces net-zero settlement: every leg of the swap must complete or the entire transaction reverts. There are no partial fills and no stuck funds.

Chain Signatures and Cross-Chain Security

Moving assets across chains without a traditional bridge relies on NEAR's Chain Signatures system. Eight independent multi-party computation (MPC) nodes jointly control signing keys for foreign chains. No single node can authorize a transaction unilaterally; signature shares are aggregated across multiple rounds before a transaction is broadcast to a destination chain. This architecture avoids the single-custodian risk that has compromised many bridge designs.

The protocol supports three signature standards — ERC-191 for Ethereum-compatible wallets, NEP-413 for NEAR wallets, and raw Ed25519 for Solana-compatible wallets — which allows users to interact directly from their native wallet without wrapping or key migration.

Supported Chains and Assets

NEAR Intents covers 31+ blockchains across three broad categories:

• EVM networks (15+): Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and others
• Bitcoin ecosystem (6): Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Zcash, Dash
• Alternative Layer 1s (10+): Solana, Sui, TON, TRON, XRP Ledger, Stellar, Starknet, Aptos, Cardano

The protocol accepts any token natively on its supported chains. Assets are represented as NEP-141 tokens or cross-chain equivalents inside the NEAR settlement layer, then converted or redeemed on the destination chain by the winning solver.

Security and Audits

Hacken completed a full smart contract audit of the Verifier and bridge contracts in December 2024. An active HackenProof bug bounty program covers smart contracts, bridges, and SDKs. The protocol's SHIELD security framework applies proactive risk and compliance screening before intent settlement. Since launch, the protocol has processed more than $10 billion in volume with no publicly disclosed security exploits.

Products and Developer Tools

Beyond direct swaps, NEAR Intents offers several related products:

• Limit orders — users can set a target price rather than accepting the current best quote
• Earn — multichain yield products built on the same intent infrastructure
• Confidential Intents (launched March 2026) — a privacy mode that executes swaps inside a private shard, concealing transaction details from public chain history and eliminating frontrunning and MEV exposure
• Hyperliquid integration — direct USDC transfers between NEAR Intents and the Hyperliquid perps exchange

For integration, the protocol provides a 1-Click Swap API (REST with JWT authentication), a React Widget for front-end embedding, and an Intents SDK in TypeScript, Go, and Rust. An Agent Skills interface enables AI agents to initiate and settle cross-chain transactions autonomously.

Adoption and Ecosystem Position

NEAR Intents was integrated into Brave Wallet in March 2026, giving the protocol potential reach across Brave's 110 million monthly active users. Cake Wallet integrated it with Zcash support — enabling ZEC swaps for its user base — earning NEAR Intents a best privacy project award from The Rollup. Developers at Jupiter (Solana's leading DEX aggregator) and Helius Labs have publicly noted the protocol's design. The Starknet ecosystem integrated NEAR Intents to give Starknet users access to chain-abstracted swaps across approximately 25 external chains without multi-step bridging.

At the time of its $10 billion volume milestone, the protocol was recording approximately $2.15 billion in the prior 30 days and $600 million in the prior 7 days, with 541,075 unique addresses active in the trailing month. The protocol has generated $17 million in total fees.

Background

NEAR Intents originated as Defuse Protocol, a project built by Aurora Labs — the team behind the Aurora EVM-compatible runtime on NEAR. In late 2024 the Defuse Protocol was renamed NEAR Intents and adopted as official NEAR Protocol chain abstraction infrastructure. The open-source solver reference implementation is published at github.com/defuse-protocol/near-intents-amm-solver, and the core contracts are maintained at github.com/near/intents.