Intents-Based vs Regular DEX Swaps: Navigating the Next Evolution in Decentralized Trading

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have been a cornerstone of the DeFi revolution, enabling trustless, peer-to-peer asset exchange without intermediaries. Over the past few years, the industry has evolved from simple Automated Market Maker (AMM) designs to more complex aggregation services, limit order protocols, and now a new paradigm known as “intents-based” swaps. These newer approaches aim to simplify user experience, reduce costs, and address some of the inefficiencies and security challenges inherent in standard DEX operations.

Understanding Regular DEX Swaps

Regular DEX swaps typically involve the user directly interacting with a liquidity pool or order book to swap one token for another. Uniswap and Orca, along with DEX aggregators like Odos and Jupiter are prime examples of this approach. With a regular DEX swap:

• The user signs a transaction specifying exactly which tokens to trade, how many of the source tokens to trade, and the acceptable price range (if applicable).
• The trade is executed by calling a smart contract that either matches the order against a liquidity pool (in AMM-based DEXs) or matches it with existing limit orders (in order-book-based DEXs).
• Price discovery, slippage, and fees are transparent but can be directly impacted by market conditions, MEV (Miner/Maximal Extractable Value), and front-running.