ERC-7683 Cross-Chain Intents: The Standard That Unifies the Bridge Landscape

There are more than 50 cross-chain bridge and intent solver protocols in production. Each has its own API, its own liquidity network, its own fee model. For an application that wants to offer users the best cross-chain execution, integrating all of them is prohibitive.

ERC-7683, proposed by Across Protocol and UniswapX, standardizes the interface for cross-chain intents. Any app that posts an ERC-7683 order can be filled by any solver that speaks the protocol.

The order structure

An ERC-7683 order contains:

• `orderData`: the swap/transfer specification - what token, what amount, what destination
• `fillDeadline`: when the order expires
• `exclusivityDeadline`: if the order was quoted to a specific solver, the window they have exclusive rights to fill it
• Signature from the user authorizing the fill

Solvers monitor the standard `OrderCreated` event and race to fill orders profitably. The user doesn't pick a solver; they post an intent and the market picks for them.

Settlement variants

`Outputs` can be either "direct fill" (the solver sends funds to the recipient on the destination chain) or "cross-chain" (a standard transfer mechanism on the settlement chain completes the transfer). Different solver networks use different settlement mechanisms - Across uses a spoke-hub model with an optimistic dispute window; CoW uses its batch auction.

The intent standard is agnostic to the settlement mechanism - it specifies what the user wants, not how it's fulfilled.

ERC-7683 in Botanary's SNAL

Botanary's best-execution routing engine queries across all ERC-7683-compatible solvers simultaneously when routing cross-chain payments. Given a (source token, source chain, destination token, destination chain, amount) specification, it broadcasts a quote request and picks the solver with the best all-in price and fastest confirmed fill time.

The fallback rule: if no ERC-7683 solver can fill the order (thin markets, unusual chains), fall through to CCTP (for USDC) or USDT0 (for USDT) directly.