Solver (Intents)
A specialized third party that competes to find and execute the best way to fulfill a user's stated trading intent, in exchange for a portion of the resulting value.
A solver is a specialized participant in an intent-based trading (see Kaavon's "Intent-Based Trading" glossary definition) system that competes against other solvers to identify the most efficient way to fulfill a user's stated intent — for example, by sourcing the best available liquidity across multiple venues, batching several users' intents together for better collective execution, or using the solver's own inventory to fill the trade directly. Whichever solver can deliver the best outcome for the user, within the competitive mechanism the system uses to select a winner, gets to execute the fill and typically earns a fee or spread for doing so.
Solvers play a role conceptually similar to market makers responding to a Request for Quote (see Kaavon's "Request for Quote (RFQ)" glossary definition), but typically operate with more sophisticated infrastructure capable of routing across many possible execution paths rather than simply quoting a single direct trade. Because solvers compete to fulfill intents, the design of that competition — including how winners are selected and how much of the value created flows back to users versus solvers — is a key factor in how much benefit intent-based trading actually delivers to end users in practice.
Examples
- A solver might fulfill a user's swap intent by sourcing liquidity from several different venues simultaneously, finding a better combined price than any single venue could offer alone.
- Different intent-based systems use different competitive mechanisms to select which solver wins the right to fill a given intent, which directly affects how much of the resulting value reaches the user versus the solver.