What are intent-based DEXs and how do they differ from AMMs

Most people who trade on decentralized exchanges do not realize they are acting as their own market makers. Intent-based DEXs flip this model. Instead of interacting with a liquidity pool directly, you sign a message describing what you want, and a network of solvers competes to give it to you at the best price. The shift from execution to intention is the most significant change in DEX architecture since the automated market maker was introduced. Summary Automated market makers changed decentralized trading by replacing order books with liquidity pools, but the model has structural costs. Slippage on large orders, impermanent loss for liquidity providers, and vulnerability to MEV extraction are all consequences of a design that requires traders to execute against a fixed pricing curve rather than competing for the best available price across all sources. Intent-based DEXs separate what a trader wants from how it gets executed. A trader signs an off chain message (an intent) specifying the token they want to sell, the token they want to receive, and the minimum acceptable price. The intent does not specify a route, a liquidity source, or a gas payment. All execution details are delegated to third party solvers. Solvers are the competitive layer in intent-based systems. They receive batches of user intents and compete to fill them at the best price. Solvers can route through multiple AMM pools, use their own private inventory, access centralized exchange liquidity, or match orders directly against each other. The solver that offers the best execution wins the right to fill the order. UniswapX uses Dutch auctions to discover prices, starting above market price and declining over time until a solver fills the order. CoW Protocol batches multiple intents together and finds coincidences of wants, matching opposing trades directly before routing remainders to on chain liquidity. 1inch Fusion delegates execution to resolvers who compete on price within a time window. MEV protection is a core benefit. In the AMM model, a pending transaction sits in the public mempool where searchers can sandwich it. In the intent model, the signed message is off chain and invisible to mempool searchers. Solvers execute the trade privately, and the Dutch auction mechanism ensures that any surplus value flows back to the trader rather than being captured by block builders. The standard explanation of intent-based DEXs starts by contrasting them with AMMs, which is the right framework but the wrong emphasis. The interesting question is not what intents are. It is why AMMs, which solved the liquidity problem that made early DEXs unusable, are now being partially replaced by a model that reintroduces intermediaries. The answer is that AMMs solved the wrong problem too well.