In the previous Ethereum Interop Roadmap article, we noted that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has set out a three-step interoperability strategy to improve user experience (UX): Initialization, Acceleration, and Finalization (see also “Ethereum Interop Roadmap: Solving the Last Mile to Mass Adoption”).
If we think of Ethereum’s future as a large highway network, then Acceleration and Finalization focus on smoothing the road and raising the speed limit. But before that, there’s a more fundamental pain point: different cars (DApps and wallets) and different toll booths (L2s and bridges) speak completely different “languages.”
This is exactly what the Initialization phase is designed to solve—and the Open Intents Framework (OIF) is its most important “common language.”
At Devconnect in Argentina, much of the discussion focused on the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL). OIF, however, is just as important: as the “glue” between the application layer and the protocol layer, it is also a prerequisite for realizing the EIL vision. In this article, we’ll break down this seemingly abstract but UX-critical OIF and how it works.
1. What Is OIF? From Transactions to Intents
To understand OIF, we first need to recognize a fundamental paradigm shift in Web3 interactions: a move from “transactions” to “intents.”
Let’s start with a real pain point for a typical user. Suppose you want to swap USDC on Arbitrum for ETH on Base. In today’s Ethereum ecosystem, that usually turns into a marathon of on-chain operations:
You need to manually switch your wallet to Arbitrum, approve a bridge contract, sign a cross-chain transaction, open another aggregator, and finally swap the bridged USDC on Base into ETH. Along the way, you calculate gas and slippage yourself, watch for cross-chain delays, and stay alert to contract risk. A simple need becomes a long chain of technical steps instead of a clear, straightforward flow.
This reflects the traditional “transaction” model in Web3. It’s like taking a taxi to the airport but having to plan every turn yourself: first left, then straight for 500 meters, then the overpass, then the exit ramp, and so on. On-chain, that means manually bridging → approving → swapping step by step. If anything goes wrong, you don’t just lose gas fees—you may even lose funds.
In the newer “intent” model, all of this complexity is hidden. You simply tell the driver, “I want to go to the airport and I’m willing to pay 50,” and you don’t worry about the route or which navigation app they use—as long as you arrive. On-chain, that means you sign a single intent such as “I want to swap USDC on chain A for ETH on chain B”, and professional solvers handle the execution.
If intents are so powerful, why do we still need the Open Intents Framework (OIF)?
In short, today’s intent market is a fragmented “Wild West”: UniswapX has its own intent standard, CowSwap has its own, and Across has another. Solvers have to support dozens of different protocols, and wallets have to integrate dozens of SDKs, which is highly inefficient.
OIF aims to end this fragmentation by defining a standardized intent framework for the entire Ethereum ecosystem, providing a shared protocol stack for wallets, bridges, rollups, and market makers and solvers. Led by the Ethereum Foundation together with projects such as Across, Arbitrum, and Hyperlane, OIF is a modular intent stack—not a single protocol, but a set of common interface standards.
OIF specifies what an intent looks like, how it is verified, and how it is settled, so that any wallet, any DApp, and any solver can communicate on the same “channel.” It supports multiple intent-based trading modes and lets developers extend them with new patterns such as cross-chain Dutch auctions, order-book matching, and automated arbitrage.
2. Why OIF Matters: More Than Just Another Cross-Chain Aggregator
You might be wondering how OIF is different from the cross-chain aggregators you see today.
The core difference is standardization. Most cross-chain aggregators today run as closed, end-to-end systems: they define their own intent formats, choose their own bridges and routes, and manage their own risk controls and monitoring. As a result, any wallet or DApp that wants to integrate them has to connect to each aggregator’s API and security assumptions separately.
In contrast, OIF works more like a neutral, open standard library. It was designed from the outset as shared infrastructure rather than a proprietary standard: intent data formats, signature schemes, and auction or bidding logic all use common settlement and verification modules. A wallet or DApp only needs to integrate OIF once to connect to multiple backends, bridges, and solvers.
Today, leading projects such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, ZKsync, and Across—across L2s, bridges, and aggregators—are already on board.
The liquidity challenges in today’s Ethereum ecosystem are much more complex than before: L2s are flourishing, liquidity is fragmented, and users are constantly switching networks, bridging assets, and granting approvals. From this angle, OIF is not just about cleaner code—it carries significant commercial and UX value for Web3’s path to mass adoption.
For users: “chain abstraction” and intent-driven UX
For users, OIF means you no longer have to think about which chain you’re on. For example, you can initiate a transaction on Optimism with the intent to buy an NFT on Arbitrum. In the past, you would have had to bridge assets, wait for them to arrive, switch networks, and then complete the NFT purchase.
Once OIF is integrated, a wallet like imToken can read your intent, generate a standardized order, and let solvers front the funds and complete the purchase on the target chain. You only need to sign once. This is the “chain abstraction” experience, and OIF provides the underlying syntax that makes it possible.
For liquidity: breaking silos and enabling global sharing
At the same time, OIF helps break liquidity silos and enable sharing across networks. Today, liquidity on Ethereum L2s is fragmented—for example, Uniswap’s liquidity on Base cannot directly serve users on Arbitrum. With the OIF standard, especially ERC-7683, intent orders can be aggregated into a global shared orderbook.
A professional market maker (solver) can monitor demand across all chains and provide liquidity wherever it’s needed. This greatly improves capital efficiency and gives users better prices.
For developers and wallets: integrate once, use everywhere
For developers and wallets, OIF means “integrate once, use everywhere.” For teams building wallets or DApps such as imToken, OIF significantly reduces workload: they no longer need to write separate adapters for every bridge or intent protocol.
Once they integrate the OIF standard, they can immediately connect to the broader Ethereum intent network and support all solvers that follow the standard.
3. Where Is OIF Today?
As mentioned above, and according to public information from the Ethereum Foundation, OIF is led by the EF Protocol team together with Across, Arbitrum, Hyperlane, LI.FI, OpenZeppelin, Taiko, and others. More infrastructure providers and wallets are joining the discussions and tests throughout 2025.
At the recent Devconnect, many new concepts were in the spotlight, but the OIF “puzzle pieces” have also been steadily falling into place, mainly through standards work and ecosystem collaboration. On the Interop main stage, discussions focused almost all day on intents, interoperability, and account abstraction. OIF appeared repeatedly in talks and slides and was clearly positioned as a key building block for future multi-chain UX.
There are not yet large-scale, user-facing applications built on OIF. However, judging from the number of sessions and the participants involved, the community has broadly reached a consensus: in the coming years, high-quality wallets and applications are very likely to build their cross-chain capabilities on public frameworks like OIF.
ERC-7683: a concrete outcome
One example is the often-discussed ERC-7683, one of the most concrete outcomes of OIF so far. Proposed jointly by Uniswap Labs and Across Protocol, ERC-7683 defines a common structure for cross-chain intents.
During Devconnect, discussions around ERC-7683 deepened, and more developers, solvers, and market makers began to actively support the standard. This suggests that cross-chain intent trading is shifting from proprietary protocols to shared public infrastructure.
OIF + EIL: intent UX plus trust-minimized cross-L2 messaging
Another key thread in the Interop roadmap is the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL). OIF provides the “intent and UX” layer at the top, while EIL provides a trust-minimized messaging layer across L2s at the bottom. Together, they form an important foundation of Ethereum’s future interoperability stack.
In this process, the Ethereum Foundation acts as a coordinator rather than a controller. Through documents such as the Protocol Update series, EF has clearly positioned OIF as part of the Initialization phase of the interoperability roadmap. This gives the market strong confidence that intents are not a short-lived narrative, but a long-term evolution path officially recognized by Ethereum.
For the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole, OIF is turning “interoperability” from a whitepaper concept into something that can be audited, replicated, and integrated at scale. In the future, when you use a wallet, you may find that you only need to state what you want to do, without worrying about which chain or which bridge to use. When that happens, it will be infrastructure like OIF quietly working in the background.
At this point, the “Initialization” piece of the interoperability puzzle is starting to take shape.
However, in the EF roadmap, being able to “understand intents” is not enough—the system also needs to run fast and stay stable. In the next article of the Interop series, we’ll look at EIL (the Ethereum Interoperability Layer), a core topic at Devconnect, and explain how Ethereum plans to use the Initialization phase to build a permissionless, censorship-resistant trust channel across L2s so that all rollups can “feel like one chain.”
Stay tuned.