NEAR Intents product is actually consists of three core layers powered by NEAR tech:
- asset layer - holding and moving assets across different chains
- settlement layer - intents smart contract and soon escrow with ton more features to settle matches intents at 600ms
- matching layer - broadcast intent and match with a solver based on originator requirements
Plus 1 click swap API - which is the easiest gasless api for exchanging assets, bridging or paying.
Asset layer is built using Chain Signature - a MPC that is controlled by near contracts. This means that any account or contract on NEAR can have public addresses, hold assets and issue transactions for other chains. It’s as if each NEAR account and contract got a Fireblocks account.
There are other use cases for this asset layer - simplest one is bridging assets from NEAR out to other chains (OmniBridge). This allowed to bring ZEC to Solana. @TemplarProtocol using it to hold deposits in isolated lending pools. It’s fully programmable and effectively makes NEAR the easiest place to build multichain apps.