The Rise of Intent Economy: Shifting from Capturing Behavior to Managing "Goals"

Title: “The Intent Economy”

Article by: Vaidik Mandloi

Translation by: Block unicorn

Preface

Over the past year, a subtle change has begun to quietly emerge on the internet. More and more systems are no longer focused on how users interact with them, but rather on the goals users want to achieve. These systems no longer emphasize click counts, steps, or operational instructions, but start from the user’s intent.

This phenomenon is reflected in many fields. In finance, users specify the desired outcome, and the software is responsible for executing it. In business, agents negotiate prices and timings on behalf of users. In search and productivity tools, people increasingly describe their goals rather than browsing menus or operational flows.

This shift is often referred to as the “Intent Economy.” It describes a system where intent becomes the primary input, and execution is delegated to software that competes to fulfill the intent under specific constraints. Until now, most of the internet has been built around user interfaces. Users need to translate their needs into actions that the system can understand. This means users must learn various tools, make choices, and manually weigh pros and cons.

Today’s change is that users’ intent itself begins to be directly captured and processed. We will now explore how intent-based systems are rising on the internet.

Current Optimization Targets of the Internet

Most internet systems do not operate directly based on intent but on behavior. When users want to complete an action, they need to express it through a series of steps: search, click, filter, select, compare, and confirm. The system cannot directly receive clear instructions on what the user wants to do but instead receives signals from user actions and tries to infer the intent. This approach is reasonable when systems are relatively simple. At that stage, options are limited, execution paths are easier to understand, and users can easily convert their needs into actual operations without much effort or risk.

However, as the internet develops, this assumption quietly becomes invalid. Market size is growing larger and more dispersed. A single result often involves multiple venues, prices, and intermediaries. Yet, interaction patterns remain unchanged. Users still need to decide how to accomplish something, even if they lack the information or background to make informed decisions. Booking travel, transferring money, purchasing goods, or coordinating work increasingly require dealing with complexity. Control still resides with the user, but their understanding of complexity has changed.

Meanwhile, platforms begin to optimize around content that is easy to monetize. User behavior becomes visible, so click rates, engagement, dwell time, conversion funnels, and conversion rates become the main signals for system responses. But this is not because they reflect user success; rather, they are measurable and monetizable. Over time, these metrics gradually replace user intent as the primary optimization goal. Systems become better at guiding users through processes rather than minimizing the effort needed to reach their goals. The longer and more complex the process, the more opportunities there are to extract value.

Thus, we have an internet where users usually come with clear goals, but platforms attract them through various processes and steps, extending their usage time. Users not only do not reduce the work needed to achieve their goals but are instead asked to compare options, weigh pros and cons, and go through lengthy paths—even though the software’s data and computational power far surpass the user’s.

Intent has always existed but has never been viewed as a direct input. Systems rely on user behavior rather than intent, leaving users to handle coordination and decision-making themselves. The friction that exists today is not accidental but a result of systems reacting to behavior rather than acting based on established goals.

Making Intent Explicit

The key difference between intent-based systems and traditional systems is not in the users’ needs but in the system’s ability to directly receive those needs. When users explicitly express their intent, they no longer need to perform a series of operations to articulate their goal; they only need to clearly specify the desired result and the conditions it must meet. These conditions can be simple, such as a price ceiling, time limit, or risk preference. Once the intent is clarified, the system no longer waits for further instructions but treats it as a problem to be solved.

This is crucial because clearly defined intent also influences how execution is carried out. Now, achieving the same goal is no longer limited to a single predefined path but can be approached through multiple methods. The system can evaluate different routes, venues, or strategies without user intervention and select the best one that meets the constraints. Users are no longer navigators of the system but instead have the system navigate on their behalf.

Today, this is possible not only because of more sophisticated interfaces but also because of reduced coordination costs. Software can now evaluate multiple options, compare results, and respond in real-time at low cost. Agents can run continuously, monitor changing conditions, and adjust execution without requesting permission at every step. In an era where computational costs are high, systems are independent, and execution requires manual intervention, this was difficult to achieve. Now, these limitations have been greatly reduced.

Another important change is that execution no longer needs to be controlled by a single platform. Once intent is expressed in a structured way, any participant capable of fulfilling that intent can respond. This introduces competition at the execution level. Different solvers, agents, or services can attempt to realize the same intent, and the system can select the best result based on predefined rules. Users do not need to know who executed the task; they only need to ensure the result meets their conditions.

In old systems, users had to manually compare options and weigh trade-offs to optimize. In intent-based systems, the optimization process shifts downstream. The system compares options, handles complexity, and presents results. Fragmentation is no longer the user’s problem but becomes an input for optimization. More options can improve results rather than increase decision difficulty.

When Results Become the Unit of Value

In attention-driven systems, value flows to those who control demand. Platforms compete to keep users within their interfaces because profits are generated there. In contrast, in intent-driven systems, value flows to those who can most efficiently achieve the goals. Scarce resources are no longer attention but reliable execution under various constraints. This is a subtle yet significant change. It shifts the focus of competition from surface interactions to backend capabilities.

In the era of the intent economy, users no longer browse markets or manipulate platforms in the traditional way but instead issue requests. This changes the influence of all parties involved. The importance of intermediaries that merely guide users through processes diminishes, while infrastructure that reduces costs, risks, or delays becomes crucial. Competition among execution service providers is no longer about user lock-in but about speed, accuracy, price, and trustworthiness. Poor execution will be quickly penalized because users do not need to understand the reasons for failure; they only need to see the failure. They can simply stop sending intent in that direction.

This also changes how markets scale. In the old model, complexity increased with the number of users. More users meant more support, more interfaces, and more decision-making pushed upstream. In an intent-based system, complexity grows with infrastructure development. Users stay simple, and the system handles various complexities for them. This makes services more accessible to non-professional users without reducing system capabilities. Advanced users and complex infrastructure can coexist, but the burden of coordination no longer falls on the requester.

It also lowers switching costs. When users are not limited by specific workflows or interfaces but only need to express their intent, they can freely send that intent anywhere. Transaction providers cannot rely on inertia or habits; they must continuously compete. This encourages standardization of intent formats, verification mechanisms, and settlement layers because improved compatibility will expand the transaction execution market. Over time, this will push the system toward greater openness.

From a macro perspective, the intent economy changes the experience of “using the internet.” Users are no longer just system navigators but start issuing requests. Many interactions that previously required attention, judgment, and repetitive decisions can be simplified into a single step. Users decide the results and constraints, and the system competes to complete the rest. That’s why the intent economy is not limited to cryptocurrency or finance. These fields clearly demonstrate their operational mechanisms because of high execution costs and obvious errors. But the same structure applies to any domain with high coordination costs: business, logistics, scheduling, procurement, information retrieval, and even daily digital tasks. In areas where results matter more than processes, intent-based systems outperform workflow-based systems.

That’s all for today. See you in the next article.