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How it works

Ophis sits on top of CoW Protocol's batch-auction settlement layer and adds a natural-language front door. This page traces a swap from a sentence to an on-chain settlement.

The intent lifecycle​

 plain English          structured order           batch auction          settlement
┌──────────────┐  parse ┌──────────────────┐ sign ┌──────────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐
│ "swap 100    │ ─────▶ │ sell: USDC       │ ───▶ │ solvers compete  │ ─▶ │ uniform-price│
│  USDC for    │  LLM   │ buy:  ETH        │ wallet│ for best execution│   │ on-chain     │
│  ETH on Base"│        │ amount: 100      │      │ (DEX / P2P / xchain)│  │ settlement   │
└──────────────┘        │ chain: base      │      └──────────────────┘    └──────────────┘
                        └──────────────────┘

1. Intent parsing​

Free-form text is sent to a Cloudflare Pages Function that proxies LibertAI's Qwen 3.6 27B (open-weights, hosted on Aleph Cloud) with a pinned system prompt and temperature: 0 for deterministic extraction. The proxy:

  • holds the LibertAI API key server-side (browsers never see it),
  • validates extracted tokens against an internal allowlist of 200+ DEX-traded symbols,
  • validates the chain against the set the network selector can actually route to, and
  • returns a structured ParsedIntent the UI uses to pre-fill the form.

The parser only normalizes language. It never places, signs, or executes a trade — that is always the user's wallet on the frontend.

2. Order signing​

Once the form is filled, the user signs an order with their own wallet (EIP-712 for EOAs, ERC-1271 for smart-contract wallets). The signature authorizes a limit — a minimum acceptable output — not a specific execution path. Solvers may only do better than the limit, never worse.

3. Batch auction & solver competition​

Signed orders collect into batches. For each batch, solvers search for the best way to settle every order simultaneously — routing through on-chain liquidity, matching orders against each other peer-to-peer (no liquidity pool needed), or bridging cross-chain. Solvers bid, and the one that maximises total surplus wins the right to settle.

4. Uniform-price settlement​

The winning solver settles the batch on-chain. Every trade in a batch clears at the same uniform price, which is what eliminates MEV by construction:

  • No front-running — there's no pending-order mempool race to win.
  • No sandwiching — the protocol does not reorder trades for value.
  • No priority-gas auction — execution order inside a batch is not for sale.

What Ophis runs​

ComponentDescription
FrontendA fork of the CoW Swap frontend with the natural-language intent layer added.
Intent-parser proxyA Cloudflare Pages Function in front of LibertAI Qwen 3.6 27B. See Intent API.
Self-hosted orderbookOphis runs CoW Protocol orderbook instances per chain (e.g. optimism-mainnet.ophis.fi). CoW-aligned chains use api.cow.fi.
Settlement contractsUnmodified CoW Protocol settlement contracts. See Security & audits.
Rebate indexerIndexes positive-slippage rebates that accrue to traders. See Fees & rebates.

Cross-chain via NEAR Intents​

Solana and Bitcoin are available as output destinations. When a swap targets one of them, NEAR Intents brokers the bridge: the user signs with their EVM wallet and provides a destination address on the target network. No second wallet, no manual bridging step.

Where to go next​