Cross-Chain Liquidity Discovery & Routing

Once an intent is expressed, the core challenge becomes execution: where should this intent be fulfilled to achieve the best possible outcome?

In a fragmented DeFi landscape, liquidity is spread across chains, rollups, and venues, each with different depths, fees, latencies, and execution constraints. Relying on a single chain or a predefined route almost always leads to suboptimal execution.

EtherlinkDAO addresses this by treating liquidity discovery as a global problem.

Rather than assuming liquidity must be local, the protocol continuously evaluates available liquidity across multiple execution environments. This includes comparing:

• available depth across pools and venues

• expected slippage for a given trade size

• fee structures and execution costs

• execution latency and settlement constraints

The goal is not to find a route, but the optimal route at the moment of execution.

Routing in EtherlinkDAO is therefore dynamic. Paths are not hardcoded, and liquidity is not assumed to be static. An intent can be resolved through a single venue or composed across multiple chains if that results in better execution.

A key design choice is that liquidity does not need to be moved or unified physically. EtherlinkDAO does not require assets to be bridged into a shared pool or consolidated under a single protocol. Liquidity remains native to its execution environment, while Etherlink coordinates access to it.

This approach avoids several structural issues:

• unnecessary capital migration

• duplicated liquidity incentives

• additional bridge-induced risk

Instead, EtherlinkDAO focuses on coordination rather than custody.

From the user’s perspective, routing is invisible. From the protocol’s perspective, it is an optimization problem solved at execution time, based on real conditions rather than assumptions.

This separation allows EtherlinkDAO to scale naturally with the ecosystem. As new chains, rollups, or venues emerge, they can be integrated into the discovery and routing process without altering the user experience.

Liquidity remains fragmented by nature but execution no longer has to be.