Despite its forward-facing platform, ShapeShift's sole reliance on the li.fi bridging protocol restricts its ability to offer users competitive rates and flexible routing options. The recent introduction of the Swapper multi-hop upgrade & new UI presents an opportunity to diversify our bridging protocol offerings, enhance user experience, and offer more competitive experience.
Swapper multi-hop upgrade ships and we’ll have a new UI. So, encouraging better bridging outside of li.fi we’lll need a couple of spikes and services.
Namely:
[Relay. Link -mini](https://shapeshift.notion.site/Relay-Link-mini-9bc4118d6fb64916985d5f0208f6c00c)
Squid Bridge (more ibc focused)
https://docs.zerodev.app/magic-account chain abstraction is a strong contender
Stargate placeholder (new Thorchain router has this so, doublecheck)
layerzero
Uni v4
intents can be used cross chain (you can see this working in across already. you could theoretically put in the destination outcome and fee is specified but the path is agnostic. the amount of time you can get “attacked/front-run” is much less. most other bridges have wrapping and more centralized authentication at the middle. )
design is to make the protocol mostly hooks and solvers on teh back but users just communicate intents.