On-chain trading is not ‘the AMM’ or ‘the order book.’ It is three settlement machines that price the same risk with different leakage and different failure modes.
A central limit order book is a sequence. Priority, queue position, and cancel/replace rules determine who trades. On-chain CLOBs inherit an extra constraint: the sequencer or the block producer is part of the matching engine, whether the UI admits it or not.
An AMM is a function. Reserves and a curve produce a price. The ‘book’ is the derivative of that function. Inventory is the pool. Adverse selection is LVR and the flow that only arrives when the curve is wrong. That is a different machine from a CLOB, even when both are called ‘DEX.’
Intents are a third machine. The user signs a constraint — asset in, asset out, limit, deadline — and a solver (or a network of them) competes to satisfy it. The trade still settles on-chain. The matching happens off the user’s wallet. That can reduce some MEV and introduce solver concentration, exclusive orderflow, and a new failure mode: the intent that never finds a solver.
A professional on-chain trading stack picks a machine per job. Hedging a perp against spot may want a CLOB. Passive inventory may want an AMM. A large swap may want an intent auction. Pretending one venue type is ‘the future of trading’ is marketing. The field already runs all three. The work is naming which one you are in before you size the ticket.
Desk notes on on-chain trading. Not investment, legal, or tax advice; not an offer of securities; not a live quote or a signal. Protocol and product studies live under Selected work.
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