What is Squid Coral?
Coral was Squid's first intent-based protocol, introduced as a faster and cheaper alternative to fully on-chain routing. It ran solver auctions (RFQ), batched similar transactions to reduce gas costs, and was the foundation for Squid's intent-based approach.
Coral used GMP protocols (primarily Axelar) to secure cross-chain settlement, and operated across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, and Linea.
From Coral to Squid Intents
Squid Intents is the evolution of Coral. It replaces the GMP-based settlement layer with Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), removing the dependency on any single third-party interoperability layer. This enables Squid to:
- Support non-EVM chains like XRPL and Bitcoin - no smart contracts needed
- Expand to new chains faster and more independently
- Achieve lower failure rates and near-minimum gas costs
The core model - solvers competing in auctions to fill user orders - carries forward from Coral into Squid Intents.