Aurora Labs CEO Declan Hannon: How Aurora Intents Is Simplifying On-Chain Funding for COCA’s 1M+ Users

Cross-chain funding has long been treated as a bridging problem — but Aurora Labs CEO Declan Hannon argues it is actually a fragmentation problem. That problem grows with every new chain a consumer product must support. In this interview, Hannon explains how Aurora Intents, built on the NEAR Intents protocol, addresses that fragmentation for COCA, a fintech platform serving more than a million users across 75 countries. He discusses persistent deposit addresses, Aurora’s solver-based routing model, and why reducing user-facing complexity — rather than adding more chains — will drive crypto adoption into mainstream finance.

Q1. How is the partnership between Aurora Intents and COCA a significant landmark for Aurora Labs in the simplification of on-chain funding?

On-chain funding was never really a bridging problem. It is a fragmentation problem. Every chain adds another funding path that a consumer product must support. COCA has over a million users across 75 countries who would otherwise face that process one chain at a time.

Aurora Intents provides one reusable address per user while managing that fragmentation underneath.

Q2. What important fundamental changes is Aurora Intents making to the overall consumer experience?

Put simply: no bridging, no waiting, no checking whether funds arrived, and no retrying if they did not. The user signs once, and our infrastructure manages the rest. It works like traditional banking, applied to something crypto has not delivered before.

Intents Deposits handles the process underneath. It provides a persistent deposit address, allowing a COCA user to top up their balance with USDC on Stellar, USDT on Tron, or funds from wherever they already sit, without using a bridge themselves.

Q3. How is COCA clients’ ability to fund accounts via a persistent deposit address beneficial?

A persistent deposit address removes a repeated decision from the funding process. A COCA user can save the address for a supported chain and use it again, while Aurora Intents handles the routing after the funds arrive.

The routing complexity should stay inside the infrastructure. Asking users to solve it on every deposit creates unnecessary friction and increases the risk of losing assets or making a mistake.

Q4. What is the role of the solver-based model in enhancing cross-chain liquidity access and execution?

Aurora Intents runs on the NEAR Intents protocol, which uses solvers that compete to fulfil each intent. COCA, or any other integrator, does not need a direct liquidity relationship on every chain.

Instead, the request is broadcast to the Solver network. Solvers compete to provide the best available execution. “Best” combines factors such as route cost, execution speed, and the requirements of the integrated Partner.

For COCA, this allows liquidity coverage to grow with the solver network. Its team does not need to maintain a separate liquidity route for every chain.

Q5. How is the elimination of blockchain complexity from the consumer interface crucial to expand the mainstream adoption of crypto products?

Adoption has not been slow because there is nothing to do on-chain. It has been slow because of what users must understand before they can do it: gas, bridges, and which chain an asset actually lives on.

None of that is the product. The risk of mistakes is high, and the cost of those mistakes can be enormous. That has created a roadblock to adoption, which products like Aurora Intents now help banks and financial companies like COCA address.

Q6. As Aurora Intents is widening intent-based execution beyond conventional DeFi utilities like liquidity routing and swaps, is user banking as well as payments the next key growth area?

Payments and account funding are important areas because users have little tolerance for routing decisions at those moments. Depositing, transferring, and spending from one place like COCA using Aurora Intents gives users an experience closer to what they know from neobanks like Revolut and Monzo than from traditional DeFi.

Intents Connect takes this further. It changes the basic instruction from “get funds to the right chain” to “get funds to the right product.” Users can stake on a chain where they have never held gas, enter a vault strategy on an ecosystem they have never bridged into, or rebalance a position across chains without holding the asset required by the destination.

Users should not need to know how to bridge, switch networks, or where the yield is located. That is how fintech companies already operate today.

Q7. How has your professional experience changed your approach to developing Aurora in line with crypto and enterprise technology?

Coming from fintech banking, I understand how important UX and simplicity are to users. They are not the only factors; cost and speed also matter.

Take Revolut, for example. It started as a travel card that users could sign up for and fully KYC in just 9 steps, compared with the 78 steps HSBC used to demand. Revolut made every part of banking simple and convenient, which is why it saw such big numbers.

I take the same approach to Aurora. Our Intents product removes the steps involved in bridging, routing, and managing gas and wallets. The user only needs to focus on what they came to do.

I believe fragmentation and silo’d networks have been core issues with this industry since I entered in 2021. At Aurora, our core mission is “making cross-chain convenient”. Aurora Intents delivers that.

Q8. What are the key challenges posed to Aurora Labs while broadening Aurora Intents to back more users, fintech entities, wallets, user applications, and chains?

A wallet like Solflare and a consumer app like COCA are not the same integration. They do not necessarily use the same infrastructure, either.

Wallet users expect crypto-native behaviour and tolerate more visibility. Fintech users often do not know they are interacting with a blockchain, and they will not forgive a failed transaction as readily as a crypto-native user might.

As a result, clients often need specific features or adjustments to integrate smoothly with more traditional technology stacks. That requires close collaboration with our clients and Partners.

We also need to build infrastructure and Products that support a wide range of use cases. Delivering that properly requires careful planning and flawless execution.

Q9. With reliability and security being the leading concerns for users when shifting assets across chains, how does Aurora Intents tackle this while maintaining a smooth user experience?

I think the biggest part of reliability and security is reducing the number of things a user must get right.

In a typical cross-chain transaction, users must choose a bridge, switch networks, manage gas across different chains, approve multiple transactions, and sometimes make another swap after the bridge is complete. Every step creates another opportunity for something to go wrong.

With Aurora Intents, we reverse that process. The user states what they want to achieve and signs that intent. The infrastructure then handles the complexity of reaching that outcome, including finding the appropriate execution path through the NEAR Intents network.

Users do not need to understand the underlying infrastructure. The interaction stays simple, while execution remains based on exactly what they authorised.

That is the goal: cross-chain should not feel like using five different pieces of infrastructure. It should feel like one transaction.