Execution that does not announce itself.
Flux takes an intent rather than an order. What you sign is a bound, not a route — and between signing and settlement, the size, the direction and the address behind them are closed.
An intent is a constraint, not an instruction.
A conventional swap tells the chain exactly what to do, in public, before it happens — which is the same thing as telling everyone else. An intent says what outcome is acceptable and leaves the route to be found afterwards, inside a batch that has already closed.
The distinction matters because of what it makes structurally impossible. The router never takes custody, and the bound you signed is enforced at settlement: if the fill is worse than the bound, the transaction reverts. Flux can fail to fill you. It cannot fill you worse than you agreed to.
What is hidden, and what is not
- Hidden until settlementOrder size, direction, and the address behind them.
- Hidden alwaysIntents that never fill — an unfilled intent is never published.
- Public after settlementThe settled trade. It is an on-chain transaction like any other.
- Public alwaysThe batch itself: that a batch cleared, and the net it sent to venue.
Anyone describing permanent on-chain invisibility is describing something this is not. The claim here is narrow on purpose: privacy during the window where leakage costs you money.
Four steps, and the reverting one is the point.
-
01
Sign
An EIP-712 intent carrying a worst-case price and a validity window. Nothing moves; nothing is published.
Off-chain -
02
Batch
Intents accumulate until the batch closes. Membership is fixed before any route is computed, so no intent can be sequenced around another.
Off-chain -
03
Net
Opposing intents clear against each other at the batch price. Only what does not cancel is routed out.
Off-chain -
04
Settle
One transaction moves everything, checking every signed bound as it goes. A single violated bound reverts the settlement.
On-chain
Equities, with the caveat attached to the quote.
An alloy has properties neither metal had alone — which is the appeal and also the catch. A tokenised share trades on a 24-hour chain while the thing it references does not.
You are not buying the share. An Alloy position is exposure to a token that references a share. What you own depends entirely on its issuer — their custody, their redemption terms, their jurisdiction, their solvency. Anneal routes to these instruments. Anneal does not issue them and cannot backstop them.
| Instrument | Reference venue | Venue clock | Quote | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xNVDA | NASDAQ | Shut | 184.22 | 142 bp |
| xAAPL | NASDAQ | Shut | 241.06 | 118 bp |
| xSPY | NYSE Arca | Shut | 612.40 | 61 bp |
| xTSLA | NASDAQ | Shut | 398.71 | 176 bp |
Illustrative quotes. Every venue reads Shut because the honest default for a demonstration is the state that costs a reader money — the reference market is closed most of the week, the quote is stale, and the spread widens to say so. A page that demonstrates itself only during market hours is demonstrating the easy case.
Route privately, settle publicly.
The execution path and the Ingot are the same protocol: one keeps the position liquid, the other keeps the order quiet.