Aurora Intents routed $19M into Zcash NFT auction

Aurora Intents has processed more than $19 million across 1,718 swaps for the zkSNARKS auction, accounting for over half of the assets converted and deposited into the ZEC-denominated sale.

Summary

• More than $19 million of the auction's $36.94 million submitted volume passed through Aurora Intents.
• USDC accounted for 27% of Aurora's routed volume, while native ETH contributed 21%.
• NEAR Intents solvers converted assets from several chains into ZEC at rates approved before signing.
• Zcash shielded the destination-side bids, but source-chain transfers remained publicly visible.

Aurora Intents handled half of the auction volume

Aurora Labs CEO Declan Hannon told crypto.news that Aurora Intents processed just over $19 million of the $36.94 million deposited for the zkSNARKS auction, with the conversions completed through 1,718 swaps.

"It's the value, the dollar value of assets converted into ZEC. Aurora Intents processed over 50% of the total volume swapped and deposited for the auction. Just over $19M out of $36.94M moved through us across 1718 swaps," Hannon said.

The figure measures the value routed through Aurora's cross-chain infrastructure, rather than the number of bids or completed NFT purchases. Some of the assets were attached to unsuccessful bids and later became eligible for refunds under the auction rules.

Auction results showed that participants submitted 16,971 bids for 8,000 available zkSNARKS assets. Total submitted volume reached 25,305 ZEC, worth approximately $36.94 million at the time, while the sale cleared at 1.5 ZEC per asset.

Under the sealed, uniform-price format, bidders placed offers without seeing the full order book. The 8,000 successful bidders paid the same clearing price, regardless of the maximum amount entered in their original bids.

Multiplying the clearing price by the 8,000 allocations gives 12,000 ZEC in completed sales. Approximately 13,309 ZEC, valued at about $19.43 million at the auction's reported exchange rate, was allocated for refunds to unsuccessful bidders or for amounts submitted above the final price.

Stablecoins led cross-chain ZEC conversions

Stablecoins supplied much of the value that Aurora Intents converted into ZEC, according to Hannon. USDC alone accounted for 27% of the funds routed through the system and arrived from four networks, with Solana contributing the largest portion.

Native ETH ranked as the next-largest individual source asset, representing 21% of Aurora's auction volume. Participants could also enter with BTC, SOL, BNB, and other supported assets rather than acquiring ZEC through a separate exchange transaction.

"Most people bidding on a ZEC-denominated auction don't already hold ZEC and did not want to go buy some just to bid. Aurora Intents powered the cross-chain swaps," Hannon said.

The source-asset mix placed stablecoins at the center of the conversion flow while also showing demand from users holding assets on other networks. Instead of bridging an asset manually, finding a ZEC market and making another transfer, each bidder could request a specified ZEC output through one transaction instruction.

Cross-chain access has also become part of NFT marketplace competition. In September, OpenSea added Solana NFTs to its OS2 platform, allowing users to trade supported collections within a marketplace that already covers more than 25 networks.

Stablecoin issuers have taken a similar multichain route. In June, Ripple expanded RLUSD access to more than 40 networks through Wormhole, including Base, Optimism, Ink, Unichain and the XRP Ledger EVM sidechain.

NEAR Intents solvers locked the quoted ZEC output

For the zkSNARKS auction, a bidder signed an intent stating how much ZEC the transaction should produce and the maximum source-asset amount the bidder was willing to spend. NEAR Intents solvers then competed to fill the request at the quoted rate, Hannon said.

"The user signs one intent---bid this much in ZEC up to the amount specified. Now the solver network, NEAR Intents, comes into play. Solvers compete to fill it at that quoted rate."

According to Hannon, the rate was fixed before the user signed the transaction, while the quote included a minimum ZEC output. A market move beyond the approved range caused the transaction to fail instead of filling at a worse price.

"If the market moves past it, the trade simply doesn't execute. If anything fails, funds return automatically to a refund address supplied up front," he added.

Although the setup removed post-signature slippage, it did not remove every dependency from the transaction path. Hannon said users relied on the NEAR Intents settlement contract, market makers issuing quotes and bridges holding the underlying source assets.

Settlement took place through the NEAR Intents 1Click Swap API, which Hannon said has processed more than $30 billion. He added that 1Click did not take custody of user funds during the process, while Aurora neither acted as a counterparty nor handled the assets directly.

Non-custodial execution does not eliminate smart-contract, bridge, or liquidity-provider exposure. In Hannon's description, each component still performed a specific role before the converted ZEC reached the auction.

For U.S. users, cross-chain execution does not settle whether an NFT sale or marketplace activity falls under federal securities rules. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission closed its OpenSea investigation in February 2025 without filing charges, but the decision did not create a blanket exemption for NFT issuers or trading platforms. The legal treatment of an asset can still depend on its sale terms, promised benefits, and promotion.

Zcash privacy started after source-chain activity

While the auction used Zcash for private settlement, Hannon drew a line between the shielded ZEC transaction and the activity that occurred before assets reached the network.

"Zcash's shielded pool does what it says on the destination side; the bid itself isn't visible," Hannon said.

"What I won't do is tell you the whole path is invisible, because the leg before it lands on a public chain, same as it would if you sent that asset anywhere else."

A user entering with ETH, SOL, BNB, or a stablecoin first initiated a transaction on the asset's source network. Public blockchains record wallet addresses, transferred amounts, and transaction times, leaving the initial leg visible even when the resulting ZEC bid enters a shielded pool.

On the Zcash side, shielded transfers use zero-knowledge proofs to verify that a transaction is valid without publishing the sender, recipient or transferred amount. The protection applies to the shielded ZEC transaction, not automatically to every preceding action on another blockchain.

The auction offered 8,000 assets from a 10,000-item zkSNARKS collection. Project information assigned another 1,000 assets to early Snarklist participants and reserved 1,000 for grants, contributors, artists, and the team.

Following the sale, on-chain investigator ZachXBT alleged that the project lacked practical utility and compared its structure with previous NFT "money grabs," according to ChainCatcher. The report said he questioned the roughly $17 million retained after refunds, as well as the collection's team allocation and royalty structure.