Relay alternatives

Relay is an intent-based bridge: the user signs an order, a solver fronts the destination-chain funds and the cross-chain settlement happens off the user's critical path. The architecture compresses the user-felt latency because the quote does not have to scan many upstream venues; the solver inventory itself is the route. That same architecture exposes a different failure mode, which is solver depth: routes the solvers do not maintain inventory on either fail or fall back to a slower path, so coverage on long-tail pairs is narrower than a fan-out aggregator's. Fees are quoted inclusive of the solver spread rather than as a separate gas-plus-bridge breakdown. Teams that switch away usually do so for a chain pair the Relay solvers do not actively support, where a route that exists at all beats a fast quote that does not.