The Next Era of Smart Apps, Powered by LI.FI

The Beginning of the App Era

Cast your mind back to a time before smartphones and the wider popularity of the internet. Internet technology was fragmented. Your telephone is something you used to call people from, your computer was how you emailed your colleagues, and your local high street is where you would do your shopping. 

A single invention disrupted this way of life: the iPhone’s App Store.

Apple debuted the iPhone in 2007 and disrupted the way humans interface with the world around them ever since. Consumers could now call, email, and shop from the comfort of their iPhone — the App Store became the marketplace, and the internet became the market. 

Soon after, hundreds of apps flooded the market, and the App Store expanded from just 500 apps in 2008 to millions by the 2020s. In doing so, it solved the discovery problem for users: any app was only a few clicks away. From games and spreadsheets to home-delivery apps like Amazon, users could easily download whatever fit their needs.

The DeFi market now finds itself at a similar inflection point.

DeFi began as Bitcoin, then had its own ‘App Store’ moment with the creation of Ethereum. Today, millions of apps are on the market, and thus we are presented with the same question: how can user discovery be better shaped amongst these markets?

And the answer, just like in the case of the internet, is in discovery-led personalisation to make it easier for users to find apps for their needs.

The next era of DeFi requires applications that coordinate markets on behalf of users. This is the smart app thesis.

What is a Smart App?

Smart Apps are apps that personalise and adapt the in-app experience to each user. Instead of having to make more choices, smart apps offer a user experience around the question of how to make better choices. 

As onchain markets continue to fragment and multiply, the logic of navigating them cannot live on users anymore. It shifts to agents, software, and applications that can compute all options and create the best one for the users, based on their preferences.

This is what Smart Apps are.

They leverage infrastructure to help users interface with markets: instead of having to make decisions about chains, routes or even assets, every user action becomes about the outcome and nothing in between.

Where traditional applications lock users into a rigid decision-making matrix, Smart Apps provide users with total freedom to move and act on markets anywhere. This is the future of applications in crypto. This is the future of DeFi.

How LI.FI Powers Smart Apps

Smart Apps require infrastructure that is composable, programmable, and market-native. LI.FI is a Smart App stack: enabling apps to personalise markets, compose actions, and personalise outcomes across the universal market of crypto.

LI.FI began its mission to address fragmentation in 2021 as a response to the growing number of chains, protocols and assets within the blockchain industry.

LI.FI’s introduction of LI.FI Composer and soon LI.FI Intents marks the beginning of a Smart App era where user actions collapse into a single transaction - every step required in the background to make the outcome possible for users becomes abstracted, and the only thing that matters is the actions, such as buy, earn, stake, lend, etc. 

These benefits extend to teams like:

Protocol Teams

Protocol teams can leverage LI.FI’s stack: aggregation, presets, and Composer, to expand user accessibility and adoption.

Through LI.FI’s existing APIs and distribution, protocols can be reached from anywhere in DeFi with optimal pricing and minimal integration overhead. On top of this access layer, LI.FI Composer allows teams to define native market actions and extend existing integrations into composed workflows, enabling multi-step, multi-chain interactions to become seamless.

Wallet & DeFi Platforms

LI.FI enables wallets and platforms to evolve from simple interfaces into Smart Apps.

LI.FI’s routing, quoting, and preset systems power fast, low-cost access to markets, including optimised stablecoin flows. Composer then turns this access layer into an action layer, enabling platforms to design intent-driven campaigns and native flows (e.g. offering onchain incentives) that reduce friction while expanding the breadth of onchain operations they can support.

Earn Products (e.g. Jumper Earn)

LI.FI Composer powers Earn products for Smart Apps like Jumper by enabling one-click UX, intent-based composition, pre-execution simulation, and multi-chain call bundling. 

Yield products can use LI.FI’s aggregation layer and stablecoin infrastructure to source and enter markets efficiently from any starting position.

LI.FI Composer builds on this by orchestrating the full lifecycle of an earn action — swaps, bridges, approvals, and deposits — into a single user interaction. For example, users with assets on Base can deposit into Aave on Arbitrum in one click.

Stablecoin Issuers

Stablecoin issuers can leverage LI.FI’s stablecoin API preset to personalise token lists for cheaper quoting and distribution across chains.

Composer extends this by turning onboarding and conversion flows into native market actions. Perena is one of the first projects to use LI.FI Composer in this way, powering one-click onboarding into USD* by allowing users to move directly from USDC into USD*.

Today marks the start of better money movement, enabled by Smart Apps, and powered by LI.FI: better flows, more efficient capital, all in one click.

To see the first-ever Smart App in action, visit: https://jumper.exchange/earn

FAQ: The Next Era of Smart Apps, Powered by LI.FI