defi-research

I find CoW Swap's "Order Surplus" concept pretty misleading—maybe even deceptive.

When calculating "surplus," CoW Swap compares the final trade execution against the limit price—which is just the minimum amount you're willing to accept (quoted amount * (1 - slippage tolerance)).

Example: you're quoted 10,000 USDC for selling 1 token A, with a 0.5% slippage tolerance. Your minimum buy amount becomes 9,950 USDC. If the trade executes at 9,975 USDC, CoW Swap claims you got a 25 USDC "surplus".

But in reality, you received 25 USDC less than what you were quoted. That's not a win—it's just better than the worst-case fallback. Calling that a "surplus" feels like spin.

Execution quality, defined as the difference between what you are quoted and what you get in your wallet, is such an underrated concept in DeFi, and users get screwed silently. 

At @matchaxyz  we spend a lot of time trying to nail execution quality, it’s a long term game

DEX aggregator by @0xproject. Search and trade over 22 million tokens across 130+ DEXs and 14 chains. It happens on matcha.xyz.

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