CoW Swap (/protocol) USPs

Asset Coverage

CoW Protocol is the most flexible in terms of supporting a wide range of assets, including long-tail assets, thanks to the diverse solver competition. Other intent-based DEXs struggle to support a wide range of tokens.

Delayed Execution

In crypto, there are many use cases that require defining the order (trade intent) parameters way in advance of the order actually being placed and executed. Some examples are multisigs with multiple signers around the world, DAOs that can take weeks to execute a decision.

Traditionally, this would require defining a price, slippage tolerance, and even defining a specific execution route in advance. But those parameters are likely to be stale by the time of execution.

CoW Swap allows users to define wide slippage tolerances while getting assurance of best execution and real-time route finding by solvers.
(We even offer additional tooling for defining dynamic slippage tolerance for users who are worried about setting wide slippage tolerance, called milkman.)

Intent-based Trading <3 DeFi

Traditionally, combining various DeFi interactions into a single atomic operation was possible only using the old paradigm of AMMs and aggregators (which gives you callData that you can use to construct a complex transaction).

For example, a collateral swap on a lending protocol:

1. Take a flashloan
2. Swap to the desired collateral
3. Deposit into lending protocol
4. Withdraw old collateral
5. Return flashloan

Today with Hooks, this is possible also with intent-based trading, so you can make these operations while getting best execution prices, and even if the execution is delayed.
Our competition doesn't have tooling that allows this use case.

Programmatic Orders

CoW Protocol offers programmatic orders - adding programmability of the conditions under which a trade intent can be executed. Combining it with Hooks allows creating autonomous trading strategies. For example:

• Maintain a constant 3x leverage on AAVE
• Under the condition that asset prices changed and my position is either under-leveraged or over-leveraged, a trade intent becomes active to maintain the fixed leverage that was defined
• This could also be used to create a liquidation guard for a lending position
• Lending protocols could even use it as a superior liquidation mechanism

Capturing Positive Price Deviations

Many times the price might move in your favor after you placed your order but before it got executed. CoW Protocol is best suited to capture this upside and keep this value with the user. Fusion and UniX can do it but with some limitations.

CoW AMM

The problem of LVR is still unsolved for traditional AMM LPs.
They constantly leak value to arbitraguers that exploit the AMM stale prices to perform CEX-DEX arb (or DEX-DEX arb).
CoW AMM is the only production ready solution for LPs to deploy assets passively while still capturing LVR value.

Batching

CoWs

CoW Protocol is the only DEX that leverages user orders as liquidity for matching other user orders. Unfortunately, this advantage is still not significant because the average amount of orders in a batch is still low (1-2 on average).

Execution optimisation

Even in lack of CoWs in a batch, the execution could be optimized for reduced gas consumption. If two users are both selling ETH for USDC, the solver can do only 1 swap with the AMM instead of two, saving gas costs.