What is slippage?

Slippage is the difference between a trade’s expected price and the actual price at which the trade is executed. It occurs because of a lag, since validation and transaction completion take some time, and the exchange rate might change within this period.

You can adjust the settings to set a slippage tolerance, thus determining the percentage of negative price changes you’re ready to take. Otherwise, the transaction will not be completed. In this case, you will still have to pay the transaction cost, but the swap will not be executed.

Slippage can be both positive when price change is favorable for users and negative when price change is unfavorable for users.

What is positive slippage?

Positive slippage for a buyer occurs when a buy order is executed at a price that is lower than the expected price, resulting in a better-than-expected price for the buyer.

However, slippage is generally more common in volatile markets, where prices can move quickly, and liquidity is limited. In more stable markets with high liquidity, slippage is less likely to occur.

What is negative slippage?

Negative slippage is the opposite: It occurs when a buy order is executed at a price that is higher than the expected price, resulting in a worse-than-expected price for the buyer.

To reduce the risk of experiencing significant negative slippage during a swap, you can adjust the slippage tolerance in the swap settings.