Paraswap slippage checks for failed swaps and lower output
Paraswap slippage is the difference between a quoted token amount and the amount a swap delivers. A Market swap can return less than its quote while meeting its minimum output. Output below that threshold makes the transaction revert. The protocol now uses the Velora name, following its April 3, 2025 rebrand announcement. Market transactions and Delta orders handle execution differently. Start with the swap’s status and recipient balance before treating a stale wallet display or an unfinished order as a pricing loss.
For an unchanged SELL Market quote, increasing tolerance lowers the minimum output without improving the quoted exchange rate.
A Missing Balance and an Unfinished Swap
Transaction status separates a wallet display mismatch from an unfinished swap, because only completed execution creates a received amount to compare with the quote. A successful Market swap receipt confirms execution, whereas an approval receipt establishes spending permission. Pending transactions provide no final output for a slippage calculation. A completed swap can deliver tokens to a designated beneficiary, so match the receiving address, destination token and chain to the trade. If the recipient’s on-chain token amount confirms delivery, a stale wallet view needs refreshing. An unchanged display alone cannot establish a pricing loss.
The transaction hash and public transfer details identify the relevant execution without exposing wallet secrets.
Quoted Output and Minimum Received
For a SELL Market swap, quoted output estimates what the selected route will deliver, while minimum received sets the lower output boundary that the transaction enforces.
Expected Destination Amount
The expected destination amount belongs to a particular input amount and route. Comparing a quote for one trade size with a receipt for another produces a misleading percentage. Keep the destination token and units consistent, including decimal precision. A quote expresses expected output, not an already-received balance.
Minimum Destination Amount
The conceptual relationship is M = Q × (1 - t). Q is the quoted destination amount used to build the SELL swap, t is tolerance expressed as a decimal fraction and M is the minimum destination amount. Higher tolerance lowers M for an unchanged Q. The built transaction supplies the exact threshold in raw token units, so its integer amount governs execution.
Fresh Quotes Before New Transactions
Quote age matters because Market pricing describes liquidity when the aggregator constructs a route, while later execution faces the conditions that exist on-chain. The
priceRoute
is stateless and unsigned; it reserves no liquidity or future price. Approval delays and time spent reviewing a transaction can leave the original estimate behind changing markets.
A fresh quote may change the route, expected output or both. A new transaction must use the returned
priceRoute
unchanged during building. Raising tolerance around an old estimate accepts a wider output range without refreshing that estimate. Reviewing a new quote remains a reversible stopping point before another approval, order signature or swap submission.
A Completed Fill and a Reverted Fill
An apparent shortfall from 1,248 quoted output-token units needs a completed swap receipt before it can count as slippage. All amounts, tolerances and potential fills in this example are hypothetical. Assume a SELL Market swap with sufficient source funds and allowance to Augustus v6.2. The destination token can represent the decimal places shown, and both comparisons use the same fee treatment.
At a tolerance of 0.8%, the minimum is 1,248 × (1 - 0.008) = 1,238.016 output-token units.
A Fill Above the Minimum
A settled fill of 1,240.512 units exceeds that minimum. The recipient gets less than the quote, yet the swap passes its output check. The shortfall is 7.488 units, or 0.6% of the quoted amount. A matching successful receipt and beneficiary credit establish the completed outcome.
A Fill Below the Minimum
An attempted fill of 1,236.768 units falls below the minimum, so the Market swap reverts. That attempted output is not a received balance. First distinguish a confirmed revert from a pending transaction; while the transaction remains pending, its eventual outcome is unresolved.
Holding the quote fixed, a tolerance of 1.1% lowers the minimum to 1,234.272 units. The previously rejected fill would pass the output check if the other execution requirements hold. It would deliver 0.9% less than the quote. A real retry needs a fresh quote and a newly built transaction, which may change these figures. Stop before signing if the revised minimum is unacceptable. Comparing Delta instead requires a Delta quote and its own funding requirements.
Route Depth and Price Movement
Route depth matters because Augustus may execute several liquidity-pool calls within one Market swap, and each hop contributes to the route’s expected output and gas requirement.
Intermediary tokens connect pools when the selected route uses multiple hops, and splitting across DEX liquidity can also affect execution. More hops do not automatically mean a worse quote; the aggregator evaluates paths across supported venues. The relevant comparison uses the returned route and its estimates.
Price impact describes the trade’s own effect on pool pricing. A quote can already reflect that effect for the requested size. Slippage measures the later difference between expected and executed output. Widening tolerance does not undo price impact that the quoted exchange rate already contains.
All hops in an Augustus v6.2 Market swap complete in one transaction or revert together. A smaller quoted input can change price impact and routing. It creates a different trade, so compare its unit rate and expected output on that new basis.
Why Can a Swap Revert Within the Slippage Tolerance?
A Market swap can revert despite an acceptable price when its spender lacks sufficient allowance or a contract call along the route fails.
Spending Permission
An ERC-20 source needs sufficient balance and authorization for Augustus v6.2. An approval to Delta authorizes a different spender. Check the network and allowance against the actual Market spender when an insufficient-allowance error appears. Increasing tolerance cannot repair that permission.
Route Execution
An unrecovered failure along the route reverts the whole Market transaction even when the planned minimum looks acceptable; the reported contract error can identify a separate cause. Treating every failure as excessive slippage can lead to repeated attempts with the same execution problem.
Changed Execution Modes
A
mode=ALL
quote returns either a
delta
or
market
block, which determines the execution requirements. An integration that changes modes must check the spender again; a confirmed allowance for the old mode does not authorize the new one.
Positive Slippage and Recipient Output
Positive slippage means execution improves on the quote, while the recipient’s credited improvement follows the integration’s surplus settings and the applicable settlement path. Surplus can accrue to the protocol or integration, and a partner using takeSurplus can redirect its surplus share to the user by enabling
isSurplusToUser
. A gross improvement alone therefore does not establish the beneficiary’s credited amount.
A partner fee included in the quote request affects the displayed quote. Identify whether the compared amount represents route output or beneficiary output before labelling the gap slippage. The relevant surplus setting belongs to the integration that builds the trade. Counting a configured allocation as price deterioration confuses different deductions.
Delta Pricing and Failed Settlement
Delta uses a signed order and a Portikus solver auction, so its pending state and settlement result require different interpretation from a broadcast Market transaction. Signing an ordinary ERC-20 order spends no settlement gas. A failed source-chain settlement does not pull the ERC-20 source funds, and the order may fail or expire. Any required on-chain approval remains a separate action.
A native-source order can require a paid deposit-and-pre-sign transaction, which holds the native asset as dETH. The
AWAITING_SIGNATURE
state can identify missing deposit authorization, not a slippage loss. An existing sufficient dETH balance permits the ordinary off-chain signing flow without a new deposit.
A crosschain order can remain
BRIDGING
after source-chain settlement succeeds. Destination delivery is asynchronous, and
COMPLETED
establishes the observed destination fill. Bridge timing and fees follow the selected route. A source-chain transaction alone does not establish the destination amount that the beneficiary received.
Resting Prices and Scheduled Fills
A SELL Delta limit order’s
limitAmount
sets its minimum destination amount, so an unfilled target does not establish realized slippage. The order rests until a solver can satisfy its price constraint, subject to its deadline and funding requirements. Compare a completed fill with the signed constraint when diagnosing its output.
A TWAP, or time-weighted average price order, settles eligible slices over time, and its status response distinguishes expected totals from executed totals. An unfinished schedule can therefore show less executed output without indicating a pricing shortfall. When a native-source TWAP expires, any unspent balance remains as withdrawable dETH without an automatic refund. That remaining source balance differs from destination tokens received.
Token Units Behind the Final Difference
A received-output comparison needs matching token units and the same accounting basis before its percentage means anything. Raw contract amounts require the destination token’s decimal precision. Divide the raw amount by 10 raised to that decimal count to obtain token units. A USD valuation or pending output estimate cannot substitute for a settled token amount.
For a SELL comparison, output deterioration is 100 × (Q - R) / Q percent, where R is received output on the same basis as Q. A negative result indicates improvement. Percentage and basis-point settings use different scales, so interpret the interface’s stated unit before building. One basis point equals 0.01 percentage points.
Paraswap slippage: what people ask
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Does a Very Low Tolerance Prevent Sandwich Attacks?
- A low tolerance limits acceptable output deterioration without making a public-mempool Market transaction private. A sandwich attack can affect execution while leaving output above the permitted minimum. Delta uses a private solver auction to address that exposure through its execution design.
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Are Gas Costs Part of the Paraswap Slippage Percentage?
- A token-output slippage percentage excludes a network fee that the wallet pays separately. It compares quoted and received destination-token amounts on the same basis. Market quotes also contain gas estimates and USD values, which help assess execution cost. Mixing those values into the token-output calculation changes what the percentage measures.
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Which Amount Does a BUY Limit Order Constrain?
- A BUY Delta limit order’s limitAmount caps the source-token input for the requested purchase. That amount describes what the order may spend, while the destination amount describes what it seeks to receive. Interpret the cap using the source token’s raw units and decimal precision; the SELL minimum-output calculation describes a different direction.
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Before Retrying a Market Swap, Will Changing Gas Settings Refresh Its Quote?
- Changing gas settings does not replace the route and output threshold already encoded in a Market transaction. Gas settings concern network execution, while priceRoute supplies the routing plan used during building. A refreshed price requires a new quote and rebuilt swap calldata.
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Can Slippage Settings Cause an ERC-20 Approval Transaction to Fail?
- An ERC-20 approval has no swap-output threshold, so slippage tolerance does not govern its success. Some tokens reject an allowance change from one non-zero value to another and require a zero allowance first. That token-specific approval behavior concerns spending permission. It differs from a swap reverting because its destination amount falls below the minimum.
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What Does REFUNDING Mean for a Crosschain Slippage Complaint?
- REFUNDING means the crosschain refund has not yet reached a verified final state. The bridge leg failed or expired, and the order system is checking the actual refund transaction. REFUNDED marks the completed refund. Available refunds entries identify the token, chain and raw amount, which may differ from the destination token originally quoted.
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Is a Small Trade Automatically Eligible for Market Fallback?
- Trade size alone does not determine whether a Delta request can fall back to Market. Only mode=ALL allows that fallback when Delta cannot price the trade, provided Market has a usable route. An explicit mode=DELTA request fails when no Delta route exists. Market cannot supply the fallback for a crosschain pair that it does not serve.