Price impact: moving the curve yourself
Price impact is the change in a pool’s price caused by your own trade. Because an AMM prices from the reserve ratio, removing tokens shifts that ratio and worsens your rate as the trade fills. It is a deterministic function of trade size relative to pool depth — big trade in a shallow pool, big impact.
Slippage: quoted versus executed
Slippage is the difference between the price you were quoted and the price you actually got, once price impact and any market movement between quote and execution are included. Wallets let you set a slippage tolerance; if the market moves beyond it, the swap reverts to protect you.
How to read it before you trade
The practical defence is liquidity depth: the deeper the pool, the smaller the impact for a given size. CoinVerum’s token pages include a scoped V2 constant-product estimate; concentrated-liquidity, Curve and Balancer execution still requires a live router quote. Read more about how DEX prices move.
- Split large orders across pools or over time to reduce impact.
- Check liquidity depth, not just the headline price.
- Set a sane slippage tolerance — too high invites sandwich attacks.
Frequently asked questions
Are slippage and price impact the same thing?
No. Price impact is the pool-price move your trade causes; slippage is the total gap between quoted and executed price, which includes impact plus any market movement.
What is a safe slippage tolerance?
For liquid pairs, a fraction of a percent is often enough. Very high tolerances expose you to sandwich attacks, where bots trade around your transaction.
Why did my swap fail?
If the price moved beyond your slippage tolerance before your transaction confirmed, the DEX reverts the swap so you are not filled at a worse price.