Frequently Asked Questions

Instead of manually checking prices across multiple DEXs, Odos does it for you. We identify the best price across the various DEXs and execute trades at the most favorable rates, oftentimes splitting the trade amount over many different pools and intermediate tokens in order to get the most output value for the user net of gas.

The safety of your funds when using a DEX aggregator depends on the security measures implemented by the platform. While DEX aggregators don’t hold your funds directly, the smart contracts they use to interact with different DEXs hold permissions to spend your funds.

The contract that users and customers directly interact with have been audited. Audit reports can be found on the documentation page for each version of our Smart Order Router contract.

Odos is a DEX aggregator, giving it the unique advantage of scanning the entire DeFi ecosystem to determine the optimal token swap route, assuring you receive the most favorable rate, even after considering gas costs. This means Odos may occasionally suggest a swap path that uses more gas, but only if it results in a significantly higher quantity of output tokens from the swap. Additionally, we’ve integrated Blocknative’s Gas API, which accesses the Mempool for accurate gas quotes, ensuring your transaction enters the next block with the least amount of slippage. This way, Odos ensures that customers are always getting the best possible swap.

An overview of why Odos costs more than a DEX

Odos uses Uniswap + Sushi + Dodo and many others as part of the path calculation, and directly interacts with the underlying pools.

Every interaction you do on chain requires gas to pay for the smart contract run time. Odos can be thought of in 3 parts:

1. The Router
2. The Executor
3. The DeFi Protocols

The router is the place that you initiate a swap with the path definition and other swap information. If something happens in any of the pools or too much slippage happens, your swap will revert and you will retain your full input amount. This guarantees you will always get back at least the minimum output amount, defined by the quote and your slippage tolerance.

The executor takes the path that we have calculated and executes it on chain. It then passes this back the router to have the final validation done.

The DeFi protocols are all of the DEX’s and RFQs we support on Odos. These are all composed into a single atomic transaction that is executed by the executor.

So with all of these checks and interactions, Odos will sometimes cost more gas than going directly to a DEX, but we will provide you the best rate possible across all DEXs, rather than just a single one. You also save gas by not having to approve tokens on all the DEXs individually and having an Odos exclusive feature of supporting swapping multiple tokens at once into a single token.

It occurs due to the changes in the price of an asset between the time of placing a trade and when it’s executed. It’s especially relevant in markets that are highly volatile, where the price can change rapidly in a short period.

Positive slippage occurs when a trade is executed at a better price than what was initially expected. For example, if a trader places an order to buy a token at $10, but the order is executed at $9, this represents positive slippage. In this case, the trader is getting more value than they initially expected.

Positive slippage can occur when the market price of an asset falls between the time an order is placed and when it’s executed. This can happen when there’s high market volatility or if a large order significantly changes the supply and demand dynamics. It’s worth noting that positive slippage is generally more likely to occur in less liquid markets.

To guard against big price changes during a trade, you can set a ‘slippage tolerance’ in the app’s settings. This is your maximum acceptable price change. If the price change is too big, the trade won’t happen. If it’s within your set limit, the trade goes through. Always double-check the minimum trade value to ensure you’re comfortable with the potential trade outcome.

We’ve partnered with BloxRoute to offer our users MEV protected endpoints which protects from Frontrunning. You can add this to your wallet by changing the RPC endpoint for the following chains.

We also support doing this directly from the dApp. This is accessible in the dApp settings.

Set your slippage in the dApp to something you feel comfortable with. Odos guarantees that you will receive at least the minimum amount you were quoted.

If you’re doing something like Stable to Stable swaps, set your slippage super low, to like 0.1%.

The router, which all transactions go through is Open Source and MIT licensed. Anybody can use the router to execute trades with their own executors, and they will inherit the security of Odos and enforce the minimum Received quotes. Refer to the documentation on the Router for how to use it for your own services.

The algorithm we have built to find these paths is patented and closed source. Our data collection is also closed source.

We share an office with Semiotic Labs. Our service is hosted in AWS, in the US West 2 region.