ep8 An Anatomy of CoW Swap: A Pioneer In Intent-Based Trading With MEV-Minimizing Approaches - Ft. Anna George
01:02:04 Share

If you are interested in DeFi and MEV, you might have heard of intent-based trading, frequent auction batch, solvers model, and Order Flow Auctions (OFAs). CoW Swap exemplifies the above innovations, organically incorporating them in a DEX product, ensuring optimal prices, the best routes, and MEV protection for end-users.

In this episode, Stephanie (@stephaniiee_eth) and Anna (@AnnaMSGeorge), cofounder of CoW Swap, engages in a detailed discussion, delving into intricacies of CoW Swap's product design. The conversation explores how the trading cycle in CoW Swap starting with collecting users' trading intents different from the traditional transaction life cycle. Anna shed lights on how the security of users' fund is guaranteed when outsourcing transaction execution to sophisticated solovers; how to bootstrap an effective competition among solvers, which is the key component that takes intent-based trading to the next level; what are the strategies to continuously incentivize solvers and keep them behaved at the meantime.

Their discussion extends to broader subjects such as how a new joiner perceives the presence of Uniswap, why CoW Swap embraces MEV minimization over MEV maximization, and why mitigation at dapp level makes sense.

--

Wen Building is supported by Antalpa Labs. Antalpha Labs is a Web3 developer community dedicated to push the boundaries of crypto space by supporting the innovation and success of open-source projects.(https://labs.antalpha.com/hackerhouse/))

--

Timestamps

01:15 Introduction of Anna and CoW Swap

03:48 Landscape of DEX Aggregators

05:56 What differentiates CoW Swap from other DEX Aggregators?

07:50 Trading cycle in CoW Swap

10:54 Any risk for users to delegating transations executions to solvers?

14:11 How CoW Swap brought intent-based trading to the next level?

17:26 How CoW Swap boostrapped the competition among solvers?

23:08 The sustainability of solvers' incentive policy

25:21 Is the solver set permissioned or permissionless?

29:22 The winning batches are sent through MEV blocker

31:34 How CoW Swap effectively enhances user welfare?

38:03 The first mover advantage of Uniswap

41:31 Comparison with Uniswap X

44:34 Why CoW Swap embraces MEV minimization over MEV maximization?

46:44 PBS is a result of MEV maximization?

50:10 Does mitigate MEV at dappp level make sense?

55:50 MEV blocker provides broader MEV protection

58:10 The roadmap of CoW Swap

--

Disclaimer: Any projects or tokens mentioned in Wen building don't construe any financial advice. This podcast is just for informational purposes.

--

Resources：

Cow Swap https://twitter.com/CoWSwap)

MEV Blocker https://mevblocker.io/)