What is Slippage?
The difference between a trade’s expected price and the price it actually executes at, driven by liquidity depth and volatility.
Slippage is the gap between the quoted price and the executed price of a swap. It happens because each trade moves the price along the AMM curve, and during the gap between submitting and confirming, other trades may also move the market.
Thin liquidity and high volatility — both common for new memecoins — cause large slippage. Traders set a slippage tolerance (e.g., 1%–15%); too low and the transaction fails, too high and bots can sandwich the trade for profit.
High required slippage on a token can itself be a warning sign of a manipulated or honeypot contract.
Related terms
Liquidity Pool
A smart-contract reserve of two paired tokens that lets people trade against it on a decentralized exchange.
Bonding Curve
A mathematical formula that sets a token’s price automatically based on its circulating supply — price rises as more tokens are bought.
DEX (Decentralized Exchange)
A peer-to-peer exchange where token swaps execute via smart contracts and liquidity pools instead of a central order book.