CoW (Coincidence of Wants) Swap is a DEX aggregator built on top of the Cow Protocol originally spinning out of Gnosis. Cowswap covers all digital assets traded on EVM chains supporting most ERC20 tokens and is stewarded by the CowDAO. It is one of the first trading interfaces to offer MEV protection and the opportunity for positive slippage whilst still providing traders trustless, gasless, and efficient p2p and on-chain liquidity source trading.

MEV-related risks such as sandwich attacks and front-running can occur for any trade on the Ethereum blockchain and is driven by price variation on any one asset at the time of block building due to arbitrary intra-block transaction ordering and in/exclusions. Cowswap offers direct p2p trade matching and settlement and uniform clearing prices through the use of “solvers” just-in-time competing for optimal order flow batch-building (as opposed to sequential ordering). This dramatically mitigates inequities resulting in a fairer way of trading on Ethereum and a virtual guarantee of lowest prices. In addition to direct p2p trading Cowswap is a meta-aggregator that taps into DEXes such as Uni v2, Uni v3, Balancer, Balancer v2, Sushiswap and other aggregators such as Paraswap, Matcha, and 1inch.

Cowswap retains the benefits of both p2p and liquidity pool trading and then overlays trade execution with decentralised batch auctions that result in price optimisation - structurally improving trading prices. This is a break-through and much-needed trading feature as MEV attacks become more coordinated, sophisticated, and impactful. Cowswap comes at an opportune market-time as the industry increases its focus on and awareness of MEV.

Cowswap is the only protocol that uses batch auctioning as a unique circumvention mechanism around MEV searchers and one of the only trading interfaces with a streamlined and complete trading experience, if not the best, that incorporates all these features. At a high-level the competition can be grouped into the following:

• MEV protection/minimisation: middleware services such as Automata's Conveyer and Shutter Network, protocols such as Vega, and in-app build-outs such as Sushi Guard on Sushiswap use mechanisms that are opaque and more focused on privacy enhancement. MEV protection solutions are difficult and services such as Chainlink’s Fair Sequencing Service (FSS) in collaboration with Arbitrum which was announced in 2020 along with these other listed proposals (with the exception of Conveyer) are still yet to go live.

• Batch auction trading: no other protocols are employing this technique except Gnosis Protocol v2 and Balancer. Cowswap is the alpha of GPv2 and GPv2 will merge with Balancer v2 into the Balancer-Gnosis-Protocol.

• Cowswap continues to compete for market share against traditional p2p buy/sell, AMMs, RFQs, and aggregators for users but are not in the same category since Cowswap provides their services and more.

Cowswap benefits from four years of incubation within the well-established Gnosis protocol and emerges with hallmarks indicative of a significant chance at venture-scale returns. We see protection against evermore sophisticated MEV searching as an integral part of any DeFi trading service’s core set of offerings for its traders for both security purposes and pricing competition. Cowswap is one of the front-running players in this space. Other things that get us excited here:

• A strong brand and devoted community of users/participants. Cow protocol was spun off through a community proposal and took along with it 5k+ members and $23m in funding. Co-founder Anna George has emphasised the importance of cow as both a meme and a cultural shift for users when it was still part of Gnosis as part of a new community identity.

• The team has deployed meaningful next-gen tech that serves and adds true value to all DeFi traders - a massive market.

• A clear vision and defined roadmap for the future of the business with pre-arranged partnerships for expanding its existing revenue stream. Cowswap is steadily merging into what will become the Balancer-Gnosis-Protocol. As the protocol and business grows so will users benefit from exponential network effects (e.g. a larger p2p pool for trade matching). The protocol holds a long-term vision of becoming the core settlement layer for decentralised trading.

• Strong founding team that has also hired well. The team has a verified reputation for being hardworking with a deep technical understanding of the market and its customers. They are relentless about performing research and innovating new marketing, business, and tech initiatives. Anna George and Felix Leupold are senior ex-Gnosis and the DAO is also active and well-organised.

• The interface has received support from and is used by significant crypto investors and players including 1kx, Delphi Ventures, 0x Labs, Hasu, and Cobie.

• The protocol subsidises a portion of the gas costs whilst the protocol fee is currently switched off for users. This may affect future pricing offering/performance.

• The protocol is early and has a few limitations: (1) requires a minimum order size to incentivise solvers (2) does not support some ERC20 tokens (3) requires direct and active community participation in order to function (e.g. solvers).

Open verification questions: (1) If Cow protocol fees were turned on and in the case an external liquidity source is used - does Cowswap still result in best priced transactions for the user? Presumably only in p2p batch processing would the user experience all benefits; so in the case of leveraging external liquidity does Cowswap cost the same to users or more (which would be punitive)? (2) What are examples of solver methodologies that technically allow batching to outrun MEV once executed on-chain? Understanding this will confirm undoubtedly Cowswap’s value-add aside from direct p2p settlements (though through offering both using Cowswap is still advantageous).(3) Shape and details of the round.

CoW (Coincidence of Wants) Swap is a DEX aggregator built on top of the Cow Protocol originally spinning out of Gnosis. Cowswap covers all digital assets traded on EVM chains supporting most ERC20 tokens and is stewarded by the CowDAO. It is one of the first trading interfaces to offer MEV protection and the opportunity for positive slippage whilst still providing traders trustless, gasless, and efficient p2p and on-chain liquidity source trading.

MEV-related risks such as sandwich attacks and front-running can occur for any trade on the Ethereum blockchain and is driven by price variation on any one asset at the time of block building due to arbitrary intra-block transaction ordering and in/exclusions. Cowswap offers direct p2p trade matching and settlement and uniform clearing prices through the use of “solvers” just-in-time competing for optimal order flow batch-building (as opposed to sequential ordering). This dramatically mitigates inequities resulting in a fairer way of trading on Ethereum and a virtual guarantee of lowest prices. In addition to direct p2p trading Cowswap is a meta-aggregator that taps into DEXes such as Uni v2, Uni v3, Balancer, Balancer v2, Sushiswap and other aggregators such as Paraswap, Matcha, and 1inch.

Cowswap retains the benefits of both p2p and liquidity pool trading and then overlays trade execution with decentralised batch auctions that result in price optimisation - structurally improving trading prices. This is a break-through and much-needed trading feature as MEV attacks become more coordinated, sophisticated, and impactful. Cowswap comes at an opportune market-time as the industry increases its focus on and awareness of MEV.

Cowswap is the only protocol that uses batch auctioning as a unique circumvention mechanism around MEV searchers and one of the only trading interfaces with a streamlined and complete trading experience, if not the best, that incorporates all these features. At a high-level the competition can be grouped into the following:

• MEV protection/minimisation: middleware services such as Automata's Conveyer and Shutter Network, protocols such as Vega, and in-app build-outs such as Sushi Guard on Sushiswap use mechanisms that are opaque and more focused on privacy enhancement. MEV protection solutions are difficult and services such as Chainlink’s Fair Sequencing Service (FSS) in collaboration with Arbitrum which was announced in 2020 along with these other listed proposals (with the exception of Conveyer) are still yet to go live.

• Batch auction trading: no other protocols are employing this technique except Gnosis Protocol v2 and Balancer. Cowswap is the alpha of GPv2 and GPv2 will merge with Balancer v2 into the Balancer-Gnosis-Protocol.

• Cowswap continues to compete for market share against traditional p2p buy/sell, AMMs, RFQs, and aggregators for users but are not in the same category since Cowswap provides their services and more.

Cowswap benefits from four years of incubation within the well-established Gnosis protocol and emerges with hallmarks indicative of a significant chance at venture-scale returns. We see protection against evermore sophisticated MEV searching as an integral part of any DeFi trading service’s core set of offerings for its traders for both security purposes and pricing competition. Cowswap is one of the front-running players in this space. Other things that get us excited here:

• A strong brand and devoted community of users/participants. Cow protocol was spun off through a community proposal and took along with it 5k+ members and $23m in funding. Co-founder Anna George has emphasised the importance of cow as both a meme and a cultural shift for users when it was still part of Gnosis as part of a new community identity.

• The team has deployed meaningful next-gen tech that serves and adds true value to all DeFi traders - a massive market.

• A clear vision and defined roadmap for the future of the business with pre-arranged partnerships for expanding its existing revenue stream. Cowswap is steadily merging into what will become the Balancer-Gnosis-Protocol. As the protocol and business grows so will users benefit from exponential network effects (e.g. a larger p2p pool for trade matching). The protocol holds a long-term vision of becoming the core settlement layer for decentralised trading.

• Strong founding team that has also hired well. The team has a verified reputation for being hardworking with a deep technical understanding of the market and its customers. They are relentless about performing research and innovating new marketing, business, and tech initiatives. Anna George and Felix Leupold are senior ex-Gnosis and the DAO is also active and well-organised.

• The interface has received support from and is used by significant crypto investors and players including 1kx, Delphi Ventures, 0x Labs, Hasu, and Cobie.

• The protocol subsidises a portion of the gas costs whilst the protocol fee is currently switched off for users. This may affect future pricing offering/performance.

• The protocol is early and has a few limitations: (1) requires a minimum order size to incentivise solvers (2) does not support some ERC20 tokens (3) requires direct and active community participation in order to function (e.g. solvers).

Open verification questions: (1) If Cow protocol fees were turned on and in the case an external liquidity source is used - does Cowswap still result in best priced transactions for the user? Presumably only in p2p batch processing would the user experience all benefits; so in the case of leveraging external liquidity does Cowswap cost the same to users or more (which would be punitive)? (2) What are examples of solver methodologies that technically allow batching to outrun MEV once executed on-chain? Understanding this will confirm undoubtedly Cowswap’s value-add aside from direct p2p settlements (though through offering both using Cowswap is still advantageous).(3) Shape and details of the round.