The gap between the quote and the fill
Every swap on Solana settles at a price the interface only estimated. SolSpread takes that gap apart: the pool fee you always pay, the price impact your own size creates, and the movement that happens while the transaction is in flight.
We define the term, show the arithmetic, then say what to do about it. Numbers here are either protocol facts or clearly labelled illustrative examples.
The console linked above is operated by a third party and is included because readers of an execution desk usually want to see what execution software does with routing and order splitting.
Anatomy of one illustrative fill
Illustrative arithmetic on a constant-product pool, not observed market data. The full derivation is in slippage explained.
Three costs sit inside every swap
They are usually reported as one percentage, which is why traders keep applying the wrong fix. Each one has its own driver and its own lever.
The spread you are quoted
buy quote - sell quote at one instantAn AMM has no order book, so the spread shows up as the difference between what you can buy at and sell at in the same moment, driven mostly by the pool fee tier.
Separate the three termsThe impact you create
impact = in / (x + in)On a constant-product pool your fee-free price impact is exactly your input divided by the post-trade input reserve. Size relative to that reserve is the whole story.
See how splitting changes itThe fees you pay per attempt
base + priority + pool fee x hopsLamport costs are flat per attempt, so they dominate small orders and disappear on large ones. Failed attempts pay them too, which is a cost most reports omit.
Build the full cost sheetFeatured explainers
Four pieces that cover the questions traders ask most often about fills that did not match the quote.
Slippage on Solana explained
Slippage is the difference between the price you were quoted and the price you got. Three separate things produce it, and only one of them is the tolerance slider.
Filed in Execution basics
Setting slippage tolerance
Tolerance is a two-sided cost: too low and the transaction reverts, too high and you fund someone else. A decision table by pool depth and urgency.
Filed in Execution basics
Quote vs fill: why they differ
The lifecycle of a quote from request to landed transaction, where it goes stale, and a symptom-to-cause diagnostic table for bad fills.
Filed in Execution basics
Aggregators vs direct pool swaps
Direct pool swaps are cheaper in compute and simpler to reason about. Aggregation wins on price for size. A comparison table and a decision checklist.
Filed in Routing
Three sections, one subject
Definitions first, then how orders are routed, then how to price and measure what the routing cost you.
Execution basics
Definitions and mechanics. What a quote is, what moves it, and which parts of the gap between quote and fill you actually control.
- Slippage on Solana explained
- Spread vs slippage vs price impact
- Setting slippage tolerance
- Quote vs fill: why they differ
Routing
How a router turns one order into several fills, why splitting lowers price impact, and what a longer route costs you in fees and failure risk.
Open the sectionCost model
The full cost stack of a swap, the risks that inflate it, and the measurement discipline that tells you whether a change helped.
- Sandwich risk on Solana
- Trade sizing and pool depth
- Execution cost breakdown
- Measuring execution quality
Worked examples you can check
Every figure below is arithmetic we performed on stated assumptions. None of it is a measurement of a live market, and each example states its inputs so you can redo it with your own.
Total gap against mid on a 100 SOL order placed against a pool holding 5,000 SOL, split into 1.96% impact and 0.25% fee.
See the five-size tableOne order priced into a single pool and then across two, three and four pools, including the case where the fourth leg makes the fill worse.
Compare the split rowsTwo execution paths with different price gaps and different landing rates, showing why cost per unit filled decides and price alone does not.
Read the comparison methodWhen execution stops being a setting and becomes an operations problem
One swap is a decision. A hundred swaps across several venues, sized against changing depth and scheduled over hours, is an operation: quotes have to be refreshed, clips sized against current reserves, failures retried, and every attempt logged if the result is going to mean anything. That is the point at which people stop clicking and start running software.
On the other side of this link is a third-party console that routes orders across Solana venues and runs the clip-by-clip work automatically. It is listed here because it is the practical alternative to doing the split by hand, not because this desk can verify any particular outcome from it.
External site. SolSpread has no operational relationship with the venues or tools it describes, and nothing on this page is advice to trade.
How the numbers here are produced
An execution desk that invents data is worse than useless, because the reader cannot tell which half is real. Our rule is simple: every number is either checkable protocol behaviour or arithmetic we show our work for.
Protocol facts
Constants that anyone can verify against documentation or the chain: nine decimals on SOL, a slot target near 400 milliseconds, a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, a blockhash valid for 150 slots, the constant-product invariant.
Illustrative arithmetic
Pool sizes, order sizes and fee tiers chosen by us to make a mechanism visible. Every such table is captioned as illustrative and states its assumptions so the calculation can be reproduced or replaced with your own inputs.
What you will not find
No observed market statistics, no performance claims, no review scores, no case studies with invented profit figures, no named traders. If we cannot show how a number was produced, it does not go on the page.
Who writes this
Everything is published under The SolSpread Desk rather than a persona. The sourcing rules, the correction process and the limits of what this desk can verify are set out in the editorial policy.