What Is Slippage in Crypto? Slippage Tolerance Explained

Slippage is the difference between the price you expect when you submit a crypto trade and the price at which the trade actually executes. It happens because prices on a decentralized exchange can move between the moment you sign a swap and the moment it lands on-chain, and because large orders move the price themselves. Slippage tolerance is the setting that caps how much of that difference you are willing to accept.

Slippage definition

In traditional markets, slippage describes an order filled at a worse price than the one quoted. In DeFi the idea is the same, but the cause is usually different. Most decentralized exchanges price assets with a formula over a liquidity pool, so the quote you see is only valid for the pool state at that instant.

Between your quote and your transaction's execution, other swaps can change the pool's balances. If they push the price against you, you receive fewer tokens than the quote promised. That shortfall is slippage. It can also be positive: if the price moves in your favour, you receive more.

Slippage is often confused with price impact. Price impact is the move your own trade causes; slippage is the total gap between quote and fill, which includes price impact plus anything other traders do before your transaction lands.

How slippage works

When you swap on an automated market maker such as Cetus on Sui or xExchange on MultiversX, the interface does roughly this:

1. It reads the current pool reserves (or, on a concentrated-liquidity DEX, the active price ranges) and calculates the expected output for your input.
2. It applies your slippage tolerance to compute a minimum amount out. With a 0.5% tolerance, the minimum is 99.5% of the quoted output.
3. Your signed transaction carries that minimum. When it executes, the smart contract recalculates the real output against the pool as it is at that moment.
4. If the real output is at or above the minimum, the swap completes. If it falls below, the transaction reverts and you keep your input tokens (you still pay the network fee).

Pool design matters. On a concentrated-liquidity DEX, liquidity can be dense near the current price and thin further away, so a trade that crosses into a thin range can slip much more than the headline pool size suggests. Our guide to concentrated liquidity (CLMM) explains why.

Slippage example

A hypothetical example. Say you want to swap 1,000 USDC for SUI and the DEX quotes 250 SUI. You set slippage tolerance to 0.5%.

• Minimum received: 250 × (1 − 0.005) = 248.75 SUI.
• Scenario A: another trader buys SUI just before you, and your swap would now return 249.40 SUI. That is 0.24% slippage, inside your tolerance, so the swap goes through.
• Scenario B: a larger buy lands first and your swap would now return 247.90 SUI, a 0.84% shortfall. That is below 248.75, so the transaction reverts. You keep your 1,000 USDC and lose only the gas fee.

If you had set tolerance to 3%, scenario B would have executed and you would have accepted the worse price without noticing.

Why slippage matters

Slippage tolerance is a trade-off between getting filled and getting a fair price.

• Too low and volatile or thinly traded tokens will keep failing, costing you a network fee each time.
• Too high and you hand a blank cheque to anyone who can reorder transactions. A wide tolerance is exactly what a sandwich attack exploits: a bot pushes the price up to your minimum, lets your trade fill at the worst allowed price, then sells back.
• Thin liquidity amplifies everything. Before you trade a smaller token, check how deep its pools are; our Sui DEX comparison shows where liquidity actually sits on Sui.

A sensible habit: start with a low tolerance (often 0.1% to 0.5% for major pairs), only widen it when a trade fails for a reason you understand, and split large orders into smaller pieces.

Slippage on JewelSwap

JewelSwap's yield farms route their swaps through established DEXs: AshSwap, xExchange, OneDex and Hatom on MultiversX, and Cetus and Turbos on Sui. Any entry or exit that involves a swap is therefore subject to those pools' depth and to slippage, which is why the minimum-received figure is worth checking before you confirm.

Related terms

• Price impact — how much your own trade moves a pool's price.
• Sandwich attack — a bot trading either side of your swap to profit from your slippage tolerance.
• MEV — value extracted by reordering, inserting or censoring transactions.
• AMM (automated market maker) — a formula-priced pool that replaces an order book.
• Liquidity pool — the token reserves a DEX trades against.
• DEX aggregator — a router that splits orders across pools to reduce slippage.

Learn more on the JewelSwap blog

• Sui DEX comparison 2026 — which Sui exchanges have the deepest liquidity, and therefore the least slippage.
• Concentrated liquidity (CLMM) explained — why liquidity ranges change how much a trade slips.
• What is Cetus Protocol? — how Sui's largest concentrated-liquidity DEX prices swaps.

Frequently asked questions

What does slippage mean in crypto?

Slippage means the gap between the price quoted when you submit a trade and the price you actually get when it executes. On a DEX it comes from your own trade's price impact plus any other trades that land before yours.

What slippage tolerance should I set?

For major, deep pairs, 0.1% to 0.5% is a common starting point. Volatile or thinly traded tokens may need more, but every extra percent of tolerance is value a sandwich bot can take, so widen it only when you understand why a trade failed.

Slippage vs price impact: what is the difference?

Price impact is the price move caused by your own trade size relative to the pool. Slippage is the full difference between quote and execution, which includes price impact and any market movement between signing and execution.

JewelSwap Crypto Glossary · educational, not financial advice. Updated 2 October 2026. Browse the full glossary.