CoW Protocol January 2023 Highlights
TL;DR
- For the month of January, CoW Protocol handled a volume of $889M, with the total amount of surplus generated for that month was $4.4M
- In regard to exciting news, CoW Protocol had a hectic month! We released a tutorial for Smart Orders, participated in Token Terminals podcast and worked along the SAFE team on the take back ownership campaign!
- We made key hires across biz dev, engineering, and ops — and we’re still hiring even more core team members! Find our latest job openings at https://cow.fi/jobs
Protocol Stats
In January, CoW Protocol settled a total of $889M
This month, the top 3 batches to highlight are the following:
- Batch with the highest % of CoW trades (Transaction details): The Batch Total volume was $183,410.91, and it was created by five traders who were perfectly CoWed for 98.5% of their volume ($180,704.76). First trader was selling DAI for OHM, the second trader was selling DAI for OHM, the third trader was selling OHM for DAI, the fourth trader was selling DAI for OHM and the fifth trader was selling DAI for OHM.
- Batch with the highest Volume in it (Transaction details): The Batch Total volume was $9,012,276.83M and it was created by a single trader who was swapping USDC to USDT.
- Batch with the highest amount of surplus (Transaction details): The Batch Total volume was $3,985,033 and it was created by a single trader who was swapping ETH to USDC. This trader achieved the largest surplus for the month of January, by getting $72,579.483 USDC extra (1.84% surplus).
During the month of January, the top 10 traders have traded a total of $107M
In the table below you can see the # of trades they have executed as well as the total volume for all their trades. Our most active trader made a whopping 2330 (!!!) trades with CoW Protocol in December.
Solvers
In January, we saw one external team add a new solver to our production environment. This solver is named Barter and the CoW Protocol team is looking forward to seeing how they perform in the competition.
Looking at the numbers, we can see that on average, for the month of January Solvers were able to generate a total of $4.4M, which all traders got to enjoy in their pockets.
In regards to the Solver Statistics, one can find all sorts of information in the following table like total value settled, number of batches solved, trades and surplus. The highest generated surplus by a solver was $1.6M.
Governance
It has been a hectic month in terms of governance! The CoW cannot be stopped 💪.
Executed Proposals
This month we executed three important and impactful proposals:
- CIP-17: Making slippage symmetric was moved for voting: proposes that the protocol treats slippage incurred by solvers symmetrically; in the case of negative slippage, a solver would be penalized with an amount equal to the negative slippage incurred (as is the case now), while in the case of positive slippage, the protocol would reimburse the solver with an amount equal to the positive slippage generated.
- CIP-18: CoW Grants Program Renewal Proposal asks to renew the CoW Grants Program set in CIP-8. The goal of the program is to improve the utility of $COW tokens & facilitate deeper integration with other DeFi solutions. The Grants Program has processed payments in the total sum of 106,640 xDAI and 190,100 COW. Not only are the funds directed to valuable projects that help grow the CoW ecosystem, but also to (1) a new Volume-based Partner Reward Program aimed for integrations with the goal of having rewards based on actual performance, and (2) paying for he CoW Grants Committee stipend.
- CIP-19: Karpatkey DAO Proposal to Create a Core Treasury Team: proposes to have KarpatkeyDAO create, train, support, and audit a Core Treasury Team within CoW DAO that would work jointly with KarpatkeyDAO to develop CoW DAO’s treasury, allowing CowSwap to efficiently provide its own liquidity, fund its operations, development, and evolution while optimizing yield for idle funds
Draft Proposals
This month, there were two new proposals asking for feedback before they move into the next phase, a final CIP, and one even made it to voting before EOY.
- CIP-Draft: Auction model for solver rewards: proposal to have an auction based mechanism for rewarding winners of the solver competition.The proposed auction mechanism allows for dynamically finding a reward based on how much value a solver provides to users by settling a batch. This results in a distribution of rewards better aligned with goals of the protocol, solvers, and users.
If you are interested in submitting a proposal to the CoW DAO, make sure to check the following template.
CoWmunity News
- CoW Protocol started the year the entrance of the 2023 year with lots of excitement, this year will be the year of the #Mooo
- Our CTO, Felix, wrote an outstanding thread that helps understand differences between the new 1inch Fusion and CoWSwap.
- Wonder what it takes to build GAT, TWAP, ARP, LARP, and ZARP orders with CoW Protocol? Check out the Smart Orders Tutorial
- Highlighted the core idea behind CoW Protocol, many token pairs traded in a single settlement transaction (aka, ring trades). Here is a nice example batch that shows why @CoWSwap emphasizes “multi-dimensional” batch auctions.
- @AnnaMSGeorge participated on Token Terminal and dove into the details behind the CoW Swap charts
- CoW Swap joined the Safe & others campaign to highlight the relevance of “Taking back ownership” to amplify the message of, not your keys, not your coins.
- CoW DAO grants got covered by Otterspace dao: Learn how CoW DAO implemented Badges to improve transparency and decision-making in their Grants Program
- CoW Swap is trusted by the best of the best, If you know you know…
- Released a new and very important feature for Smart Contract Wallets, you can now buy ETH directly from your multisig, with CoW Swap.
- Partnered with Chainpatrol to help our CoW users report phishing websites and scams surrounding the CoW ecosystem!
- CoW is getting ready for ETHDenver2023!!!
Product Updates
Backend
The backend team has been working hard to improve the product infrastructure. In January we:
- Continued working on the Driver Colocation
- Finished the Solver trampoline contract and sent it for review
- Improved native price calculation for solvable orders
- Removed deprecated orderbook routes
- Worked on the roadmap planning and specification for 2023
- Fixed emergency “transfer” alerts in Tenderly
- Investigated why native price cache wasn’t performing as expected
Frontend
The frontend team has been pushing hard for several improvements in the UI front, as well as the overall UI infrastructure. In January we:
- Addressed various improvements in the overall design for the Eth Flow
- Worked on the roadmap planning and specification for 2023
- Refactored tokens-list to get better performance in the UI
- Worked on several on bug fixes and tech debt, improving CowSwap app performance, fixing styles, updating dependencies, etc
- Worked on research for implementing CMS and update landing page, FAQ, and warning
- Started working on revamped wallet connection functionality to improve UX and add new wallet integrations easily
- Released CoW Swap version with the logo for the Chinese new Year 🐰
- Released Explorer v2.17.0, and effectively Kilingl ~3000 lines of old code
Open Job Positions
The CoW Protocol team is currently looking to hire:
Marketing
Copywriter Remote — Lisbon — Berlin
Engineering
Integration Engineer Remote — Lisbon — Berlin
Product
Name Your Role Remote — Lisbon — Berlin
For more information on our latest job openings, visit: https://cow.fi/jobs
That’s all for January — the February update will be here before you know it. 👋
