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CoW DAO: 2023 in Review!

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As we bid farewell to another eventful year, we’re taking some time to reflect on CoW DAO’s milestones in 2023.

CoW DAO develops two main products:

  • CoW Protocol & the CoW Swap Interface: A decentralized exchange providing users with the best prices and cutting-edge MEV protection for swaps
  • MEV Blocker: An RPC endpoint designed to protect user transactions from suffering MEV attacks. MEV Blocker leverages an order flow auction among searchers and builders to offer users a rebate (backrun) for their trades

2023 has been marked by a number of noteworthy developments that have expanded protocol functionality, enhanced the user experience, and solidified CoW DAO’s position at the forefront of DeFi.

CoW Protocol 2023 Product Launches

Milkman — February

The challenging task of timing trades for DAOs has finally found its solution in Milkman. Developed through the CoW Grants Program in collaboration with Yearn.fi, Milkman enables smart contracts to specify an on-chain data source, like an oracle, as a reference for the otherwise static “min_out” function. This is a game-changer for deferred trade execution, as it gives DAOs a dynamic price backstop that guarantees up-to-date pricing despite governance-related delays.

Born of the spirit of collaboration, Milkman has already made its mark by facilitating large trades from major DAOs. In 2023, Aave used Milkman to swap $4 million directly into a Balancer LP, Nexus Mutual used it to trade over 14.4K ETH for rETH, and ENS traded 10K ETH for USDC. To date, Milkman has already handled over $20 million in trading volume!

Learn more about Milkman: “What is Milkman? CoW Swap’s Solution for Delayed Execution Trading”

Partially Fillable Limit Orders — April

The introduction of partially fillable limit orders in April unlocked a faster limit order experience that also reduces price impact for large orders.

Unlike traditional “fill or kill” limit orders, partially fillable limit orders execute gradually as liquidity becomes available. For users, this means that their limit orders will complete earlier, as they can gather liquidity over time rather than having to wait for it to become available all at once.

What’s more, partially fillable limit orders are “surplus capturing,” meaning that users can receive surplus on top of their limit price. If the solvers execute a limit order for better than the limit price, the positive price difference (known as “surplus”) will be passed along to the user.

Learn more about Partially Fillable Limit Orders: “CoW Swap Improves the Limit Order Experience with Partially Fillable Limit Orders”

CoW Hooks — July

The launch of CoW Hooks transformed CoW Protocol from a swap-intent-matching engine into a generalized intent execution machine. Thanks to CoW Hooks, users can now specify pre and post-trade interactions for solvers to execute alongside their trades.

CoW Hooks interactions can be any DeFi actions: bridging, staking, depositing, or anything else a user would like to do before or after their trade. The best part? Solvers execute the entire sequence of pre and post interactions as a single transaction. True to the CoW Protocol model, users pay gas fees in their sell token, and they only pay if the transaction succeeds.

Learn more about CoW Hooks: “CoW Hooks: You are in control!”

TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price) Orders — August

In August, CoW Protocol launched the first implementation of TWAP orders on a decentralized exchange to date. TWAP allows users to split large trades into smaller, discrete orders which execute over a specified time period. This lessens price impact, ensures entry at a “average” market price, and enhances MEV protection.

Learn more about TWAP orders: “CoW Swap Launches TWAP Orders”

Gasless Approvals — October

CoW Swap has offered gasless swaps since the start, but in October we made the entire experience — approvals + swaps — entirely gasless for over 100 tokens. With gasless approvals, the intents that users sign to place an order now give solvers the permission to execute both the swap AND the approval transaction on behalf of the user.

Thanks to this, brand new wallets can use CoW Swap without holding any ETH, as all fees get deducted in the sell token.

Learn more about gasless approvals: “Announcing Gasless Approvals on CoW Swap”

Programmatic Order Framework — November

The Programmatic Order Framework pioneered a new era of “programmatic orders,” which are automated orders that execute based on on-chain conditions.

Programmatic orders are created with just one signature, and they execute when certain on-chain conditions (prices, volumes, balances, times, etc.) are met. These orders can stretch indefinitely into the future, automating everything from complex trading strategies to advanced order types, portfolio management, DAO operations, and more.

The Programmatic Order Framework itself is used to create programmatic orders by automating the boilerplate code necessary for order placement. This allows DeFi users to programmatically create any set of orders and automatically approve them for execution with just a single signature.

Learn more about the Programmatic Order Framework: “Introducing the Programmatic Order Framework, from CoW Protocol”

Widget — November

Launched with the goal of bringing the lush pastures to a wider audience, the widget embeds a CoW Swap trading module on any website or web3 dApp. Projects can now bring CoW Swap’s famous MEV protection and best prices to their users and even collect fees from swaps made through the widget.

Learn more about the widget on our website.

Improvements Throughout The Year

  • Surplus Notifications → Users now see exactly how much they received in surplus after every trade! Wallets connected to CoW Swap can also view their total historical surplus using the account tab 💸
  • Fortune Cookies → Besides being the best place to trade, CoW Swap is also the most fun! This year, we added fortune cookies to the UI, welcoming you with a new message each day to inspire you along your trading journey 🥠
  • Custom Recipient Addresses → It’s now possible to make a trade with funds from one wallet that sends proceeds to a different wallet. Save on gas fees and expedite your trades with custom recipient addresses 🔀
  • Token Page Release → The token page lists the tradeable tokens on CoW Swap. Users can use the page to sign the approval transactions necessary for trading new tokens in advance — useful if you’re trying to time the market ⏳
  • The Limit Orders Stop Light → Limit orders received a useful UI upgrade that shows how close your orders are to completing. The limit order “stop light” lights up in different colors depending on how close the market price is to what it needs to be for your limit orders to execute 🚦
  • A World of Notifications → Staying informed is key in the world of DeFi. To this end, CoW Swap enabled notifications through Discord, Telegram, and email to help users stay up to date with new announcements 🔔

The CoW Protocol Revolution: A Year of Collaboration

The shipping hasn’t only been us, though. We’re proud to have encouraged innovation in DeFi even outside of the CoW DAO ecosystem. Below is a list of projects that are integrated with or built on top of CoW Protocol.

1. Dump Services

CoW DAO introduced dump.services, a dApp that allows users to swap (“dump”) multiple tokens from their wallet all at once by trading them for a single asset. This streamlines portfolio management, especially for small token balances.

2. CoW Swap Safe App Batch Transactions

The CoW Swap Safe App introduced a game-changing feature — the ability to bundle multiple transactions into a single batch. Thanks to the Safe batching feature, users can merge approving, wrapping, and trading into a single, cost-effective transaction.

3. The Tally Recipe for CoW Swap

Tally, a prominent DAO tooling platform, launched a Recipe for CoW Swap. The Tally CoW Swap Recipe leverages Milkman to let DAOs attach a swap to a governance proposal, turning a multi-step process into only a few clicks.

4. Stackly DCA

Stackly is a new dApp that brings Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) swaps to DeFi users on Ethereum and Gnosis chain. Under the hood, Stackly leverages CoW Protocol ERC-1271 smart orders for the trades.

5. Coinshift Apps

Treasury management platform Coinshift integrated CoW Swap as a part of its suite of apps, bringing the safety and reliability of CoW Swap to the DAOs using Coinshift for their treasury operations.

6. Stader Swap Feature

The liquid staking service Stader Labs added a “Swap” function powered by CoW Swap which directs users to trade tokens on CoW Swap dApp.

7. Lido Swap Feature

Staking service Lido also added CoW Swap as one of their “withdrawal” options for users looking to convert stETH to ETH right on the platform.

New Products: MEV Blocker

While the lush pastures of CoW DAO saw a lot of shipping in 2023, there was one flagship launch that stood above the rest: MEV Blocker.

CoW DAO, in collaboration with Beaver Build and Agnostic Relay, introduced MEV Blocker to protect Ethereum transactions from frontrunning and sandwich attacks. The free RPC endpoint routes transactions through a permissionless network of searchers who cannot frontrun or sandwich user transactions. Instead, searchers capture value through backrunning, sending 90% of all profits back to the users as rebates.

MEV Blocker addresses the multi-billion dollar MEV problem, enabling users to trade, buy NFTs, provide liquidity, and more without worrying about harmful price exploitation.

Reflecting on our Udderly amazing Journey, and cheers to a CoW-tastic 2024!

2023 has been the most exciting year so far for CoW DAO. We’re already diving headfirst into 2024 with a renewed commitment to more products built for both novice and experienced users. Here’s to another thrilling year at the forefront of DeFi!


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