How swaps and best-route pricing work

What a swap is

A swap trades one token for another. Same-chain, like USDC to ETH on Base. Or cross-chain, like ETH on Arbitrum to SOL on Solana. You connect your own wallet and sign every transaction yourself. roodswap never holds your funds. They move from your wallet straight to the destination token.

You pick the token you have, the token you want, and the amount. roodswap does the rest of the work: finding the route that leaves you with the most.

Best-route aggregation

There is no single price for a token. Every DEX and every bridge quotes a slightly different rate, and those rates change second to second. Taking the first quote you see usually leaves money on the table.

roodswap queries dozens of DEXs and bridges through several routing engines at once. Each returns a possible route for your trade. roodswap compares them and picks the one that leaves you with the most output after the costs that are priced into the quote: the underlying DEX or bridge fee, the flat 0.1% roodswap service fee, and any fixed fee a bridge charges on top. Those are all already reflected in the rate you see. Network gas is not part of that comparison — two of the engines do not report it at all, so ranking on it would quietly favour whichever one stayed silent. It is listed per route wherever we have it. No hidden markup.

Minimum received

Prices move between the moment you get a quote and the moment your transaction lands. To protect you, every quote shows a minimum received: the least amount of the destination token you will get. If the market moves against you past that floor, the transaction reverts instead of filling at a worse rate.

You always see this number before you sign. Nothing executes until you approve it in your wallet.

Same-chain vs cross-chain

1. 1
   Connect your wallet

   For a same-chain swap, one connected wallet on that chain is enough. For a cross-chain swap between ecosystems (like SOL to ETH), connect a wallet on both sides so there is a destination address to receive the output.

2. 2
   Enter the trade

   Pick the token you have, the token you want, and the amount.

3. 3
   Review the quote

   Check the rate, the gas, the underlying fee, and the minimum received. Everything is shown before you commit.

4. 4
   Sign

   Approve the transaction in your wallet. A same-chain swap is a single settlement. A cross-chain swap sends assets out on the source chain and delivers them on the destination chain.

5. 5
   Receive

   Tokens arrive at your destination address once the route completes.