★ Transaction parameters: what is price impact, exchange rate, blockchain fee, minimum received

Text with one star ★ is recommended for experienced users. If you need a guide to basic operations on DEX, study this encyclopedia from the beginning.

As an experienced user in swaps, you've probably noticed that before making transactions on DEX, there are several different parameters displayed:

Let's consider each one separately. Let's start from the end, from simple to complex.

Route: The path your funds will take to become the token you need. Cryptocurrency does not exist "on its own" — tokens are held in balanced pairs (called liquidity pools), for example, TON/STON. When you sell TON and buy STON for it, you are interacting with this pair, adding TON there and taking STON away. For simplicity, let's imagine these routes as flights: popular routes are usually connected by direct flights, while less demanded ones require transfers and additional costs. On STON.fi, you can only exchange tokens along direct routes — this is the simplest and most effective way of trading.

Blockchain fee: The fee that the blockchain charges for each transaction. This is the payment for the blockchain's operation.

Minimum received: History remembers cases when the token price changed dramatically during the transaction. A user expecting to receive a certain amount in exchange for tokens would receive a completely different amount (usually losing money — which, of course, is deeply unpleasant!). STON.fi DEX solves this problem: the smart contract fixes the value of all assets at the time of the transaction. Even if at the moment you press 'Swap', the token price changes radically, you will receive the amount specified here.

Exchange rate: The current rate of the token received to the one sold.

Price impact: If you exchange a volume of tokens that represents a significant portion of the liquidity pool, i.e., available for exchange tokens, then by this operation you will change the ratio of the value of one token to another, and its price will change. For example, if you want to buy many tokens, but there are few of them in the pool, you risk buying them too expensively due to your own actions. You won't notice a price impact in large popular pools, but always remember this indicator. We consider transactions with a price impact above 5% disadvantageous in the vast majority of cases and warn about this in the DEX interface.

We remind you that within this guide, we provide information in a simplified form, omitting some details and generalizing the principles of DEX operation.