1inch (@1inch): Ignore the 50 million hot takes. This is what’s important.

Ignore the 50 million hot takes. This is what’s important. Getting a quote is only step one of verifying a transaction. That's the practical lesson from March 12's Aave/CoW swap incident, where a user sent $50,432,688 into a swap and received $36,000 back. But there's a second thought worth drawing out, too. DeFi safeguards and self-custody aren't in conflict. Helpful friction, that doesn’t remove control from users but does encourage them to think, is part of what makes permissionless finance usable at scale. Price impact is not slippage These two terms get confused constantly, and the confusion matters. Slippage is the difference between the price you're quoted and the price at which your trade actually executes. It happens because markets move: between the moment you request a quote and the moment it fills, conditions can shift. Slippage can surprise you. Price impact doesn't. It's caused by your own order size. When you buy a large amount of an asset with thin liquidity, you consume the available supply at each price level in turn, pushing the price against yourself as you go. The quote already reflects this. According to CowSwap and Aave, during the March 12 incident, the quote showed 99.9% price impact before the user confirmed, the interface showed a warning, and the swap button stayed greyed out until the user checked a box acknowledging a potential 100% loss of value. The market didn't move against the user. The order size was too large for the available liquidity to absorb at anything close to market value, and the quote said so. What to check before a large swap When a swap interface returns a quote, it means a route was found. It doesn't mean the trade is economically sound. Before confirming any large swap: → Compare expected output to the asset's current market price → Take price impact warnings seriously. 99.9% is not a rounding error → For large volumes, splitting the order or going OTC may give significantly better outcomes How 1inch handles routing On 1inch, swaps route through Pathfinder, our algorithm that scans 300+ liquidity sources to find the best available path. Pathfinder can split orders, route across multiple pools and chains, and optimize for execution quality. What it can't do is create liquidity that isn't there. If you search for a swap on 1inch and no quote appears, it means Pathfinder couldn't resolve a viable route. That absence is useful information. It tells you the market conditions for that trade, at that size, aren't currently there. And if there’s a price impact - we warn you. Clearly. If you see that warning, it’s really important to take it seriously. What this means for DeFi UX DeFi is permissionless. That's the foundation, and it should stay that way. No one should need to ask permission to manage their own assets. But we have to balance this commitment by meeting users where they are. People come to DeFi for a whole range of reasons. Early adopters were strongly driven by the principles of decentralization. But the more the space grows, the wider the range of user needs it has to serve. And if we’re truly bullish about DeFi - we should welcome the idea that people will arrive in search of practical advantages rather than ideological commitment. The question is how to strike the balance and provide safer UX without losing sight of the principles that make DeFi what it is. Aave is responding to this incident with Aave Shield (not to be confused with 1inch Shield, a long-standing element of our own security setup). This is a default block on swaps with price impact above 25%, which advanced users can override in settings. That's the right model. Real friction before a high-risk confirmation, without removing anyone's ability to proceed. At 1inch, we’ve taken this as a prompt to review our own user safeguards. If you use our products - would you like to see more active controls on high risk swaps? You can let us know in the comments below. The goal of DeFi UX isn't to stop users making choices. It's to make sure those choices are made with full information and a genuine moment to reconsider. Self-custody means the user is in control. That control is most valuable when it's exercised with full knowledge of what's being confirmed. Mass adoption won't come from making DeFi more restrictive. It will come from making it easier to understand what you're doing before you do it. That's a UX problem, and it's one the whole space is working on. Read more If you want more background - check out the 1inch Help Centre articles in comments. Links posted in comment → Price impact vs slippage: help.1inch.com/en/articles/4585109 → Slippage tolerance: help.1inch.com/en/articles/4585126 → Can my funds be lost in a swap?: help.1inch.com/en/articles/4585097