CoW Protocol batches trades and auctions them between public and private liquidity sources. It aims to achieve better prices than other exchanges by matching trades via Coincidences of Wants (CoWs) and protecting from MEV.

CoW Protocol is a meta-DEX aggregation protocol that acts as a batch settlement layer on top of all other AMMs & DEX aggregators. CoW Protocol is a spin off from Gnosis DAO that launched in February 2021.

COW tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue).

governance

github

twitter

discord

etherscan

website

DEX aggregators

CoW Protocol

# CoW Protocol Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average fees per user (AFPU) measures the average value of fees paid by an individual active user to CoW Protocol within a 24-hour window. This metric provides insight into the unit economics of the protocol's batch auction settlement mechanism and the average cost incurred by traders for MEV protection and surplus capture. AFPU is calculated by dividing the total daily fees by the number of unique active users (daily).

## 2. Data sources

- **Fees**: Derived from the Fees metric
- **Active users (daily)**: Derived from the Active users (daily) metric
- **Blockchain events**: `Trade` events from `GPv2Settlement` contracts, `OrderPlacement` events and `createOrder` function calls from `CoWSwapEthFlow` contracts, and `bill` function calls from `MevBlockerFeeTill` contracts, covering Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, and 5 other chains
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds and asset metadata

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Protocol fee extraction

- **Purpose**: Captures trade-level protocol fees including surplus, volume, and price improvement policies
- **Logic**: Trade-level data is retrieved from the CoW Protocol API scraper. Protocol fees are unnested from JSON arrays to identify the specific fee type (surplus, volume, or price improvement) and the associated asset address. Native assets are mapped to their respective wrapped equivalents for consistency across all supported chains.
- **Key fields**: `executed_protocol_fees`, `fee_amount`, `fee_type`

### Component B: Network fee extraction

- **Purpose**: Captures legacy network fees paid by users before the transition to solver-absorbed gas costs
- **Logic**: The `feeAmount` field is parsed from `Trade` events emitted by `GPv2Settlement` contracts. These values represent the direct fees paid by users to cover execution costs. This component was the dominant fee source prior to September 2024, after which solvers began absorbing gas costs and protocol fees were introduced.
- **Key fields**: `fee_amount` from `Trade` events

### Component C: MEV blocker fee extraction

- **Purpose**: Captures fees accrued through the MEV blocker mechanism on Ethereum
- **Logic**: The `bill` function calls from `MevBlockerFeeTill` contracts are parsed to extract the `due` values associated with specific solver IDs. These fees are included in the total fee calculation for all transactions occurring before November 2025.
- **Key fields**: `due_value`, `token_address`

### Component D: Active user identification

- **Purpose**: Determines the daily count of unique traders interacting with the protocol
- **Logic**: Unique trader addresses are identified from `Trade` events in `GPv2Settlement` contracts and `OrderPlacement` events or `createOrder` function calls in `CoWSwapEthFlow` contracts. Addresses are deduplicated daily across all supported chains to establish the active users (daily) count.
- **Key fields**: `user_address`, `sender`, `in_owner`

### Component E: USD conversion and AFPU calculation

- **Purpose**: Normalizes all components into a single daily USD value per user
- **Logic**: Fee amounts are normalized by decimal precision and multiplied by end-of-day asset prices. The total daily fee value is divided by the daily active user count to produce the final average fees per user (AFPU) metric. Daily granularity is maintained using UTC day boundaries.
- **Key fields**: `fees`, `user_dau`

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

CoW ProtocolCOW

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Competitive landscape