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).

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CoW Protocol

# CoW Protocol Trading volume Methodology

## 1. Overview

Trading volume measures the total value of trades executed through CoW Protocol. This metric reflects the activity of the protocol's meta-aggregation and settlement layer, where trades are executed via batch auctions. Trading volume is a key indicator of the protocol's market share and its capacity to generate fees through its solver-based execution model.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: `Trade` events from `GPv2Settlement` contracts, plus `OrderPlacement` events and `createOrder` function calls from `CoWSwapEthFlow` 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: Trade data extraction

- **Purpose**: Parse raw trade execution data from the settlement contracts
- **Logic**: `Trade` events are extracted from `GPv2Settlement` contracts across all supported chains. For each event, the sell token, buy token, sell amount, and buy amount are identified. If a trade involves the native gas token, the native token identifier is replaced with the address of the corresponding wrapped native asset for that specific chain. Transactions involving specific denylisted assets are filtered out to maintain data quality.
- **Key fields**: `sellToken`, `buyToken`, `sellAmount`, `buyAmount`, `orderUid`

### Component B: Order attribution and trader identification

- **Purpose**: Link trades to the original order placement and sender
- **Logic**: `OrderPlacement` events and `createOrder` function calls are parsed from `CoWSwapEthFlow` contracts. These records are joined based on transaction hashes to create a mapping of order identifiers to the original sender addresses. This mapping is then joined with the trade dataset using the order identifier to ensure volume is accurately attributed to the correct user address.
- **Key fields**: `order_identification`, `sender`, `orderUid`

### Component C: Normalization and manipulation filtering

- **Purpose**: Convert trade amounts to USD and mitigate price manipulation
- **Logic**: Raw trade amounts for both the sell-side and buy-side assets are normalized by decimal precision using asset metadata. The USD value for each side of the trade is calculated by multiplying the normalized amounts by end-of-day price feeds. To protect against price manipulation or extreme volatility in low-liquidity assets, the final trading volume is calculated as the lower USD value between the sell-side and the buy-side of the transaction.
- **Key fields**: `token0_amount`, `token1_amount`, `price_usd`

### Component D: Final aggregation

- **Purpose**: Consolidate trade values into a daily time series
- **Logic**: The filtered USD values are summed by chain and timestamp. Data is aggregated to a daily granularity using UTC day boundaries.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp`, `chain`, `trading_volume`

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

Total value of spot trades executed on the exchange.

CoW ProtocolCOW

Trading volume

Trading volume

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown