Slippage

What is Slippage?

In crypto markets, prices move continuously. When you submit an order, by the time it executes, market conditions may have shifted due to:

• Market volatility.

• Network delays or block confirmation time.

• MEV / arbitrage activity.

Slippage is the difference between the expected price of a trade and the actual execution price.

Because of this, traders define a slippage tolerance — the maximum allowed price deviation for trades to be executed.

For example:

You submit a swap expecting 1 ETH → 2,000 USDC, with a 0.5% slippage tolerance.

If the market moves while the transaction is pending, the trade only executes if the change stays within your limit:

✅ Price is now 1,994 USDC (-0.3%) → The trade will get executed.

❌ Price is now 1,984 USDC (-0.8%) → The trade will be reverted, keeping you from getting a bad price.

Manual Slippage Setting

You can configure their slippage tolerance in Carina by clicking the icon below:

On the slippage settings screen, you can pick one of Carina’s preset slippage options or enter their own custom value.

Based on the custom value entered, Carina will display the appropriate warning level.

Auto Slippage

Carina also offers Auto Slippage mode, which automatically calculates the optimal slippage tolerance based on recent market price.

Carina measures short-term volatility for both tokens using the maximum and minimum prices over the past 10 minutes, and uses the higher volatility rate of the two. This ensures the trade has enough buffer to execute successfully during market fluctuations.

Formula:

$$\text{Auto Slippage} = max(\text{volatility of token A}, \text{volatility of token B})$$

$$\text{Volatility} = \frac{Price_{max} - Price_{min}}{Price_{min}} \times 100\%$$

The prices used in this formula are sourced from trusted third-party providers, such as Binance. If price data for a token is not available, Carina applies a default volatility value of 0.5%.

You can enable Auto mode by selecting it from the options.

If you're not familiar with slippage settings, just use Auto, Carina handles it for you.