Slippage
Slippage is how far the price may move against you between quoting and filling. Past that line, the trade is refused and your USDC is returned rather than filled at a worse price.
It cuts both ways:
- Higher — more trades go through, and some of them at a price you would not have chosen.
- Lower — a better price when you fill, and fast-moving coins bounce more often.
Slippage is not price impact
Slippage is the market moving while your trade is in flight — other people’s trades. Price impact is your own trade moving the price, because you are buying a meaningful share of a pool. It is set by the size of your trade against the liquidity available, and no setting makes it go away. The Liq percentage on the token panel is the figure to watch for impact.Liquidity protection
Dawn refuses a buy that would move the price by more than 30%. That is a floor under how badly a thin pool can treat you, and it is on unless you turn it off. Degen Mode removes it and raises slippage to 100%, which means a buy goes through however far it moves the price. Sells keep your normal slippage either way.MEV protection
On by default. Solana only. A public Solana transaction can be seen before it lands, which lets a bot buy in front of you, let your trade push the price up, and sell into it — a sandwich. You get a worse fill and they take the difference. With MEV protection on, your swaps go through a private lane instead, so nobody sees the trade in time to trade in front of it. The EVM chains do not have this option; leaving it on costs nothing there.Protection is about visibility, not speed. In a fast market the price can still move between your tap and your fill — that is what slippage covers.
Gas preset
How hard your trades bid to land fast and protected.
A higher bid does not improve your price. It improves your odds of landing in a block while there is competition for space — which, in a fast market, amounts to the same thing.
Dawn pays this gas for you, up to $5 per trade. The preset changes what Dawn bids, not what you pay, unless the cost goes over the cap — see Gas Surplus.
Putting it together
A quiet, deep-liquidity coin
Low slippage, Medium gas. You will fill close to the quote.
A launch, minutes old
Higher slippage, High gas, small size. Expect impact and expect some trades to bounce.