Fees and Wait Times

Fee Types

Users pay up to four kinds of fees when conducting a swap.

  1. Layer1 Network Fees (gas): paid by the user when sending the asset to THORChain to be swapped. This is controlled by the user's wallet.
  2. Slip Fee: protects the pool from being manipulated by large swaps. Calculated as a function of transaction size and current pool depth. The slip fee formula is explained here and an example implementation is here.
  3. Affiliate Fee - (optional) a percentage skimmed from the inbound amount that can be paid to exchanges or wallet providers. Wallets can now accept fees in any THORChain-supported asset (USDC, BTC, etc). Check the "Preferred Asset for Affiliate Fees" section in fees.md for more details and setup information.
  4. Outbound Fee - the fee the Network pays on behalf of the user to send the outbound transaction. See Outbound Fee.

Info

The Swap Quote endpoint will calculate and show all fees.

See the fees section for full details.

Refunds and Minimum Swap Amount

If a transaction fails, it is refunded, thus it will pay the outboundFee for the SourceChain not the DestinationChain. Thus devs should always swap an amount that is a maximum of the following, multiplied by at least a 4x buffer to allow for gas spikes:

  1. The Destination Chain outboundFee, or
  2. The Source Chain outboundFee, or
  3. $1.00 (the minimum outboundFee).

For convenience, a recommended_min_amount_in is included on the Swap Quote endpoint, which is the value described above. This value is priced in the inbound asset of the quote request (in 1e8). This should be the minimum-allowed swap amount for the requested quote.

Wait Times

There are four phases of a transaction sent to THORChain each taking time to complete.

  1. Layer1 Inbound Confirmation - assuming the inboundTx will be confirmed in the next block, it is the source blockchain block time.
  2. Observation Counting - time for 67% THORChain Nodes to observe and agree on the inboundTx.
  3. Confirmation Counting - for non-instant finality blockchains, the amount of time THORChain will wait before processing to protect against double spends and re-org attacks.
  4. Outbound Delay - dependent on size and network traffic. Large outbounds will be delayed.
  5. Layer1 Outbound Confirmation - Outbound blockchain block time.

Wait times can be between a few seconds up to an hour. The assets being swapped, the size of the swap and the current network traffic within THORChain will determine the wait time.

Info

The Swap Quote endpoint will calculate points 3 and 4.

See the delays.md section for full details.