Multi-Hop Swap
A DEX trade that routes through multiple liquidity pools or token pairs to achieve the desired swap, optimizing price and reducing slippage.
What is Multi-Hop Swap?
Multi-hop swaps involve chaining multiple token swaps (e.g., ETH → DAI → USDC) to fulfill a trade when a direct pool is unavailable or suboptimal. DEX aggregators like 1inch or Matcha use algorithms to identify efficient paths across pools on chains like Ethereum or Polygon. In 2025, 1inch processes $1 billion weekly in multi-hop trades, reducing slippage by 0.5% versus direct swaps, per DeFiLlama. For example, swapping 5 ETH (~$15,000) to USDT via WETH/DAI and DAI/USDT on Uniswap V3 might save $150 versus a single pool with 1% slippage. Gas costs rise slightly ($7 vs. $5 on Ethereum), but layer-2 hops on Arbitrum cost $0.50. A 2023 multi-hop exploit inflated fees by 5% due to flawed routing logic. Users should use aggregators with audited routers to optimize trades in DeFi’s fragmented liquidity landscape.
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