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What is a DEX aggregator?
A DEX aggregator is a service that searches many decentralized exchanges and liquidity pools and routes your swap through whichever combination returns the most tokens, sometimes splitting the order or passing through other tokens. You sign one transaction instead of comparing venues yourself.
What it means for you
The quote is an estimate: prices can move before your transaction lands, so your slippage tolerance sets the worst result you accept. Swapping means approving the aggregator's contract to spend your tokens; an unlimited approval stays live until you revoke it, and a fake aggregator site can ask for the same approval.
How it works
Each pool has its own reserves, so a large trade moves the price along that pool's curve. Splitting the trade across several pools, or routing through a third token, can cut the total price impact. Researchers have shown that, ignoring fixed costs, choosing the split across a network of pools is a convex optimisation problem that can be solved efficiently; adding a fixed cost for each pool used, such as gas, makes it much harder, so routers rely on approximations. The same paper notes that aggregators emerged to route orders across many pools on users' behalf.
Source: Angeris, Chitra, Evans, Boyd: Optimal Routing for Constant Function Market Makers (arXiv) · checked 4 October 2026
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Educational content, not financial advice. Written by hand and checked against the source named above. Something wrong? Tell us and we reply within two business days.