ENS Trade Breakdown

On February 9th, 2023, After a successful governance vote from ENS, CoW Swap processed a large trade for the ENS DAO using the exchange’s signature intent-based trading design and Milkman contract.

Trade Details

ENS DAO sold 10,000 ETH in exchange for USDC in order to reduce its exposure to ETH.

• USD value of the trade: $16,145,549.60
• Slippage tolerance: 2%
• Actual slippage: 0.5%
• Price surplus: $80,992.87

Why CoW Swap?

CoW Swap’s solver competition ensured that ENS received the best possible execution price, even after announcing trade details publicly in a governance proposal ahead of time.

CoW Swap provided several benefits for a trade of this size:

1. Protection from attack vectors caused by the delayed execution
2. Allowing ENS to create a governance proposal that includes the exact swap parameters and protects the trade with a price checker — guaranteeing that the trade receives some minimum amount determined at the moment of swap execution (not during the creation of the governance proposal)
3. Use of the Milkman bot for protection against MEV, slippage, and re-entrancy risk

Milkman

The CoW Grants Program-funded, and Yearn.fi-developed Milkman bot was critical to the ENS trade.

The Milkman bot ensures that trades execute for the real-time price or better by utilizing a price checker, such as a Uniswap v3 pool, Chainlink oracles, or a custom price checker. Instead of setting a slippage tolerance, DAOs can utilize Milkman to determine a maximum percentage deviation from the price checker, guaranteeing that their trade will finalize at a fair market price. Milkman also simplifies governance for trades as DAOs don’t have to define a fixed price re-vote if the market moves significantly.

For this swap, ENS DAO chose to use a Uniswap v3 ETH/USDC pool, with a maximum slippage of 2%, guaranteeing that they would receive no less than the minimum specified in the governance proposal.

CoW Swap: The leader in DAO trading

The largest DAO trades take place on CoW Swap, and the exchange is single-handedly responsible for more than 30% of all DAO trades. Check out CoW Swap for DAOs to learn why DAOs such as Aave, Nexus Mutual, and more trust CoW Swap with their large trades.

If you’re a DAO looking to make a large trade on CoW Swap, get in touch with us on Twitter or through our Discord. You can check out CoW Swap for yourself here.