Solana & memecoins
What is slippage in crypto?
Slippage is the difference between the price you were quoted and the price you actually filled at. It has two causes: the market moving between your click and your confirmation, and your own order being large enough to move the pool. Your slippage tolerance is the maximum you will accept before the transaction is cancelled instead.
Setting the number
- Too tight on a moving memecoin and nothing fills. Failed transactions still cost a fee.
- Too loose and you accept a materially worse entry, which is a real cost even when the trade works out.
- Most Solana memecoin traders sit between 5 and 15 percent, and accept that a share of trades will not land.
The cost you can control
Half of slippage is the market and half is your order size against the pool. The controllable half is position sizing: an order at 1 percent of pool liquidity barely moves the price, and one at 10 percent is the price. This is why a liquidity floor is a trading-cost setting as much as a safety setting.
Round trip, not one way
You pay it twice. A 5 percent entry and a 5 percent exit means the position needs roughly 11 percent just to break even. On a strategy whose average win is 20 percent, that is more than half the edge, which is exactly how a profitable-looking approach quietly loses money.
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