DEX Aggregators

One Trade, Many Pools

A decentralised exchange (DEX) like Uniswap lets you swap tokens directly from your wallet, but liquidity for a given pair is scattered across dozens of DEXs and hundreds of pools. A DEX aggregator sits on top of all of them: you ask to swap token A for token B, and the aggregator searches every source it knows, finds the combination of pools that gives you the most token B, and executes the whole thing in one transaction. You get a better price than any single DEX would give, without manually checking each venue.

The Familiar Names

**1inch** popularised aggregation and runs its own optimised routing. **Matcha** (by 0x) offers a clean interface over the 0x routing network. **ParaSwap**, **CowSwap**, and **OpenOcean** each bring different routing engines and features. On Solana, **Jupiter** is the dominant aggregator. They differ in the sources they cover, how they handle fees, and extra features like gas-cost optimisation or MEV protection — but the core promise is the same: search everywhere, execute the best route atomically.

• An aggregator searches many DEXs and pools to find the best price for one swap
• It executes the whole multi-pool route in a single atomic transaction
• 1inch, Matcha, ParaSwap, CowSwap on EVM chains; Jupiter on Solana
• You typically get a better rate than any single DEX in isolation