CoW Protocol is a decentralized trading platform that batches user orders and matches them either peer-to-peer or via aggregated DEX liquidity. It uses off-chain trade intents and a solver network to find optimal trade execution, reducing costs and preventing MEV exploitation.

By matching users directly through Coincidence of Wants (CoWs), CoW Protocol avoids traditional DEX fees and gas costs. When exact opposing orders are found, trades are settled peer-to-peer, eliminating intermediaries and saving gas.

COW is a governance token used to participate in CoW DAO decisions, fund grants, and shape future upgrades. It can also be allocated to incentivize solvers, developers, and community contributors.

Yes. CoW Protocol protects users from front-running and sandwich attacks by using a private order settlement mechanism. It also offers MEV Blocker, an RPC that reroutes trades through protected relayers and returns backrun profits to users.

COW is available on major exchanges like Binance, Bitget, Gate.io, and MEXC. It also trades on DEXs such as the project's native DEX, CoW Swap, as well as Uniswap.

The maximum supply of COW is capped at 1 billion tokens. Approximately 419 million are in circulation.

The protocol is governed by the CoW DAO, a decentralized community of token holders who vote on upgrades, grants, and protocol parameters.

Users sign off-chain trade intents, which are picked up by solvers competing in batch auctions. The solver offering the best execution (max surplus for the user) wins and settles the trade on-chain.

COW is primarily an ERC-20 token, so it can be stored in any Ethereum-compatible wallet, such as MetaMask, Ledger, SafePal, or Trust Wallet. Additional wallet options are available for the Arbitrum and Gnosis versions of the token.

Unlike AMM or routing-based aggregators, CoW Protocol uses batch auctions and peer-to-peer matching to improve execution prices and minimize gas. It’s solver-driven, decentralized, and fully permissionless.