Surge Protection is a built in pre trade safety mechanism designed to safeguard users from significant value loss during periods of shallow liquidity, extreme market volatility or abrupt price movements

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How It Works

Before executing a swap, the Router performs a rapid, hypothetical reverse trade simulation. This simulation instantaneously attempts to “sell back” the expected output token for the original input token, all within the context of the same block and without external market interference
  • Simulation logic: The router uses the current onchain state to estimate how much of the original inputToken a user would recover if they immediately tried to reverse the trade
  • Threshold trigger: If this estimated recovery amount falls below a predefined threshold (currently 90% of the original inputAmount), the trade is deemed high risk and is automatically blocked by the router. This prevents the transaction from being broadcast onchain, saving the user from a potentially significant loss

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Evaluation Criteria

The Surge Protection mechanism evaluates a combination of factors to determine if a trade poses an unacceptable risk:
  • Liquidity depth: Assesses the available liquidity on the chosen routing path. Extremely shallow liquidity can make trades highly susceptible to price swings
  • Price impact: Analyzes the estimated price impact of the proposed trade on the affected liquidity pools
  • Volatility within the block: Detects sudden and significant price changes occurring within the current blockchain block, often indicative of front-running attempts or market manipulation

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Default Threshold

If the estimated reverse loss exceeds 10% (meaning the recovered amount would be less than 90% of the original input), the trade is halted, and the API returns a revert: true flag and the specific error causing the Surge Protection activation

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User Benefits

Implementing Surge Protection directly translates to a safer and more trustworthy experience for the end users:
  • Prevents sudden losses: Acts as a shield against common DeFi pitfalls like front running (where malicious bots execute trades before and after a user’s transaction to profit from price changes) or being the “exit liquidity” in illiquid pools
  • Avoids adverse market conditions: Protects users from executing trades when liquidity is insufficient or prices are highly volatile, which could lead to substantial value erosion
  • Enhances trust and safety: By proactively preventing potentially bad trades, Surge Protection significantly enhances user confidence in your application and on us!

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Configuration

Surge Protection is disabled by default to give integrators full control. You can enable it explicitly in your /v1/quote API request by setting the surgeProtection parameter to true: 
{
  // ... other parameters
  "surgeProtection": true
}
When enabled, any trade exceeding the 10% reverse loss threshold will cause the /v1/quote endpoint to return revert: true and will not provide executable calldata. Your application should gracefully handle this condition and inform the user