Lesson 2 of 6, about 4 minutes to read
How a swap on Solana works
Pools, routes, quotes and signatures: what happens between pressing Swap and seeing the new token.
A swap trades one token for another. On Solana most swaps go through liquidity pools: smart contracts holding two tokens, where the price moves as people trade against them. Some routes also use market makers who quote a price directly.
An aggregator such as Jupiter looks across many pools and can split one order over several of them to get a better total result. The path your tokens take is called the route.
From quote to confirmation
Every swap follows the same order of events:
- Quote: the aggregator estimates how much you get for the amount you put in.
- Transaction: the app builds the instructions for that route.
- Signature: your wallet shows the transaction and you approve or reject it.
- Confirmation: the network processes it, usually within seconds, and your balances change.
Quotes go stale
Prices keep moving while you decide. That is why a swap carries a minimum amount you are willing to receive: if the market moves past it before your transaction lands, the swap fails instead of filling at a worse price. The next lesson covers that limit.