What is slippage in crypto trading and how do I control it?

Slippage is the gap between the price you were quoted when you hit swap and the price you actually got. Markets move in the second or two between quote and execution, especially on Solana tokens, and slippage is where that shows up in your fill.

What causes it

• Price movement. Other trades land before yours and shift the pool. On a token that's running, a lot can happen in a second.
• Thin liquidity. In a shallow pool your own trade moves the price. That part, price impact, is visible up front and grows with your size relative to the pool.
• MEV. Bots sandwich you, buying just before and selling just after, and pocket your slippage allowance. See what MEV is on Solana.

What tolerance does

Slippage tolerance is the worst price you'll accept. It's written into the transaction as a minimum output, and if the fill would come in under that, the transaction fails instead of filling badly. That's protection, not a bug. Too tight on a volatile token and your swaps keep failing while it runs away. Too loose and you've handed a bigger allowance to price movement and to the bots.

Settings that work

Liquid majors: under 1% is plenty. Volatile low caps: 5 to 10% is normal, and a fill during a spike will cost you. The mistake is leaving 20%+ on by default. That's an invitation. Splitting a big order into smaller swaps also cuts price impact in thin pools.

What the slippage sheet in Aurus actually does

Two modes. Manual is a stepper from 0.1% to 50%, and the terminal keeps its own setting separate from the main swap screen. Auto reads how much the token has moved in the last five minutes and the last hour and picks a band from that, 3%, 5%, or 10%, never tighter than your own fallback. Either way, the tolerance on screen is the tolerance written into the transaction. There's no hidden buffer.

If the price moves past it, the swap fails and you get a choice on the status screen: retry at the same tolerance, or a clearly labeled wider one, sized to the move. Nothing widens on its own, and a retry never quietly resets what you originally approved. Bots can't sandwich a transaction that failed.