A Question about Swap Fees

@Isogeny Yeah that just the way it is. What you can do is search for a better fee. Check out PegasusSwap. I use them usually because they got the best fee rate. They're in this forum too

@sepia The sad story I saw is, if most platforms are not honest on the actual costs, we are not even able to compare. Pegasus does look good by claiming not to have hidden fees, and I'll try it next time. Thanks for the recommendation.

@Isogeny I wish man. I remember getting $5 fee because I don't know better. It's sting when you only swap for a small amount and most of the chunk got eaten

@sepia Does an XMR Yelp sound like a good idea? I mean an app that secretly stores user-fed raw data and outputs the average hidden fee level for each exchange, both in relative percentage and absolute value? Since this demands the sacrifice of some private information -- trade id (to avoid duplicate reviews), timestamp (to correctly quote the market prices), and the coins' quantities -- I would double check whether hiding user ID suffices. Upside is, though, everybody could benefit from the transparency and cost reduction resulting from spiced competition between the platforms.

Not knowing more about other coins, I'm curious if such obscurity only exists for tokens delisted from major exchanges. Market size should be one question to think about.

@Isogeny I think it's not necessary because there are website that help you to search for the best rate. Oh yeah i forgot to mention CypherGoat, it's a swap aggregator which show the best rate that the market can offer, it has level to no kyc too. CypherGoat often do talk in Monero event btw, he will be in MoneroKon in Poland June 6 this year

https://cyphergoat.com/

@Isogeny Fees can vary by swap amount, the lower the trade, the higher the fee. If you are looking for the best rates then look at aggregators.

@monerica That's why I think the coin quantities in each trade matters in estimating the underneath pricing mechanics. If I exchanged 100 EUR for 115 USD when the EURUSD spot rate is 1.17, I can't simply guess they charged me a fixed fee of $2, or a scalable 1.74% spread. But if another trade happens at the same time, I can deduct the formula like:

• If 200 EUR was traded for 232 USD, then it's a fixed $2;
• If 1000 EUR bought 1150 USD, then it's a constant 1.74% spread;
• If 500 EUR became 594 USD, then things are complicated, and one probability is half-half: The exchange charges $1 for each trade plus 0.87% of the dollar amount.

The math is pretty simple, as long as sufficiently many observations are provided. My first impression on the aggregator site is, most judgments are qualitative (which is sufficient in many cases); to achieve higher economic efficiency, quantitative analytical methods could be very useful. Is there such a technical community yet?

@Isogeny There is a Monero trader group: https://www.reddit.com/r/xmrtrader/

But, there are also other factors. The markets are always moving. Fixed vs. float rates for example, you might not get what you expect unless it's a fixed rate but that is almost always a worse rate in a normal situation.

It really depends what you are trying to do, professional traders are almost always submitting full KYC so they get access to the most liquidity and the lowest fees plus spreads. In the world of instant swaps, which is what Monero trives on, 1% doesn't matter that much to people. There's a premium for privacy.

@monerica As a privacy advocate, I fully agree with you in general, while when in deal with an individual exchange, knowing whether the privacy premium is capped (or floored) to 1%, 10%, or 50% still matters. Even better, if the community knows sufficiently well about this, advanced financial engineering methods could be applied to reduce the uncertainty. XMRUSD flutuates, but the pricing model can't be comparably sophisticated, and once all exchanges of the same KYC level become comparable, all market participants will enjoy the benefit. It is fundamental humanity that people prefer lower risks -- why not trading with both lvl 0 KYC and the confidence that the loss is contained to a reasonably low level, when technically possible.

in case no one mentioned it yet, exolix is a really sus swap backend many services use

https://monero.forum/thread/40-exolix-swaps-exposed-via-api-vulnerability