Risks

Robust risk management measures are in place, but regardless users should remain informed of risks. Below is a non-exhaustive list of dangers the Crystal protocol could potentially be exposed to.

Smart Contract Risk

Crystal's order matching and settlement executes on-chain in immutable smart contracts. As with any smart contracts, may contain undiscovered bugs or vulnerabilities which could result in loss of funds. To mitigate these risks, Crystal’s code has undergone external third-party professional audits, and the protocol runs a bug bounty program and an extensive testing framework.

Slippage Risk

Trades execute against live liquidity, and prices may change between the time a transaction is submitted and when it is executed. To protect against this, every trade enforces a slippage bound and deadline, and reverts if those limits would be exceeded. Setting loose slippage bounds, particularly in thin or volatile markets, can result in significantly worse trading rates.

Partial Fill Risk

An order may only be partially filled before reaching its worst acceptable price. Depending on order type, the unfilled remainder will be returned, be converted into a resting limit order (a market-to-limit order), or the transaction may be reverted.

Market Configuration Risk

Anyone can permissionlessly create a market with arbitrary parameters of their choice, so a given token pair may have multiple markets, potentially with unreasonable parameters. Canonical markets, in contrast, are configured with vetted parameters, and the router automatically routes to the latest canonical market for a pair, so end users are shown reasonable defaults. Interacting directly with a non-canonical or misconfigured market is at the user's own risk.