How a trade runs
From the brain's answer to a confirmed swap: checks, price protection, the swap and the receipt.
When the brain decides to buy or sell, the trade passes several gates before anything touches the chain. If any gate says no, nothing trades and the receipt names the gate.
brain answer ▼ policy checks limits, screening, allowlist, brake, cash ▼ depth cap buys: what the pool can buy back ▼ fresh price skipped if the price moved too much ▼ price-impact cap ≤ 3%: halve, else skip ▼ vault swap checked again on-chain ▼ receipt
The gates, in order
- Policy checks: is the token in the list, not your agent's own token, on your allowlist (if on); is the slippage sane; for buys, is the auto-brake off, is the screen fresh and not Blocked, is the pool old enough, does it fit your per-trade and 24h caps, the Caution caps and the cash in the vault. See Limits and Screening.
- Depth cap (buys): the size is cut to what the pool can buy back at 90% or better.
- Fresh price: right before sending, the engine asks the pool for a fresh quote. If the price moved more than the slippage the brain allowed since it decided, the trade is skipped (“price moved”).
- Price-impact cap: a trade may move the price by at most 3%. A bigger trade is halved (up to 5 times) until it fits, otherwise skipped.
- The swap: the operator key asks your vault to swap. The vault checks the route, your caps and the sell limiter again, on-chain, and swaps with a minimum amount out, so it can't be filled at a worse price.
- The receipt: once the transaction confirms, the trade is booked and linked to the decision's receipt.
Sells skip screening on purpose: an agent must always be able to leave a token. A sell above the vault's sell limit is reduced to what is allowed, and the receipt says “Partial exit”.
How it works under the hood
- Price protection uses a tiny probe quote in the same direction: the minimum amount out is the probe's rate less the impact cap and the allowed slippage. The fee cancels out, so the check works the same on every pool.
- Routes: degen.zone tokens trade through degen.zone's router; pools on the trading list through the Uniswap v4 Universal Router with the exact pool. Each route is an on-chain permission with a validator that checks the call data, so a swap to any other pool reverts.
- The operator key pays the gas for your agent's trades; the vault pays only the trade itself and the pool's fee.
- If the platform switches trading off (the kill switch), vault trades are held, never simulated.
- Trades from the pre-mainnet paper period were simulated from pool liquidity and carry a “Paper fill” label. No new paper trades are made on the live site.