Fractal
How offchain liquidity helps a solver consistently outbid the competition
Percentage of Fractal's trades involving Bebop
17%
Total settled through Bebop
$2B+
Numbers of trades using Bebop
180k+
Fractal is a solver, a professional trading algorithm that competes to execute trades on behalf of users. Every time someone places a trade on Cowswap, Fractal is one of the algorithms fighting to fill it at the best possible price. The solver that delivers the most value wins and earns protocol rewards. The quality of a solver's liquidity sources and the routing know-how determines whether it wins or not.
Fractal wins by combining onchain DEX liquidity with offchain RFQ sources to construct routes that beat the competition. Last year, Fractal settled $7.2B in volume and over 330,000 trades across all venues, consistently ranking among Cowswap's top three solvers.
Solvers on Cowswap face a fundamental tension. They need to offer the best execution to win auctions, but they also need to protect their own margins to run a sustainable operation.
Cowswap uses a batch auction where solvers compete to fill user trades. The solver that delivers the most surplus to users wins and earns protocol rewards. But solvers also face penalties when trades revert or execution deviates from what was promised.
Onchain DEX liquidity makes this harder for a few reasons.
Prices move within the 12-second window between blocks. A path that looks optimal at simulation time can degrade by settlement. Solvers cannot lock in a price, so they have to pad their quotes to absorb potential movement. If the price moves too far, the transaction reverts entirely and the solver eats the cost. There is no guarantee of a fill.
Onchain pools have finite depth. Any trade above a certain size pushes the price against you, and multi-hop routes compound the problem. For the high-volume pairs where solvers compete most aggressively, onchain liquidity alone often cannot support the trade size without meaningful price impact.
Not many onchain venues consistently offer competitive rates on the pairs that matter most. Having access to the best pricing sources is essential to building better routes overall.
The result: solvers have to discount their bids to account for all of this. That discount comes directly out of margin. And if the discount is not enough, a revert costs even more.
Fractal needed a liquidity source that solved all these problems.
Bebop's RFQ+ API connects Fractal directly to professional market makers who stream firm, executable quotes. Unlike onchain DEX quotes that shift between simulation and settlement, Bebop's prices are signed commitments. The price quoted is the price filled. No unexpected slippage. No failed transactions.
The first advantage is price. Professional market makers competing through Bebop often provide tighter spreads than onchain DEX pools, especially on high-volume pairs. Better prices mean more surplus, and surplus is how Cowswap scores solutions.
The second advantage is execution certainty. Solvers submit their solutions before settlement happens onchain. If the actual execution deviates from what was promised, or if a transaction reverts entirely, the solver faces penalties. This forces solvers to discount their bids to account for execution risk on volatile onchain routes. With Bebop's guaranteed fills, Fractal can bid closer to the true value of its solution without hedging against reverts or price movement.
Together, these two advantages compound. Cowswap rewards solvers using a second-price auction mechanism. A solver's payout depends on how much additional value they bring compared to the next best alternative. Bebop helps Fractal maximize on both fronts: competitive pricing from professional market makers, and execution certainty that lets Fractal report that pricing without discounting it.
Since integrating in late 2024, Fractal has routed over $1.9B in volume and 178,000+ trades through Bebop on mainnet. Nearly half of this volume flows through two pairs: WETH-USDC and WETH-USDT, representing over $850M in combined volume.
At the beginning, Fractal used Bebop for the obvious high-value pairs: stablecoins to WETH and back, where guaranteed execution matters most. With Bebop in its routing stack, Fractal could bid more aggressively on these pairs without padding for execution risk, helping it win more auctions and retain more margin on each win.
Over time, Fractal started routing an increasingly diverse set of trades through Bebop. Today, Fractal uses Bebop across 1,250+ unique token pairs. Bebop went from being a liquidity source for Fractal's biggest trades to a building block embedded across its entire routing strategy.
The solver market on Cowswap and other intent protocols is getting more competitive as more solvers enter. Every major solver on Cowswap is already connected to Bebop. The ones that consistently win are the ones that use it to its full potential.
Onchain DEXs will always be a core part of solver routing. But for high-volume pairs where execution quality determines the outcome, offchain RFQ liquidity provides an edge that onchain sources alone cannot match. Pricing that a solver can build reliable solutions around.
The value proposition is straightforward. Access to better prices gives solvers the raw material to win auctions and guaranteed execution removes the risk that eats into those wins.
As the solver landscape grows more competitive and expands across new chains, the solvers with the best liquidity infrastructure will continue to separate themselves. Fractal's integration with Bebop is a foundation built to scale with that competition.
Building a solver where execution quality determines whether you win?
