Difference between sell and swap

Hi Incognito team.

At the beginning I would like to say big THANK YOU. My friend recommended me an Incognito and I’m impressed.

But I’m confused when used it (just once yet) in my “coin exchange workflow” what is the exact difference between Sell and Swap in Trade part of app. (Android, v5.0.13)

  1. I have created an account
  2. I have asked for initial PVRs via Faucet
  3. I have shielded some LTCs and I have seen some PVRs was used to cover this transaction.
  4. According my friends I wanted to buy another PVR to cover my future transactions.
    4.1. As I had pLTC in my wallet already, I expected to make a Swap to PVRs. I was surprised when the fee for such swap was much higher that I had available.
    4.2. I had to use Sell where the transaction fee was 0. It taken several hours but I have received by PVR finally.
  5. Then I have decided to exchange my pLTC to pBTC. (As the Android app doesn’t show the “p” anymore I was a little bit confused. Do I have really pLCTs? Or plain LTCs and I have to shield them before any next step?
    But it seems they are really pLTCs.
    )
    On the Trade page, both Sell and Swap tabs offers me some kind of exchange between 2 coins. I have used Swap and according How to trade on the new Incognito exchange we should not used Sell but I didn’t really understand why.
    Anyway, I have used Swap.

Then I wanted to buy another PVRs as I spent almost all of them as fee for my exchange.

When I compare offers of Sell and Swap I see these differences:
(Numbers taken Sunday morning, 2022-01-30)

  • Sell: 0.0048436 LTC -> 0.7326 PVR, fee 0
  • Swap: 0.0048436 LTC -> 0.756950391 PVR, fee 0.00185 PVR

Even the swap was marked as using SHIVX as interim jump.
Of course, I have used swap as it offered me higher amount of PVRs.

But I would really know what’s the difference between sell and swap? I wasn’t able to find any manual/description.

Many thanks for any explanation (specially “for dummies” like me).
//Rado1

Swap allows you to go from one coin to the other based on the level of available liquidity. It allows you to execute your trade immediately and entails a fee.

Buy and Sell is different. It allows you to place a limit order on the buy or sell side at a specified price for the coin you’re looking to trade. Limit orders for now entail no fee but this may change in the future. Your order will not fill until another trader enters an opposing trade at the price you have specified. This is similar to how trading would occur on a stock exchange or a centralised exchange.

The reason why there’s a swap as well as a buy / sell limit orders in the app is because the incognito decentralised exchange uses a hybrid automated market maker (AMM) and traditional order book system. See the link below:

https://we.incognito.org/t/introducing-the-new-pdex-pdex-v3/13026

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Many thanks for the explanation. It makes a sense for me.
Just small additional Q.
In case I will want to get additional PVRs but my current amount of PVRs is not sufficient to pay swap from some coins to PVR…
Is there some other way to resolve it than “Buy” or “Sell”?
I expect the Faucet is available only one time for fresh accounts.

Many thanks.

For a user who has just brought crypto into Incognito and they want to get PRV they would use the Buy function of the Trade menu.

Do you see how that could be very problematic for new users?

Its fine for anyone that already has onboarded their crypto and has plenty of PRV to fund trading activity especially with larger crypto amounts.

But for new users relying on buy/sell is problematic because:

It is subject to getting the order filled which can take time.

Buy / sell orders are not very deep in most markets which make it again difficult since it’s not clear what price they should set to have a reasonable chance that their order matched.

Buy and sell limit orders will not always be free. What happens in that scenario?

If new users can’t buy PRV easily to fund transaction fees easily and swiftly - it deters adoption.

The way to resolve this would allowing swap to net off the fees for a PRV purchases and sales (for example a user enters a 1000 prv purchase but in effect it nets off to 998 prv).

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I understand where you are coming from. I have relayed this to the devs and asked for them to discuss it during their next meeting.

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Or…
Just to select by which coins you want to pay a fee. And for preferable PVR the fee will be slightly lower. Something similar has implemented Bisq.
Then, there is still and price pressure to use PVR but there is also other option (even slightly more expensive) in case you have no PVRs.

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Oh, I mean exactly the same as @SPAddict25, just didn’t catch it at first.

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It’s not the best, took a while to work out you Deposit BTC in to a one time address which is auto Shielded ‘on incognito exchange’, then you perform a Trade via a Swap to convert to another Shielded coin, and then can hold or perform a send ‘off incognito exchange’ with auto Unshield. They need exact Step by Step instructions for every use-case ‘management consulting at its worst’, for each app, with pictures, on every version update, personally like the “it’s a club” approach but liquidity is liquidity.

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