CoW DAO: 2024 in Review!

See you later 2024! But before we wave goodbye to this year, let’s review all the amazing things that went on in and around CoW DAO over the last 12 months.

Ready?

Let’s go.

CoW DAO broke new ground in revenue, market share, and transaction speed

This year was big for CoW DAO, in all the ways. CoW DAO earned 2,815 ETH in revenue over the course of 2024, breaking all previous records since the project started.

As you can see from the chart below, things got better as the year passed, setting CoW DAO up for another stellar year in 2025.

That was powered, in part by gains in market share. CoW DAO had an ambitious target for CoW Swap: to become the largest DEX aggregator in the DeFi space. In January 2024, 1inch held a dominant position, with 40% market share, CoW Swap meanwhile, was second with 18%.

By the end of the year, CoW Swap had grown to 26.8% market share, pulling 1inch back to 35%. Our goal for 2025 still remains: to make CoW Swap the number 1 destination for DEX aggregation in DeFi.

In the anti-MEV market meanwhile, MEV Blocker finished the year with an 81.3% market share, dominating the space.

Helping CoW Swap, and the underlying CoW Protocol achieve this feat was the tireless work CoW DAO’s engineering team did to improve transaction speeds.

CoW DAO engineers decreased the average execution time by 45% while increasing the percentage of orders executed in less than 50 seconds by 80%. Not bad at all.

But this was just the beginning. Below we delve into what else CoW DAO got up to in 2024.

CoW Swap headed to new new chains

It was a big year for new networks. In June CoW Swap launched on Arbitrum - the first L2 for CoW Swap. That meant Arbitrum users for the first time had access to:

• The most robust solver competition

• Surplus-capturing (price-improving) swaps

• Advanced order types and custom intents

Since launching CoW Swap has grown its market share to become one of the key DEX aggregators on Arbitrum. But we didn’t stop there.

In December, CoW Swap launched on Base.

Traders who already used CoW Swap on Ethereum mainnet loved its features, and with the launch on Base, could now seamlessly switch to the L2 inside CoW Swap’s existing UI with the touch of a button.

You no longer need to leave CoW Swap to trade on the world’s fastest growing L2.

This launch positions CoW DAO as a foundational player in the Base ecosystem, targeting both traders and developers, while extending CoW DAO’s suite of products, which are now available to users on Ethereum, Gnosis Chain, Arbitrum and now, Base.

CoW Product Launches and Tweaks

The engineering team were super busy in 2024, building and releasing new products, while simultaneously tweaking and improving existing ones. Here’s an overview.

In January we overhauled our technical documents

This was a mighty endeavour. Our technical documents are vital to helping developers understand and integrate CoW DAO products into their own tech stacks. We’re proud of how they’ve turned out.

In March we launched CoW AMM Safe app

Funded by CoW Grants and developed by BlueFi Studio, the CoW AMM Safe app allows anyone to deploy a liquidity pool between two tokens, inside the Safe app.

This made it simpler than ever to pick a token pair, and let CoW AMM power your very own passive investing strategy.

In May we launched MEV Scanner

In late spring, we launched MEV Scanner!

This is an X, Telegram, and Discord bot that checks how much MEV an Ethereum wallet address has suffered.

This meant that anyone could look up an Ethereum wallet address, or ENS name, and a bot will respond with how much MEV the address has suffered along with the most-MEV'd AMM contract.

Oh and we built a website, too!

In June we launched a new brand identity

CoW DAO is very different today than it was when it first launched.

CoW DAO was created to support CoW Protocol, but over the past two years it has launched two more mission-aligned products: MEV Blocker (the #1 MEV protection RPC) and CoW AMM (the first MEV-capturing AMM).

Supporting three products behind CoW Protocol proved awkward and confusing, so we're re-emphasized CoW DAO over CoW Protocol. With the rebrand this allowed us - and hopefully you - to see CoW DAO products as a house of inter-connected and mission-aligned brands.

Not only does the new brand provide a framework to hold existing products together – it creates a flexible and cohesive identity system that can incorporate future launches, while making it easier to cross-promote every brand in the family.

In August, we launched CoW AMM

While CoW DAO’s other products protect traders from MEV, CoW AMM became the first product from CoW DAO built to protect liquidity providers directly. CoW AMM is the first product on any blockchain to tackle the LVR problem head on.

Launching CoW AMM was a natural extension of CoW DAO’s mission to protect Ethereum users from MEV. With two successful products (MEV Blocker and CoW Protocol) aimed at traders, it was the perfect time to extend MEV protection to liquidity providers.

LVR is a large problem, estimated to be responsible for over $500M in value lost to MEV bots every year - more than all trading-related forms of MEV combined.

CoW DAO is uniquely capable of bringing an FM-AMM design to market, as it relies on a surplus-capturing solver network to balance liquidity pools. CoW Protocol currently runs the largest solver competition on Ethereum, with 19 active solvers.

Since launch, CoW AMM has a TVL of more than $25 million, helping market makers everywhere avoid MEV.

In August we also relaunched the progress bar

CoW Swap's order progress bar got a facelift! In late summer, our front-end team put the finishing touches on a shiny new progress bar. This meant traders could now see:

• When your order is included in a batch

• When solver competition starts

• When the best price is found

• View all solvers that took part

In October we launched 80/20 Pools on CoW AMM

Following on from the summer launch of CoW AMM, we rolled out a unique new feature with our partners, Balancer.

Loss Versus Rebalancing (LVR) is DeFi's dirty secret. As the price of an asset deviates across exchanges, arbitrageurs rush in to take advantage of price differences between pools. The first to do so can trade using an outdated price, siphoning profits from LPs.

Those leaks lead to $100s of millions in losses for LPs. Not on CoW AMM. Its LVR protection means pools remain leak free. By introducing 80/20 pools, CoW AMM offers more flexibility for deploying capital.

Using CoW AMM and 80/20 pools gives LPs:

• Asymmetric upside

• Reduced impermanent loss

• Hedging

In essence, these pools can maximize exposure to the native token while providing an avenue to boost returns via trading fees and token rewards.

CoW AMM's 80/20 pools give liquidity providers new pastures to play in.

New Listings

The $COW token went big in 2024. Lots of centralized exchanges listed $COW, helping new users discover the COW ecosystem.

The likes of BitVavo, Kraken, Coinbase, Binance and BingX Official all listed $COW in 2024.

This is a big step on our journey toward making DeFi safe and seamless for all. More access equals more liquidity, more awareness and, ultimately, more users.

CoW Protocol became the place projects go to do big things

In the autumn, CoW DAO partnered with Sky, formerly MakerDAO to help the project migrate its tokens as it transitions to its next chapter.

The team behind Sky approached CoW DAO to integrate CoW Protocol into their SWAP feature to allow users to seamlessly, and safely swap their tokens between DAI and its replacement, USDS, and its governance token MKR to SKY.

This was a sizable task: the MakerDAO transition was one of the largest token migrations. DAI is one of the world’s largest stablecoins, with a market cap of $5.3 billion and more than 500,000 holders. MKR, meanwhile, has a market cap of $1.5 billion and more than 100,000 token holders.

But thanks to the rock-solid architecture of CoW Protocol, the migration was a smooth and simple process for thousands of traders.

Thinking of doing something big in 2025? Get in touch.

Reflecting on our Udderly amazing Journey, and cheers to a CoW-tastic 2025!

This year has been the most exciting year so far for CoW DAO. We’re already diving headfirst into 2025 with a renewed commitment to more products built for both novice and experienced users.

Here’s to another thrilling year at the forefront of DeFi!

Mooooo