Three structural gaps
The Sui ecosystem already supports active AMM, order-book, and aggregator-based trading. But these systems execute orders largely in isolation, and three gaps remain unresolved.Platform gap
CoW Protocol pioneered the Coincidence-of-Wants (CoW) model on Ethereum — batching opposing intents and settling matched portions peer-to-peer to avoid AMM price impact. Since 2021 it has returned over $1.2B in surplus to traders on cumulative volume exceeding $199.5B. Yet no major CoW-style protocol exists on Sui, leaving its DeFi ecosystem without a native batch-auction coordination layer. Sui’s object-centric storage, low fees, and sub-second finality make it viable where Ethereum’s gas costs forced the auction off-chain.Trust gap
Existing CoW implementations delegate winner selection, price verification, and solver coordination to off-chain services. This introduces two problems: liveness depends on trusted infrastructure, and the solver set is governed by a DAO-curated allow-list. The protocol cannot verify that the winner was chosen fairly — participants must trust the off-chain operator.Liquidity coordination gap
Sui DEXs process orders individually. Cetus executes one AMM swap per transaction, DeepBook matches one taker against available maker quotes, and aggregators still route through the same fragmented sources. When two users hold compatible opposing intents in the same market window, those intents are executed independently through separate liquidity paths, paying double the price impact and fees. The potential zero-slippage match is missed.The cost of fragmented execution
| Problem | Root cause |
|---|---|
| AMM price impact | Constant-product formula moves price proportionally to trade size relative to pool depth |
| Fragmented liquidity | Traders manually search across pools and aggregators |
| MEV exposure | Public transactions are vulnerable to frontrunning and sandwich attacks |
| Weak user protection | A badly chosen minimum output or slippage setting leaves money on the table |
| Permissioned solver set | Whitelists limit competition and increase centralization risk |
| No atomic settlement | Multi-step settlement on EVM requires off-chain coordination; partial failures are possible |