Your first swap
How aggregators find the best price, what slippage and price impact mean, and how to avoid getting sandwiched.
A swap trades one token for another. On Solana you rarely pick a pool yourself: an aggregator checks every major DEX and finds the best route for you.
Doing it
- Open Jupiter (or Titan) and connect your wallet.
- Choose what you're selling and buying. For anything new, paste the mint address.
- Read the quote: the route, the price impact and the minimum you'll receive.
- Approve in your wallet. Check the preview matches.
- Open the transaction on Solscan to see exactly what happened.
Price impact vs slippage
These two are easy to confuse.
Price impact is how much your own trade moves the price. Pools price tokens by a formula, so buying makes the token scarcer in the pool and pushes the price up as you buy. Deep pools barely move; thin ones move a lot. On a normal-sized trade, anything above about 1% is a sign liquidity is thin.
Slippage tolerance is a safety limit: the worst price you'll accept before the trade cancels. The price can move between when you click and when your transaction lands. Auto slippage works well for major tokens. Volatile tokens need more room, which also leaves more room for bots, so use smaller sizes.
MEV and sandwiches
Some bots watch for pending swaps and sandwich them: buy just before you, let your trade push the price up, then sell straight after. You get a worse price; they pocket the difference, up to your slippage limit.
Protections:
- Keep slippage as tight as the token allows.
- Use apps with MEV protection (Jupiter Ultra and Titan's Prime Mode route around many of these attacks).
- Split very large trades.
The MEV lesson explains the mechanics.
Limit orders and recurring buys
You don't have to trade at market. Limit orders fill only at your price. DCA (dollar-cost averaging) buys a fixed amount on a schedule, which is a calm way to build a position without timing the market. Both live inside Jupiter.
Common mistakes
- Buying a copycat token found by name search.
- Swapping with almost no SOL left for fees.
- Setting 50% slippage "so it goes through" on a memecoin.
- Approving without reading the wallet preview.
Key takeaways
- Aggregators like Jupiter and Titan split your order across many pools for the best price.
- Price impact is how much your own trade moves the price; above 1% on a normal trade means thin liquidity.
- Slippage is the worst price you'll accept; tight slippage protects you from sandwich bots.
- Paste mint addresses instead of searching by name.
Check yourself
3 questions. Get them all right to mark this lesson complete.
Try it
Facts checked Oct 19, 2026. Educational content, not financial advice.
