When you get a swap quote, the number on screen is an estimate — not a guarantee. That's not a catch. It's how floating-rate pricing works, and understanding it takes about five minutes. This guide walks through the mechanics so you know exactly what to expect before you send funds.
What "floating rate" means
A floating rate is a live market rate. It isn't locked at the moment you enter an address or click a button. Instead, the rate that applies to your swap is the one in effect at the moment your deposit transaction is confirmed on-chain and the swap executes.
Think of it like a currency exchange counter at an airport. The board shows a rate. By the time you hand over your cash, the rate may have ticked up or down. The amount you receive reflects the rate at execution, not the rate you saw on the board.
For crypto, this matters because block confirmation times vary and markets move continuously. Between the moment you initiate a swap and the moment your funds arrive, the underlying market price can shift — sometimes by fractions of a percent, occasionally more during high-volatility windows.
Where the rate comes from
GhostSwap sources pricing from aggregated liquidity from leading crypto markets. That means the rate you see isn't invented or manually set — it reflects the weighted mid-market price across multiple active trading venues at the time of execution.
This has two practical effects:
- Prezzi competitivi. Aggregated liquidity tends to reduce the spread between the buy and sell sides, compared to routing through a single source.
- Rate movement. Because the rate is live, it moves. A quote is an estimate of what you'll receive, not a contract.
The fee language GhostSwap uses is precise for this reason: "Floating-rate pricing from aggregated liquidity." That phrase means exactly what it says.
The quote-to-execution gap: what actually moves your rate
Three things determine how much your final amount differs from the quoted estimate:
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Time to deposit confirmation. The longer it takes your sending network to confirm your transaction, the more time the market has to move. A Bitcoin transaction waiting for one confirmation might sit in the mempool for several minutes during congestion. An XMR transaction confirms differently again.
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Asset volatility at that moment. Stablecoin-to-stablecoin swaps move very little. BTC-to-XMR or ETH-to-SOL swaps can move more, because both legs have independent price action.
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Liquidity depth for your pair. Larger swaps can have a wider execution spread than smaller ones, because moving more volume through aggregated liquidity may consume more of the order book on one side.
GhostSwap supports 1,600 pairs across approximately 200 assets (product-truth API, fetched 2026-04-25T05:05Z). Pair depth varies — high-volume pairs like BTC/ETH have deeper liquidity than long-tail pairs.
What typically happens in practice
Most swaps complete in around 8 minutes at the median (p50). At the 95th percentile, swaps complete within 30 minutes — that ceiling usually reflects slow block times on the sending or receiving network, not anything on GhostSwap's side (product-truth API, fetched 2026-04-25T05:05Z).
GhostSwap's 30-day uptime is 99.5% (product-truth API, fetched 2026-04-25T05:05Z), meaning the swap infrastructure is available for the vast majority of your attempts.
For most swaps, the final amount lands within a narrow band of the quoted estimate. You should plan for minor rate movement — treat the quote as a directional figure, not a fixed number.
What you need to start a swap
No account. No email address. No identity verification. You supply a receiving address for the output asset and, if you want a safety net, a refund address. Funds pass through non-custodially — GhostSwap does not hold your funds at any point in the process (A1, A2, A6).
The floating-rate model and the no-account model are independent properties of how GhostSwap is built. You don't need to sign up to get a live rate — you just initiate the swap and the rate applies at execution.
A note on fixed-rate alternatives
Some swap services offer a fixed-rate or "guaranteed" rate option. That typically comes with a wider spread baked in — the service is absorbing the market-movement risk and pricing that into your quote upfront. Whether floating or fixed is better for you depends on the size of your swap, the volatility of the pair, and how long your confirmation is likely to take.
GhostSwap uses floating-rate pricing. If you want certainty on the output amount, factor in a small buffer when deciding how much to swap.
Sintesi
- Floating rate = the market rate at execution, not at quote.
- GhostSwap sources rates from aggregated liquidity from leading crypto markets.
- Most swaps complete in ~8 minutes (p50); nearly all within 30 minutes (p95).
- No account or identity check is required — supply a receiving address and initiate.
- Treat the quoted estimate as directional. Minor rate movement between quote and execution is normal.
For more on how swaps work, see the GhostSwap FAQ.
