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RFQ Liquidity

Orders routed to DFlow are executed against request-for-quote (RFQ) liquidity provided by professional market makers. RFQ is a commonly used source of liqudity in traditional OTC markets. DFlow offers both an indicative and firm quote.

Note if a platform fee is enabled by the order flow source, the indicative and firm quote will factor in the fee and display a fee-adjusted price to the user.

Indicative Quote​

An indicative quote is provided by market makers to give a continuous stream of price quotes for order flow sources to display to users. This is a high throughput endpoint that can be called to give users an approximation of the "real" price, where DFlow defines the "real" price as the executable price.

Indicative Quote

  1. Sends an endorsement request
  2. Sends an indicative quote request upon receipt of endorsement
  3. DFlow Swap API verifies endorsement and if valid, sends request to auction winner
  4. Market maker returns indicative quote to DFlow Swap API
  5. DFlow Swap API returns price quote

Indicative quotes can not be executed. See firm quote below.

Firm Quote​

A firm quote is an executable price, meaning users will be able to have their orders filled at the firm quote. I.e when fetched, the receive quantity will be calculated from the firm quote and displayed to users, and users will be guaranteed that receive quantity assuming fill success.

Fetching a firm quote, unlike an indicative quote, returns both a quote for the token swap and a crafted blockchain transaction, which the user can then sign to complete the order transaction. For example, orders from Ethereum prompt the DFlow node to create a signable Ethereum transaction for users and orders from Solana prompt the DFlow node to create a signable Solana transaction for users.

Firm Quote

  1. Sends an endorsement request
  2. Sends a firm quote request upon receipt of endorsement
  3. DFlow Swap API verifies endorsement and if valid, sends request to auction winner
  4. Market maker returns firm quote to DFlow Swap API
  5. DFlow Swap API creates and returns blockchain transaction containing price quote
  6. Retail trader approves transaction and returns signed transaction
  7. DFlow Swap API forwards signed transaction to market maker for final approval
  8. Market maker sends transaction to blockchain to be settled

When to Request Firm Quotes​

Note this price quote endpoint is rate-limited which means order flow sources should refrain from retrieving firm quotes unless user has intent of submitting an order. For example, order flow sources should fetch indicative quotes when displaying continuous prices to users and firm quotes on trade confirmations. For certain types of app designs where user intent may not be explicit, fetching firm quotes at a reasonable frequency is allowed (refer to rate limit).