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Note: We will try to keep things simple here, so some important keywords will be highlighted with bold and underline decorations. Keep attention to them, and feel free to return to this page to refresh your bearings.
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SwapDuck operates as an exchange broker, facilitating exchanges of crypto funds by finding the best available methods to swap the provided crypto funds. Every Order that receives a Deposit is thoroughly analysed and matched against our CEX and DEX Exchange Providers, and based on our market assumptions is swapped using the best applicable Exchange Provider and Trading Strategy.
Naturally, this introduces the concepts of Deposits, Swaps and Withdrawals - which, in turn, constitute an Order in our system. A successful Order creates an Payout - which is a USDT deposit into your partner Balance.
In other words, for every successful order received via our B2B integration, SwapDuck will deposit a set percent of its margin into your partner account.
(there is also the markup option, but we’ll talk about that a bit down the line…)
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SwapDuck systems process ONLY ONE deposit per order. We rotate deposit addresses between our clients, and not only any secondary and/or late deposit will be ignored, but it may as well be credited to a completely different order from a different client. Please warn your clients accordingly and do not display deposit address information for timed out orders.
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When an Order is routed through one of our Exchange Providers, the provider will typically issue a dedicated Deposit Address for the requested currency and network. This address is created and reserved as part of the order placement flow, and the provider will start monitoring its balance for inbound transactions. Once the deposit transaction is seen and reaches the required confirmation threshold (blockchain and provider-specific), the CEX marks the deposit as credited and makes the funds available for trading.
Our systems treat that provider-issued deposit address as the single authoritative target for the Order. We continuously poll the Deposit Address balance and issue internal status updates to detect when the deposit has been seen and credited, and we do so within a strict time window of 2 hours. If the deposit is not detected before the Order times out, we will stop watching the address for that order and will re-issue it to another Order within our system after a 3 days grace period.
SwapDuck uses a set of Trading Strategies to execute a Swap in a way that balances speed, cost, and slippage. At a high level, the strategy we pick depends on the route we are using (which Exchange Provider and which market) and the size of the order, because the same execution style does not perform equally well across all amounts.
For smaller amounts, we typically prefer market order trading strategies. Market orders are optimised for speed and simplicity: once your client’s Deposit is credited, we can usually complete the trade quickly at the best available price in the order book at that moment. This reduces time-in-market and helps keep the overall flow predictable.
For larger amounts, we typically switch to limit order trading strategies. Limit order trading allows us to control the execution price and reduce slippage by working the order against available liquidity instead of taking it immediately. This can improve realised rates on big trades, at the cost of potentially longer execution time, because limit orders may fill partially or require multiple placements as market conditions change.
If your business requires more control over how big trades are executed, we can also provide personalised trading options. This can include configurable parameters such as limit order types and options, execution time window, price tolerance, and how aggressively an order should seek fills. These settings are best discussed case-by-case, because the optimal configuration depends on the asset, network, typical order sizes, and the liquidity profile of the selected providers. Moreover, if your Order requires some extra attention and granular control, we can arrange a manually-driven order placement with a specific price.
Finally, some trading routes may involve cross-provider trading flows, where the deposit and trading legs span multiple venues. For example, a BTC → USDT trade may be executed as CEX A → CEX B with different transient currencies (such as TRX or ZCASH) if that path yields better liquidity or requires a high level of anonymity for a given pair. In these cases, SwapDuck handles the orchestration between providers and still exposes the exchange to you as a single Order, with consistent status updates across the full flow.
Once the trade is completed, the selected Exchange Provider is called by our systems to issue the outbound transfer to your client’s specified Withdrawal Address on the requested network. Depending on the route, this may be a direct on-chain withdrawal from a CEX hot wallet or a DEX settlement transaction. In all cases, SwapDuck treats the withdrawal leg as part of the same Order and tracks it until the transfer is broadcast and confirmed.
As soon as the provider has created the withdrawal and we receive the on-chain identifier, we update the Order with the TX hash (transaction ID). In practice, this means you should expect the TX hash to appear once the withdrawal is submitted to the network, not when it is fully confirmed. Final confirmation times vary by blockchain, network congestion, and provider-specific policies, so the TX hash is the most reliable anchor for your own order tracking via block explorers.
To improve the accuracy of our estimated price, SwapDuck can offer network fee compensation on eligible routes. When enabled, we cover the blockchain network fee using our own funds so that the user’s received amount is not reduced by the network fee component. This helps keep the quoted estimate closer to the realised payout for the client, especially on networks with volatile fees, while keeping your partner-side commission calculation consistent with our internal fee model.