Slippage

Slippage is the difference between the price you expected when placing a trade and the price you actually got when it executed. It happens most often in illiquid markets, or during large orders, fast-moving prices, or high volatility, when there aren't enough matching orders at your expected price to fill the whole trade. On decentralized exchanges, traders typically set a maximum slippage tolerance, which cancels the trade if the price moves beyond that threshold rather than executing at a much worse price. Some slippage is normal in fast markets; unusually high slippage is often a sign of thin liquidity for that particular trading pair.