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What actually happens between your click and tokens in your wallet. Worth two minutes — knowing the pipeline makes the settings and the failure modes obvious.

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The four phases

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1. Request

You click Buy/Sell. The request captures your intent — token, amount, and your transaction settings (slippage cap, priority fee, MEV mode).

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2. Quote

Your trade is priced against live liquidity: expected output, price impact, routing. What you see on the review screen is this quote. Your approval signs it with session-scoped permissions — authorizing this trade, not open-ended control of your wallet.

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3. Checks

Before broadcast, the trade passes risk checks: the quote is still valid within your slippage cap, the route is still live, token-level red flags (honeypot patterns, transfer restrictions) haven’t tripped. A trade that fails checks reverts here — costing you nothing but a retry.

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4. Execution

The transaction is built with your priority fee and MEV routing applied, and lands on-chain. Confirmation shows the moment the trade is final — the position appears in your Portfolio as soon as it’s real.

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Trading across chains

Trades execute on the token’s chain, from that chain’s USDC balance. When your funds sit on the other chain, the built-in bridge moves USDC over in one click (0.50%, min $0.50 — see Fees & Tiers); the bridge leg adds the destination chain’s confirmation time. Details: USDC Balance & Bridge.