A trader attempting to swap $50 million in Tether for the AAVE token executed an extremely unfavorable trade on March 12, receiving just 324 tokens despite explicit warnings. The transaction occurred through the Aave interface, which integrated routing from CoW Swap. Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov confirmed the user manually accepted a warning about extraordinary slippage before proceeding. Both Aave and CoW Protocol stated they would refund the fees collected from the transaction.
A user attempted to purchase AAVE tokens with $50 million in Tether through the **Aave** interface, according to a statement from **Aave Labs** founder and CEO Stani Kulechov. The interface, which uses routing infrastructure from **CoW Swap**, displayed a mandatory warning about extreme slippage due to the order’s size.
Kulechov said the user confirmed the warning on a mobile device and chose to proceed. The trade ultimately delivered only 324 AAVE tokens for the $50 million, a result of the execution conditions and available market liquidity.
Kulechov stated the routing infrastructure functioned as designed following standard DeFi practices. He noted that such high-slippage events can happen when trade sizes far exceed available liquidity, though this transaction was unusually large.
In response, the Aave team sympathized with the user and plans to return approximately $600,000 in fees from the transaction. Kulechov added that while maintaining DeFi’s permissionless nature is important, the industry can build more guardrails to prevent similar incidents.
CoW Protocol explained that “preventing users from making trades removes choice and can lead to terrible outcomes in some situations.” The platform also stated it would refund any fees sent to its DAO.
The incident drew reactions across the crypto community. A popular analyst, Autism Capital, described it as a teachable moment, while commentator KJ Crypto questioned the motivation behind such a large single purchase.
