Why did my swap go through in two minutes but my friend's took over an hour

07 September 2026

Two swaps on the same site can finish minutes apart because no two swaps travel the same path. The difference is almost always explained by network congestion, the specific tokens involved, or the liquidity available at the moment each swap was sent.

What controls the speed of a swap

A swap does not move in a straight line. It passes through several steps: the blockchain confirms your transaction, the exchanger finds a route, it executes trades across one or more decentralized exchanges, and then it sends the output tokens back to you. Any of these steps can stall.

Network congestion is the most common cause of delay. Blockchains have limited space per block. When many people are sending transactions at the same time, miners or validators prioritize those that pay higher fees. If you sent your swap with a fee that was competitive at that moment, it got into the next block. Your friend might have sent theirs a few minutes later, when the network was busier, or with a fee that was too low for the current conditions. That one transaction then sat in the mempool waiting for a block with room.

The tokens themselves matter. Swapping a popular pair like SOL for USDC is fast because deep liquidity pools exist on multiple exchanges. The exchanger can split the trade across several pools and fill it almost instantly. Swapping an obscure token with thin liquidity is slower. The exchanger may need to break the trade into smaller pieces, wait for each piece to fill, or route through multiple intermediate tokens. Each hop adds time.

Liquidity depth changes by the second. A pool that had enough tokens when your friend started might have been drained by a large trade just before their swap landed. The exchanger then had to search for an alternative route, which can take multiple attempts. You may have caught a moment when the best route was obvious and liquid. They did not.

Slippage tolerance also plays a role. A swap with a tight slippage limit will fail or stall if prices move even slightly. The exchanger then retries with different parameters or waits for price to return. A wider tolerance lets the swap go through even during volatile moments. If you set a higher slippage and your friend set a low one, your swap cleared while theirs kept failing and retrying.

The blockchain itself can slow down. Some chains experience temporary halts, block reorgs, or spikes in block time. Solana, for example, sometimes slows when the validator network is under load. If your swap landed during a smooth period and your friend's hit a rough patch, the difference was not about the swap itself but about the chain's condition.

What to do while a swap is running

Do not send another swap. That can create conflicts, tie up funds, or cause both to fail. Check the transaction status on a block explorer using the transaction ID the site gave you. If the transaction is still unconfirmed, the issue is likely network congestion. If it is confirmed but the output has not arrived, the issue is in the routing or execution phase.

The hub page titled "Why your swap is still pending and what actually speeds it up" covers the specific actions you can take when a swap is stuck. That page explains fee bumping, cancellation, and when to simply wait.

Why your friend's swap took longer

There is no single reason. It could be that your friend used a token with less liquidity, sent the swap during a busy period, set a lower fee, or chose a tighter slippage limit. It could be that a large trade moved the market between your swap and theirs. It could be that the blockchain itself slowed down for a few minutes.

The core answer is this: your swap found a clear, liquid path with a competitive fee at a quiet moment. Your friend's swap hit one or more obstacles along that same path. The difference of an hour versus two minutes is normal in decentralized trading. It is not a bug. It is how permissionless networks behave when many participants compete for the same resources.

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