In this guide
What this covers
TWAP — time-weighted average price — spreads a single decision across many small executions. You are trading immediacy for a better average. This guide covers when that trade is worth making and how to bound the downside while the schedule runs.
When to use it
Use TWAP when your order is large relative to available depth, or when you have a view on the day but not the minute.
Do not use it when you need the fill now. A schedule that has only filled a third of the way through is a third of a position.
1. Describe the size, the window, and the escape
Three parameters, one sentence:
Buy $120,000 of ETH over the next 8 hours in equal slices,
pause if price moves 4% against me.Maren converts this into slices, an interval, and an abort band. The abort band is the important part and the one people leave out.
2. Sanity-check the slicing
The confirmation shows slice size and cadence before anything executes:
| Field | Value | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Slices | 16 × 7,500 USDC | Each slice is small enough to be a non-event for the pool |
| Interval | 30 minutes | Spans the full window without clustering |
| Abort band | −4.0% | Stops buying into a decline you did not intend to fund |
Too many slices and fees eat the benefit. Too few and each one is back to moving the market. Ask Maren to re-slice if the shape looks wrong for the pair.
3. Understand what pause means
On breaching the band, the schedule stops and notifies you. It does not sell, and it does not silently continue. Everything already filled is yours; the unspent remainder stays put until you resume, cancel, or replace the instruction.
Pause is not a stop-loss. It protects the unspent balance, not the position you have accumulated. If you want protection on the filled side, attach it separately — see Attach protection before you open a perp.
4. Track it and step in when you want
Ask for status at any point and you get slices filled, average price so far, and remaining budget. Cancelling keeps the filled portion intact.
Tips
- Align the window with the liquidity you expect. An eight-hour window over a thin weekend session is not eight hours of depth.
- Uneven slicing — heavier early, lighter later — is available if you have a directional view. Just say so.
- For recurring accumulation rather than a one-off entry, a DCA schedule is the better primitive.
Troubleshooting
Slices are filling worse than expected. Depth is thinner than the window assumed. Lengthen the window or reduce total size.
Schedule paused almost immediately. The abort band was too tight for the pair's normal range. Widen it, and re-derive it from realised volatility rather than a round number.
The controls behind this workflow
- Each slice carries its own slippage cap; one bad slice does not spend the rest.
- The schedule pauses itself on the abort band and waits for you.
- You can cancel mid-schedule and keep everything already filled.
Guides describe how to operate Maren. They are not financial advice, and figures shown are illustrative. You approve every transaction before it is signed.