Crypto glossary
Request for quote (RFQ)
Request for quote (RFQ) is a trading model in which market makers send firm off-chain price quotes that the user signs and settles on-chain.
In an RFQ system, a user asks for a price to buy or sell a specific amount. Professional market makers respond with signed quotes valid for a few seconds, and the user picks the best one. Settlement happens on-chain through a smart contract that checks both signatures and swaps the tokens. The model mirrors how institutions trade bonds or block trades in traditional finance.
RFQ has become a major source of liquidity on DEX aggregators and intent-based protocols such as 1inch Fusion, CoW Swap, UniswapX, 0x and Hashflow. Market makers can quote using their inventory and prices from centralised exchanges, which often beats AMM pools for large trades and avoids price impact and sandwich attacks.
The trade-off is reliance on a small set of professional firms. Quotes can be withdrawn when markets move, makers may decline to quote volatile or obscure tokens, and the user depends on the protocol to vet participants. Liquidity is not visible in advance the way an AMM pool or order book is.
Example
A DAO wants to sell 3 million dollars of ETH for USDC; through an RFQ interface it receives quotes from four market makers, accepts the best one and settles in a single on-chain transaction with no price impact.