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Stale Quote Meaning

A Stale Quote is a "Price Offer" that is no longer valid because the market has moved since the quote was generated. In high-speed trading, a quote can become "Stale" in Milliseconds.

For a retail user on a DEX, a "Stale Quote" is a common error message that prevents a trade from being "Signed" if the price has changed too much while they were looking at the screen.Technically, stale quotes are a major problem for "Price Oracles." If an oracle hasn't "Updated" its price for 10 minutes, a "Smart Contract" might use that "Stale Price" to calculate a "Liquidation." A "Malicious Trader" could see this, know the "Real Price" is different, and "Arbitrage" the protocol for an instant profit. This is known as an "Oracle Attack" and has led to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses in DeFi.To prevent stale quotes, platforms use "Heartbeats" (forcing an update every X minutes) and "Deviation Thresholds" (forcing an update if the price moves by more than X%).

They also use "Multi-source Aggregation," pulling prices from 10 different exchanges simultaneously to ensure the "Mid-price" is as accurate as possible.

For the end-user, "Stale Quotes" are a "Friction Point," but they are an essential "Safety Feature" that prevents them from "Buying the Peak" or "Selling the Bottom" due to outdated information.

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