ChangeNOW is expanding its lead in the non-custodial swap market with new benchmark data showing an average settlement time of less than one minute – significantly faster than the industry median of around 45 minutes.
Seven months ago, ChangeNOW was already ahead of the pack. Swapzone’s mid-2025 speed benchmark showed exchanges averaging around 1.8 minutes per swap: fast enough to rank first among the eight platforms tested. Its nearest rival, Changelli, was almost two minutes ahead. Everyone else wasn’t really in the conversation.
Now, the space has expanded to something closer to the abyss.
Swapzone 2026 Tracking Report, Speed Benchmarks: A Comparison of Non-Arrested Swaps 2026draws on 150,000 completed transactions to illustrate an industry still struggling with challenges ChangeNOW appears to have largely resolved. The market average for the USDT to ETH exchange is currently sitting at 45 minutes. Median ChangeNOW per pair: less than 60 seconds. That’s not the ultimate advance, that’s a 45-fold difference.
Crypto markets move quickly and every minute a swap is processed is a minute the price can move against the user. A trader who closes a rate and then waits 45 minutes for settlement is not trading the market they thought they were entering. The longer the window, the wider the potential gap between the quoted amount and what is actually in the wallet.
ChangeNOW’s response to this was infrastructure. The exchange’s liquidity routing is specifically optimized to squeeze this execution window, and by the numbers, it’s working. In high-volume pairs like SOL/USDT and ETH/USDT, the platform constantly clears swaps before most competitors even confirm a deposit.
“At ChangeNOW, we consider speed to be a key pillar of user trust,” said Pauline Changette, the company’s Chief Strategy Officer. “Our goal is to remove delay as a barrier between merchants and their funds to establish instant settlements as the new standard for the informal industry.”
This framework, speed as a trust mechanism, reflects the real thing in data rather than just a feature of convenience. When the swap closes after 60 seconds, there is almost no window for the market to move against you. What you see, in practical terms, is what you get.
