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Orderbook Service

The Orderbook service functions as CoW Protocol’s primary user-facing interface, providing HTTP APIs for order submission, validation, quoting, and historical queries. It validates orders against multiple criteria before persisting them to PostgreSQL for consumption by downstream services.

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Core Responsibilities

The service manages four key functions:
  1. Order validation - checking signatures, balances, token approvals, and parameters
  2. Order persistence - storing valid orders in PostgreSQL
  3. Price quoting - generating trading quotes through multiple estimation backends
  4. Data retrieval - enabling users to check order status and trade history

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API Endpoints

The REST API includes:
  • POST /api/v1/orders - submit new orders
  • POST /api/v1/quote - request trading quotes
  • GET /api/v1/orders/{uid} - retrieve order details
  • GET /api/v1/account/{owner}/orders - list user orders
  • GET /api/v1/trades - query historical trades
  • DELETE /api/v1/orders/{uid} - cancel orders

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Validation Architecture

The service performs extensive checks including:
  • Signature verification: EIP-712, EIP-1271, PreSign
  • Balance confirmation: Verify the user has sufficient token balance
  • Token allowance validation: Ensure the settlement contract is approved
  • Banned user detection: Chainalysis integration for compliance
  • Gas limit enforcement: Prevent orders that would exceed gas limits

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Infrastructure

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Database

PostgreSQL handles order storage, trade history, caching, and logging. Optional read replicas can be configured for query offloading.

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Key Dependencies

  • Ethereum RPC nodes for blockchain state
  • External solver APIs for pricing
  • Smart contract integrations: Settlement, WETH, Signatures contracts

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Deployment

The service runs via Cargo with required parameters including database URLs, configuration file path, and Ethereum node endpoints:
Docker deployment is also supported through containerized images.

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Scaling

  • Multiple orderbook instances can run concurrently against the same database
  • Horizontally scalable to handle high API traffic
  • Read replicas can offload query load from the primary database
Source: crates/orderbook/
Last modified on March 4, 2026