# Swaps

Swaps are decentralized exchanges where you can trade your *tokens* for other *tokens*. Usually to trade something, you need a counterpart that is willing to make the trade with you. To trade tokens without a counterpart, each token swap requires a liquidity pool. Each swap’s liquidity pool contains a supply of the tokens (liquidity) in the swap. You don’t need someone to trade with since you are trading with the pool’s liquidity. So who provides liquidity to the pools? Anyone!

Anyone can provide their own tokens to the liquidity pool of a swap. These are called liquidity providers. Liquidity providers are given a portion of the fees involved in swapping tokens as a reward for contributing. This is why the swaps are considered decentralized; they are powered by the community and used by the community!

*DeFi dapps*, such as liquidity pools, are good places to store a portion of your assets if you are planning on holding onto them for a while. *DeFi protocols* sometimes offer very high rewards to their contributors.

Some of the most popular swaps are: [Uniswap](https://uniswap.org/) (Ethereum & Polygon), [Pancakeswap](https://pancakeswap.finance/) (Binance), and [Raydium](https://raydium.io/) (Solana)

![Using Uniswap’s MATIC-ETH swap. Notice that the gas fee for this trade on the Ethereum blockchain is $29.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*5TtQ68Y6-bQ6Jw9ENEfUIA.png)

![Using Uniswap's MATIC-WETH swap. Notice that the gas fee for this trade on the Polygon blockchain is $.01.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*1SvkRsirKtTFBwSmhIwl9w.png)

![Uniswap’s Pool portal lets you add liquidity to pools, view the top pools, and learn about providing liquidity.](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*oe0xvERxSOh7dkO_0ALwtg.png)

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