CowSwap is a permissionless decentralised trading mechanism (protocol) that runs on Ethereum and xDAI. The new version, known as Gnosis Protocol v2, capitalises on an economic phenomenon known as Coincidence of Wants, which can only occur in batch auctions (CoWs). By utilising all on-chain liquidity sources and settling trades in batches, CowSwap is able to provide miner extractable value (MEV) protection as well as offer better prices.