ChangeNOW is expanding its speed lead in the non-custodial swaps market with new benchmark data showing average settlement times of less than one minute. This is significantly faster than the industry average of approximately 45 minutes.
Seven months ago, ChangeNOW was already leading the way. Swapzone’s mid-2025 speed benchmark recorded exchange times averaging around 1.8 minutes per swap. That’s fast enough to take first place out of eight platforms tested. Its closest rival, Changelly, was about two minutes behind. Everyone else didn’t really participate in the conversation.
Now the gap has widened to a level close to a chasm.
Swapzone’s 2026 follow-up report: Speed Benchmark: Non-Custody Swap Comparison 2026Based on 150,000 completed transactions, it shows an industry still struggling with issues that ChangeNOW appears to have largely solved. The market median for USDT-ETH swap is currently 45 minutes. Median ChangeNOW for the same pair: less than 60 seconds. That’s not a marginal lead, it’s a 45x difference.
Cryptocurrency markets move quickly, and every moment a swap is processed the price can move against you. A trader who locks in the exchange rate and then waits 45 minutes for settlement is not trading in the market he or she thought he or she would enter. The longer the period, the larger the potential gap between the amount quoted and what actually ends up in your wallet.
ChangeNOW’s answer was at the infrastructure level. The exchange’s liquidity routing is specifically optimized to compress that execution window, and by the numbers, it’s working. On high-capacity pairs like SOL/USDT and ETH/USDT, the platform continually clears swaps before most competitors even confirm their deposits.
“At ChangeNOW, we believe speed is a fundamental pillar of user trust,” said Pauline Shangett, the company’s chief strategy officer. “Our goal is to establish near-instant settlement as the new standard in the non-custodial industry by eliminating latency as a barrier between traders and their funds.”
The framing of speed as a trust mechanism rather than simply a convenience feature reflects what is real in the data. If the swap closes within 60 seconds, there is little chance of the market moving in the opposite direction. The rate you see is actually the rate you receive.