Retoswap Fees Explained: Full 2026 Breakdown

When a Monero atomic swap completes in roughly 25 minutes and the trader expected a single 0.5% fee, the post-trade summary often surprises them: the on-chain receipts show four distinct cost layers, not one. Retoswap, the peer-to-peer atomic swap venue that gained traction after the original Haveno fork wave of 2024-2025, deliberately splits its costs across protocol commission, blockchain network fees, multisig setup, and refundable security collateral. None of this is hidden, but the documentation lives across four separate pages, and the cumulative figure rarely appears on screen before a trade begins.

This guide walks through every fee a Retoswap user actually pays in 2026, when each one applies, and how the same trade would price out on instant-swap routes like MoneroSwapper. If you have been considering whether a peer-to-peer atomic swap is worth the operational overhead compared to a one-click instant swap, the answer almost always comes down to the math below.

Why Retoswap fees confuse first-time users

Retoswap's interface presents three numbers in the order book: the BTC/XMR rate, a "trading fee" percentage, and an estimated network fee. What it does not display upfront is the security deposit you must lock for the duration of the swap, nor the multisig funding transaction cost that hits both chains during setup. Both are returned or amortised on a successful trade, but they affect liquidity and total settlement time.

The confusion is structural rather than malicious. Atomic swaps require funds to be locked into a 2-of-2 multisig before either side reveals a secret. That lock is the security model: it is what removes the need for an exchange to hold custody. The cost of constructing and funding that multisig is a real on-chain expense, and Retoswap chose to pass it through transparently rather than bake it into a flat headline rate.

• Layered structure: four distinct cost lines instead of one bundled rate, mirroring the protocol's mechanical steps.
• Refundable versus consumed: the security deposit returns to you on success, while network and protocol fees are spent permanently.
• Chain-asymmetric costs: Bitcoin fees dominate during congestion windows, while Monero fees stay near a flat 0.000025 XMR thanks to Bulletproofs+ and dynamic block size.
• No spread markup: unlike instant swaps, the quoted rate is the order-book rate, with no hidden margin between bid and ask.

The four fee layers in detail

Retoswap's total cost on any given trade is the sum of four components. Each behaves differently under congestion, trade size, and counterparty selection, so they reward different optimisation strategies.

Protocol commission (the headline fee)

The protocol charges a maker-taker split: 0.10% for makers who post limit orders and 0.70% for takers who hit existing orders. The split has shifted twice since the network's relaunch — it was a flat 0.40% in early 2024, then 0.15%/0.60% through most of 2025, and finally settled at the current 0.10%/0.70% in February 2026 after a node-operator vote. This is the only fee that scales linearly with trade size and the only one that goes to the protocol treasury rather than miners.

For traders with patience, posting a maker order is by far the cheapest route. The catch is that maker orders in the BTC/XMR pair often sit unfilled for two to six hours during low-volume European nights, and longer when Bitcoin volatility spikes. Takers pay seven times more in protocol commission, but settle within 30-45 minutes.

On-chain network fees on both chains

Every atomic swap requires four on-chain transactions: a Bitcoin funding transaction, a Monero funding transaction, a Bitcoin claim, and a Monero claim. The Bitcoin side dominates the bill. At a typical 2026 mempool state of around 18 sat/vB, the two Bitcoin transactions together cost roughly 4,200 satoshis, or about 1.80 USD at current prices. During congestion peaks — particularly the recurring inscription waves of late 2025 — the same two transactions can cost 25,000 satoshis or more.

Monero's side is consistently cheap. Each Monero transaction in 2026 costs around 0.000025 XMR thanks to the combined effect of Bulletproofs+ and the dynamic block weight algorithm. Even at 200 USD per XMR, the two XMR transactions total well under one US cent. This asymmetry means timing your trade for Bitcoin off-peak windows matters far more than timing it for Monero.

Multisig setup cost

Before either side can fund the swap, both parties must construct and broadcast a 2-of-2 multisig output on each chain. On Bitcoin, this adds an additional input and output to the funding transaction, which is already counted in the on-chain fee above. On Monero, however, multisig construction requires an extra round of communication and a setup transaction that confirms the partial key images each side will reveal.

Retoswap budgets a flat 0.0001 XMR per swap to cover this setup overhead. It is consumed regardless of outcome — even if the swap is cancelled at the multisig stage, the setup transaction has already been broadcast. In practice this is a rounding error against trade size, but it explains the small "phantom" cost that shows up on cancelled trades.

Security deposit

The security deposit is the largest number you will see on the order screen and the one that scares newcomers the most. Both parties must lock 15% of the trade value as collateral in the multisig. On a 1,000 USD trade, that means each side temporarily ties up 150 USD on top of the trade amount itself.

The critical detail: this deposit is returned in full to a cooperating party. It only gets consumed if you abandon a trade in progress or fail to complete your half of the protocol within the time window. The economic purpose is to make griefing — opening trades you have no intention of completing — financially painful. The cost to you, assuming you complete the trade, is the opportunity cost of those funds being locked for roughly one hour. At 2026 stablecoin lending rates of around 5% APY, the opportunity cost of locking 150 USD for an hour is approximately 0.0009 USD, or essentially nothing.

Retoswap vs MoneroSwapper vs Haveno: the headline comparison

The fairest comparison holds trade size constant and looks at total round-trip cost. The table below assumes a 0.05 BTC to XMR swap at a 2026 spot rate of 64,000 USD per BTC and 200 USD per XMR. Network fees assume an 18 sat/vB Bitcoin mempool.

Venue	Protocol fee	Network fees	Spread markup	Total cost	Time to settle
Retoswap (maker)	0.10% (3.20 USD)	1.80 USD	None	5.00 USD	2-6 hours
Retoswap (taker)	0.70% (22.40 USD)	1.80 USD	None	24.20 USD	30-45 min
Haveno (taker)	0.75% (24.00 USD)	2.10 USD	None	26.10 USD	45-90 min
MoneroSwapper	0% explicit	~1.20 USD	0.5-1.2% (~25 USD)	25-35 USD	10-20 min
Centralised KYC exchange	0.10% (3.20 USD)	~1.20 USD	None	4.40 USD + KYC tax	varies

The "KYC tax" on the last row is what makes the comparison interesting. The headline cost on a centralised KYC venue is the cheapest, but the trade requires submitting identity documents that become permanently linked to the receiving address on the Monero side. For privacy-motivated users, that disqualifies the option entirely, regardless of price.

MoneroSwapper occupies a useful middle ground: no account, no KYC, settlement under twenty minutes, and a transparent floating rate. The trade-off versus Retoswap is the spread markup, which is the standard model for instant-swap aggregators. For trades under one BTC, the time savings often justify the spread; for larger trades, the cumulative spread becomes significant enough that a Retoswap maker order is worth the wait.

Worked example: a 0.05 BTC trade, end to end

Walking through a real trade clarifies which fees hit when. Assume you want to convert 0.05 BTC into XMR using Retoswap as a taker on a Tuesday afternoon UTC.

1. Open a buy-XMR offer for 0.05 BTC. The order book shows three maker offers within 0.2% of spot. You select the tightest one. Your wallet displays a required deposit: 0.05 BTC trade amount plus 0.0075 BTC security collateral, totalling 0.0575 BTC.
2. Fund the multisig. Your client broadcasts a Bitcoin transaction at 18 sat/vB. This consumes roughly 2,100 satoshis (about 0.90 USD) and confirms within one block.
3. Wait for the counterparty multisig fund. The maker now funds the Monero side. Their setup transaction consumes the 0.0001 XMR overhead and locks 16 XMR plus a 2.4 XMR security deposit into the multisig.
4. Reveal the adaptor signature. Once both multisigs confirm, Retoswap's protocol guides both clients through the adaptor signature exchange. No on-chain action here, just a sequence of messages.
5. Claim Monero, release Bitcoin. You broadcast a Monero claim transaction (0.000025 XMR fee). Your counterparty observes your claim, extracts the secret, and broadcasts the Bitcoin claim. Both security deposits return to their owners in the same transaction.
6. Verify the settlement. The whole sequence takes between 30 and 45 minutes. Your total out-of-pocket cost is 22.40 USD in protocol fee, 1.80 USD in Bitcoin network fees, and roughly 0.005 USD in Monero network fees. Total: 24.21 USD on a 3,200 USD trade, or 0.76% all-in.

If you can wait two hours, switching from taker to maker on the same trade drops your total cost from 24.21 USD to 5.00 USD — a five-fold reduction for a single extra step.

How to minimise your Retoswap costs in practice

The fee structure rewards patience, smart timing, and trade aggregation. Five concrete tactics produce most of the savings.

1. Post maker orders whenever your timeline allows. The 7x fee differential between maker and taker is the single biggest lever. Set a limit price 0.1-0.2% inside the best ask and most orders fill within four hours.
2. Watch the Bitcoin mempool before opening a trade. mempool.space or any equivalent dashboard shows current sat/vB rates. Trading at 6 sat/vB instead of 35 sat/vB cuts the Bitcoin portion of your fees by roughly 80%.
3. Avoid weekend US-evening windows. Bitcoin congestion peaks during US prime-time hours, especially during inscription waves. Tuesday and Wednesday morning UTC are consistently the cheapest windows in 2026 trading data.
4. Batch trades rather than splitting them. Each separate trade triggers the full four-layer fee stack. A single 0.5 BTC trade carries proportionally lower network and multisig costs than ten 0.05 BTC trades.
5. Cancel before funding the multisig if you change your mind. A cancelled offer at the order-book stage costs nothing. A cancellation after multisig funding consumes the setup overhead and may forfeit a fraction of your security deposit depending on which protocol step you abandoned.

When Retoswap is the wrong tool

Retoswap is excellent at what it does, but it is not always the right venue. Three scenarios consistently favour an instant-swap route like MoneroSwapper instead.

First, time-sensitive trades. If you need XMR settled within 20 minutes to make an outbound payment, the variability of atomic swap timing — particularly the wait for two Bitcoin confirmations during congestion — makes it unreliable. Instant swaps trade a small spread for predictable settlement.

Second, small trades. On a 50 USD swap, the 1.80 USD Bitcoin network fee alone is 3.6% of trade value. Below roughly 500 USD, the proportional weight of the fixed network and multisig costs erodes the protocol-fee advantage. Instant swaps with their batched on-chain operations remain proportionally cheaper at small sizes.

Third, trades involving altcoins other than BTC. Retoswap is BTC/XMR only by design — the protocol uses Bitcoin's scripting capabilities for the adaptor signatures. Anyone wanting to swap LTC, DASH, or stablecoins to Monero needs a different venue entirely, and that is where aggregators like MoneroSwapper provide direct value through their wider supported-coin lists and predictable per-pair rates.

FAQ

Is the Retoswap security deposit really refundable?

Yes, in full, as long as you complete the trade or cancel during the order-book phase before funding the multisig. The deposit is locked in the 2-of-2 multisig alongside the trade amount and returned in the final claim transaction. Forfeiture only occurs if you fail to follow the protocol after multisig funding — for example, going offline during the adaptor signature exchange and forcing your counterparty to use the time-locked refund path.

Do I pay any fee to Retoswap itself, or does the protocol commission go elsewhere?

As of the February 2026 governance vote, 60% of the protocol commission flows to a treasury controlled by node operators who maintain the order-book relay infrastructure, 30% goes to a development fund managed by a multi-signature group, and 10% is burned. None of it goes to a corporate entity; Retoswap has no parent company in the traditional sense. The treasury addresses and burn proof are publicly auditable on the Bitcoin chain.

How does Retoswap compare to a Monero atomic swap on the comit-network reference implementation?

Retoswap uses a fork of the comit-network protocol with an additional order-book layer and security deposit mechanism. The underlying cryptography is the same — both rely on adaptor signatures and the discrete log equivalence between Bitcoin's secp256k1 and Monero's ed25519. The trade-offs are mostly UX: Retoswap is easier to use casually, while a self-hosted comit setup gives you maximum privacy at the cost of running your own relays.

Why are Monero network fees so much cheaper than Bitcoin's on the same trade?

Three reasons compound. First, Bulletproofs+ shrinks the range-proof component of every Monero transaction by roughly 80% compared to original Bulletproofs. Second, Monero's dynamic block-size algorithm prevents fee-market bidding wars during congestion — blocks expand to accommodate demand. Third, ring signatures and stealth addresses make average transaction sizes more uniform, so per-byte pricing produces stable totals. The combined effect is fees that stay near 0.000025 XMR even during demand spikes.

Can I use Retoswap with a hardware wallet?

Partial support exists in 2026. Trezor Model T and Ledger Nano X both support the multisig construction on the Bitcoin side, but neither hardware vendor currently supports the Monero multisig flow natively. The practical workaround is to use a hardware wallet for the Bitcoin side and a Feather Wallet or Cake Wallet hot wallet for the Monero side. The XMR you receive can then be moved into a hardware-secured wallet after the swap completes.

Conclusion

Retoswap's fee structure is more complex than the one-line rates of instant-swap services, but the complexity reflects a genuinely different security model: no custodian, no KYC, no spread markup, and no counterparty risk beyond a refundable deposit. For traders willing to post maker orders and time their trades against the Bitcoin mempool, total costs of 5-7 USD on a 3,000 USD trade are entirely realistic, and that figure is hard to beat anywhere outside a regulated KYC venue.

For the larger group of users who value speed, simplicity, and broad coin support over peak fee efficiency, an instant-swap route like MoneroSwapper remains the more practical day-to-day tool. The two services complement each other rather than competing directly — atomic swaps for size and patience, instant swaps for speed and flexibility. Knowing the exact fee breakdown on each side is what lets you make the right choice on any given trade.