CQ1 Overview

The Carbium Quote 1 (CQ1) Engine is a high-performance DEX aggregation system designed for sub-millisecond quote generation on Solana. It combines binary-native state management with massively parallel pathfinding to deliver exact quotes that match on-chain execution.

Why CQ1

Traditional DEX aggregators face three bottlenecks:

1. Stale data: Polling RPC nodes introduces 200-500ms latency
2. Parsing overhead: JSON serialization on every request
3. Sequential routing: Limited path evaluation capacity

CQ1 eliminates all three through architectural redesign rather than incremental optimization.

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Architecture

CQ1 operates on three decoupled layers:

graph TB
    subgraph API["API Layer"]
        Gateway["Express Gateway"]
        Controller["Quote Controller"]
    end

    subgraph Core["Core Router"]
        Engine["Parallel Path Engine"]
        Math["Math Core"]
        Adapters["DEX Adapters"]
    end

    subgraph Ingestion["Data Ingestion"]
        gRPC["gRPC Listener"]
        Scheduler["Weight Scheduler"]
    end

    subgraph Storage["State Layer"]
        Redis[("Redis Buffers")]
        Mongo[("MongoDB Topology")]
    end

    Gateway --> Controller
    Controller --> Engine
    Engine --> Math
    Math --> Adapters
    Adapters --> Redis

    gRPC --> Redis
    Scheduler --> Redis
    Scheduler --> Mongo

    style Engine fill:#0d9488,color:#fff
    style Redis fill:#f59e0b,color:#fff
    style gRPC fill:#8b5cf6,color:#fff

Key principle: Read path and write path are completely decoupled. Quote generation never blocks on state updates.

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Core Components

Component	Function
API Layer	Request handling, validation, rate limiting
Routing Engine	Parallel pathfinding, waterfill splits
Math Core	Exact curve calculations (AMM, CLMM, Stable)
DEX Adapters	Protocol-specific implementations
Binary State	Zero-copy pool state in Redis
gRPC Listener	Real-time on-chain updates
Weight Scheduler	Periodic TVL recalibration

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Performance

Metric	Value
Quote latency	sub-1ms
State freshness	Real-time (~10ms from chain)
On-chain match	Exact
Supported DEXs	15+ protocols

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How It Works

1. User requests quote (source, destination, amount)
   1. Routing engine evaluates millions of paths in parallel
      1. Waterfill algorithm optimizes splits across pools
         1. Math core calculates exact output using binary state
            1. Quote returned with route plan and expected output

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