May was a building month. New infrastructure, $100M in referred affiliate volume, the DAO’s most consequential tokenomics conversation yet — and a chapter of accountability quietly closed. 
Here’s what happened 
Numbers
$2.2B in monthly volume
$201.12B cumulative all-time volume
241,368 trades
40.9k active wallets
16.8% DEX aggregator market share — 2nd across all supported chains
All-time: 12.3M trades · 708.1K wallets · $42M DAO revenue · $1.21B surplus returned to users
Product & Integrations
Atomic Bundles launched May 1 — bundle looping, repay-with-collateral, and flashloan strategies into a single atomic intent. One signature. Solver-executed. Intents just got a lot more powerful for developers.
Euler has integrated CoW Protocol as the swap execution layer for its lending workflows. Multiply positions. Swap collateral. Repay debt from collateral. All MEV-protected, all powered by Atomic Bundles.
Affiliate Program milestone — $100M in total referred volume. Rewards are flowing to affiliates and traders. The program is working.
Governance
CIP-86 passed 
— The discretionary grants program for victims of the April DNS hijacking is concluded. All eligible claims verified, all grants paid by May 31. That’s what accountability looks like. **[CIP-Draft: Simplifying Bonding Pool Operations](CIP-Draft: Simplifying the operations of the CoW DAO bonding pool - #5 by Cheng "CIP-Draft: Simplifying Bonding Pool Operations
CIP-Draft: Simplifying Bonding Pool Operations — Proposes a cleaner, more transparent set of rules for solvers in the CoW DAO bonding pool: 10% service fee from day 1, formalised Solver Bond Safes receiving 20% of rewards weekly, and a clearer path to running an independent solver setup. Less overhead, more decentralisation.
CoW DAO’s Path to Value Distribution — Core Team framework published. Three proposals: tighter solver bond HODL rules, a 1:1 burn trial from the DAO Safe (60–85M COW), and a flexible buyback mandate. A feedback-based CIP is the next step.
CoW DAO x Aragon AMA — Aragon’s benchmarking research, Core Team’s framework, community questions live. Missed it? Check out the recording.
:
: COW Token
Buybacks since Apr 2024: 78.6M $COW
Solver emissions since Apr 2024: 66.6M $COW
Net emissions: –12M $COW
Deflationary every quarter
Grants
The Integration Documentation RFC was closed without an external grant — but the Core Team is incorporating community recommendations directly into their internal roadmap.
Team
Open roles:
• Integration Engineer
• Senior Backend Engineer (Rust)
Full monthly recap available on the blog → CoW DAO Monthly Recap: May 2026 - CoW DAO
Keep milking it, CoW DAO ::