💰Liquidity Providers

Liquidity providers supply liquidity to a pool for traders to swap against. In return for supplying liquidity, LPs receive swap fees from trades. The liquidity that is provided to a pool is represented by liquidity tokens. These tokens represent a proportional share of the liquidity pool and reservoir(s). The liquidity in a reservoir does not earn fees but can be reintegrated into the liquidity pool by LPs. This reintegration or balancing of a pool is done by adding single-sided liquidity. The protocol places constraints on this process to protect LPs further.

Adding Liquidity

LPs can add liquidity to an existing pool in two different ways:

1. Double-Sided: Depositing liquidity for both assets of the token pair at a proportional rate.

2. Single-Sided: Depositing liquidity for the asset with less liquidity, further balancing out the pool.

Let ‘s’ represent the number of liquidity tokens, and ‘z’ represent the total number of tokens in the pool:

$$s_-minted/s_-starting=z_-deposited/z_-starting$$

LPs will always be able to deposit an equivalent amount of Token X and Y. When one reservoir, i.e. Token X, is partially filled, LPs can mint liquidity tokens by depositing Token Y to balance the pool.

Removing Liquidity

There are two types of redemption:

1. LPs can withdraw liquidity and redeem (burn liquidity tokens) for a proportional share of the pool and reservoir

2. LPs can withdraw from a single-asset reservoir up to the total number of tokens in the reservoir.

Option #1 will always be available to LPs, resulting in an equivalent withdrawal of Token X and Token Y. If one reservoir is partially filled, i.e. Token X, LPs can redeem liquidity tokens for just Token X.

If you deposit single-asset liquidity, this does not mean you can redeem for a single asset.

Initialization of a Pool

Pool creation will be turned off for the initial launch of Poolside.

The creation of a pool determines the initial price of an asset pair and its resulting swap ratio. The initializer receives liquidity tokens for creating the pool. A larger amount of liquidity deposited will result in more liquidity tokens for the initializer. Increased liquidity will also lead to less slippage and a more stable pool.

Using x and y for each token, and s for the number of liquidity tokens minted, liquidity pools are initialized as follows:

$$s_-minted = √(x_-deposited*y_-deposited)$$