What is a Liquidity Pool?

Liquidity pools (LPs) are the lifeblood of the modern money markets worldwide. Their involvement in the currency landscape makes global trading possible and supports this actively growing industry. Despite the sheer size and profitability of the worldwide money market, it is still very much dependent on receiving a healthy injection of liquidity. 

LPs play a vital role in this process, supplying the liquid funds wherever and whenever necessary to fill the gaps in the currency exchange market. Without their participation, buyers and sellers of various currencies would have fewer options on the market and fewer deals would see the light of day. But, why are LPs so crucial for the crypto and money markets in general? Let’s dive in!

First things first – let’s start with the definition: 

Liquidity Pools are essentially smart contracts located on various exchange platforms that contain significant volumes of crypto currencies, ensuring that all transactions go through without delay.

With formalities out of the way, let us closely examine the nature of liquidity pools and why they were invented for crypto in the first place. Not long ago, the only way to acquire currency was through traditional exchange markets, which are in turn regulated and supplied by various market makers (Banks, investment funds and brokers). 

The MM entities effectively supply the liquidity to the market continuously, ensuring that there is no shortage of currency volumes on the market. If someone wants to sell a popular fiat currency, the supply will never disappoint on the fiat market. While this model is quite successful for the fiat market, it doesn’t translate into the crypto field.

As we all know, one of the biggest advantages of crypto is speed and efficiency. Aside from security and anonymity, the fast-paced nature of crypto is what attracts potential customers. Now, the crypto market is significantly smaller compared to fiat, with much less buyers and sellers across the globe. Due to this gap, mimicking the fiat exchange methodologies would sacrifice the speed of crypto transactions as it would be challenging to find buyers and sellers at any given moment.

With liquidity pools, this is no longer an issue. These automated smart contracts lock up the necessary crypto volumes within their protocols, avoiding the need to connect sellers and buyers. Instead, liquidity pools enable traders on a given platform to exchange funds instantly by releasing the requested coins from their reserves. This way, exchange deals are executed automatically and without outside involvement, letting crypto exchange platforms live up to the initial promise.

As we dissected the significant role of liquidity pools in making crypto exchange work, let’s examine the technical process that makes everything tick. As mentioned, liquidity pools are smart contracts that act as containers to large sums of crypto coins. They are completely impenetrable and unmodifiable aside from the built-in protocol that governs the disbursement of funds.

This concept ensures that when a potential buyer or seller enters an exchange platform, they don’t have to wait around for a perfect match to conduct their business. Once the exchange requests enter the LP protocol, the respective crypto funds leave the liquidity pool and get transferred to a counterparty. Correspondingly, the exchanged amount enters the liquidity pool.

Now, this digital mechanism is quite straightforward, but there are some prevalent questions remaining. Most importantly, how can a particular exchange platform function smoothly when there is such a huge artificial presence? Well, it’s time to introduce the Automated MMs and how they assist in keeping the crypto exchange market free-flowing.

Explained simply, AMMs are the engine that makes the concept of liquidity pools come to fruition without compromising the free market philosophy. AMM is effectively an automated protocol that determines the necessary prices, quantities and other variables within the exchange platform to keep things proportional.

Without AMMs, it would be exceedingly difficult to maintain price stability on a particular exchange platform and we would witness numerous market manipulators taking the advantage of liquidity pools.

AMMs prevent that from happening. They adjust currency exchange rates in accordance to organic supply and demand. In most cases, advanced AMM systems can identify manipulation efforts and take them into account. So, if someone tries to artificially nudge a price of a certain currency, the AMMs stand guard to prevent such tactics. Now, let us ask another vital question:

While the concept of liquidity pools is what revs the engine of crypto exchange markets, these handy protocols would become useless without liquidity provision. After all, the liquidity pools themselves serve as mere containers of crypto coins. They do not possess the ability to generate crypto out of thin air. Thus, we have finally reached liquidity providers, which are terrifically important participants in the crypto exchange sector.

LPs come in many different shapes and sizes. From large banks and investment funds and prime brokers to individual traders, liquidity can come from many sources and with different conditions. In case of crypto, LPs are even more important, since they enable the liquidity pool protocol to function properly.

The transfer of liquidity is fairly straightforward – LPs provide a certain amount of liquid funds that instantly join the liquidity pool. As a rule of thumb, it is required to put a balanced pairing of crypto coins into the liquidity pool. As an LP, you should select a particular currency pairing and provide equal amounts of those currencies.

For example, if you would like to supply BTC and ETH to an exchange platform, you will have to provide $ 500 equivalents for both currencies. Of course, LPs are not limited to a single pairing and they can supply colossal amounts of liquidity. However, this general rule exists to ensure the balance on the market is not tipped over due to a skewed provision of liquidity.

The introduction of liquidity aggregating pools to the crypto market has produced numerous benefits for the trading public. This system provides a myriad of advantages to crypto exchanges. So, let us dive right into how liquidity pools enhance the crypto trading experience.

First and foremost, liquidity pools enable traders to set rock-solid expectations. Trading with crypto is frequently a complex operation and most active market participants on the market are conducting multi-currency transactions every single day. Thus, in this environment, you need absolute certainty that your desired currency will actually be available at any given time. Liquidity pools ensure just that and let the buyers and sellers on the exchange market to have firm expectations.

Since the necessity to have peer-to-peer transactions is eliminated by liquidity pools, so is the waiting time to retrieve a crypto of your choice. The automated nature of liquidity pools ensures instantaneous execution, making the crypto exchange process as fast as technologically possible.

This unparalleled efficiency is beneficial not just because of convenience. Most high volume traders in the crypto sector value short transaction times tremendously. Due to market volatility and changing prices, having a reliable and lightning-fast source of exchange could provide lucrative profits for day traders and arbitrage experts.

With liquidity pools and AMMs, the exchange market is virtually free from unfair price quotes and various manipulative strategies that permeate peer-to-peer trading. AMMs determine prices with a parity algorithm that always tips the scale toward balance. This means that your portfolio won’t experience significant dips or spikes in value due to superficial intervention.

It comes as no surprise that eliminating the need of third parties and human intervention bodes well for the overall security. With a proper AMM algorithm and liquidity pool protocols in place, the entire system works like a well-oiled machine, reliably exchanging your requested amounts. No delays, no unpleasant surprises and absolutely no chances of fraud. 

While the inception and development of liquidity pools has greatly benefitted the crypto exchange market, there are quite significant risks to consider. Let’s discuss:

As with any other piece of technology, liquidity pool protocols are susceptible to error, breakdowns and manipulation from malicious parties. Although we haven’t witnessed any crippling examples of LP breakdowns, they tend to happen from time to time, creating a significant price variance on the exchange platforms.

As a result, your owned crypto funds on a given exchange might get undervalued pretty fast, leading to substantial losses. Additionally, those who have access to the LP and AMM systems could do major damage to the entire platform. Altering even the slightest parameters here could cause the balancing protocols to spiral out of control and produce some costly deviations. In this case, even fraud and misplacement are realistic scenarios.

While there is no effective way to mitigate the technology risks, you can always stay vigilant against potential scammers. The key here is to select the most dependable and established exchange platforms that prioritize security. With several powerhouse names on the market, you will have no trouble finding a safe, LP-supported exchange. Uniswap is one of the most acclaimed options, providing excellent LP and AMM-backed exchange services since 2018.

The second culprit that makes the liquidity pool concept risky is the continuous price shifts. Since the entire pricing is regulated by the algorithm, it can be susceptible to dramatic variations. While certain exchange platforms have tried to implement various safeguards against colossal price fluctuations, it is still a huge concern. To visualize this scenario, let us take an investor A that has just purchased currency X.

Investor A has acquired a significant amount of currency X at a high price. In a matter of seconds, the exchange platform algorithm has decided to decrease currency X value due to market considerations. Now, investor A has lost a significant chunk of his wealth almost instantly. While this loss is seldom permanent, it limits investor A to do anything with his portfolio. The only option they have is to wait and reclaim their sudden losses.

This scenario poses two major risks to investors – reduced liquidity and inability to engage in different transactions. While these investors can still freely exchange the currency X, it is obviously a bad idea. The only diligent option here is to wait for the price to normalize. This forced strategy indirectly decreases the liquidity of currency X, leaving the investors inactive for extended periods.

Liquidity pools are a match made in heaven for crypto exchange platforms that want speed, accessibility and parity. However, much like other innovations in this field, the key is to utilize the technology correctly and apply all the necessary safeguards. Simply put, this disruptive methodology could prove to be a revelation in the right hands but also lead to massive losses if utilized poorly.

So, if you decide to build an exchange platform of your own, liquidity pools could be your best friend, letting your customers transact momentarily and without the intervention of third parties. But you must consider all the discussed risks and come up with a balance that will suit your specific needs. There are no objective answers here and it all depends on your ability to make diligent decisions.