Liquid Staking Tokens in Automated Market Makers


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Date

2024

Publication Type

Conference Paper

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Abstract

This paper studies liquid staking tokens (LSTs) on automated market makers (AMMs), both theoretically and empirically. LSTs are tokenized representations of staked assets on proof-of-stake blockchains. First, we model LST-liquidity on AMMs theoretically, categorizing suitable AMM types for LST liquidity and deriving formulas for the necessary returns from trading fees to adequately compensate liquidity providers under the particular price trajectories of LSTs. For the latter, two relevant metrics are considered: (1) losses compared to holding the liquidity outside the AMM (loss-versus-holding, or “impermanent loss”), and (2) the relative profitability compared to fully staking the capital (loss-versus-staking) which is specifically tailored to the case of LST-liquidity. Next, we empirically measure these metrics for Ethereum LSTs across the most relevant AMM pools. We find that, while trading fees often compensate for impermanent loss, fully staking is more profitable for many pools, raising questions about the sustainability of the current LST liquidity allocation to AMMs.

Publication status

published

Book title

Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy

Volume

Pages / Article No.

27 - 54

Publisher

Springer

Event

5th International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE 2024)

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Organisational unit

03604 - Wattenhofer, Roger / Wattenhofer, Roger check_circle

Notes

Conference lecture held on July 10, 2024.

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Related publications and datasets

Is new version of: 10.48550/arXiv.2403.10226