Blockchain Smart Contracts with Solidity · Lesson

AMMs and Liquidity Pools

Understand how Automated Market Makers (AMMs) like Uniswap function and how liquidity pools enable decentralized trading.

Welcome to AMMs

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has revolutionized how we trade assets. At its heart are Automated Market Makers (AMMs).

AMMs power decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap, allowing users to swap tokens without traditional buyers and sellers.

Instead of matching orders, AMMs use mathematical formulas and liquidity pools.

Traditional exchanges use order books, where buyers and sellers list their desired prices. Trades only happen when bids and asks match.

Order Books: Centralized, requires matching orders, can suffer from low liquidity.
AMMs: Decentralized, uses liquidity pools, always offers a price determined by a formula.

AMMs solve the liquidity problem for many token pairs on a blockchain by always providing a market.