Partially Active Automated Market Makers

Abstract: We introduce a new class of automated market maker (AMM), the \emph{partially active automated market maker} (PA-AMM). PA-AMM divides its reserves into two parts, the active and the passive parts, and uses only the active part for trading. At the top of every block, such a division is done again to keep the active reserves always being (λ)-portion of total reserves, where (λ\in (0, 1]) is an activeness parameter. We show that this simple mechanism reduces adverse selection costs, measured by loss-versus-rebalancing (LVR), and thereby improves the wealth of liquidity providers (LPs) relative to plain constant-function market makers (CFMMs). As a trade-off, the asset weights within a PA-AMM pool may deviate from their target weights implied by its invariant curve. Motivated by the optimal index-tracking problem literature, we also propose and solve an optimization problem that balances such deviation and the reduction of LVR.