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A Theory of Automated Market Makers in DeFi

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Coordination Models and Languages (COORDINATION 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12717))

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Abstract

Automated market makers (AMMs) are one of the most prominent decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. They allow users to exchange units of different types of crypto-assets, without the need to find a counter-party. There are several implementations and models for AMMs, featuring a variety of sophisticated economic mechanisms. We present a theory of AMMs. The core of our theory is an abstract operational model of the interactions between users and AMMs, which can be concretised by instantiating the economic mechanisms. We exploit our theory to formally prove a set of fundamental properties of AMMs, characterizing both structural and economic aspects. We do this by abstracting from the actual economic mechanisms used in implementations and identifying sufficient conditions which ensure the relevant properties. Notably, we devise a general solution to the arbitrage problem, the main game-theoretic foundation behind the economic mechanisms of AMMs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/blockchain-unica/defi-workbench.

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Acknowledgements

Massimo Bartoletti is partially supported by Conv. Fondazione di Sardegna & Atenei Sardi project F74I19000900007 ADAM. James Hsin-yu Chiang is supported by the PhD School of DTU Compute. Alberto Lluch Lafuente is partially supported by the EU H2020-SU-ICT-03-2018 Project No. 830929 CyberSec4Europe (cybersec4europe.eu).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Massimo Bartoletti

  2. DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

    James Hsin-yu Chiang & Alberto Lluch-Lafuente

Authors
  1. Massimo Bartoletti
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  2. James Hsin-yu Chiang
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  3. Alberto Lluch-Lafuente
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Hsin-yu Chiang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Ferruccio Damiani

  2. Sir Alwyn William Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Ornela Dardha

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Bartoletti, M., Chiang, J.Hy., Lluch-Lafuente, A. (2021). A Theory of Automated Market Makers in DeFi. In: Damiani, F., Dardha, O. (eds) Coordination Models and Languages. COORDINATION 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12717. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78142-2_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78142-2_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-78141-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-78142-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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