Stellar Liquidity Pools & AMM, Explained
Alongside its on-ledger order book, the Stellar DEX has automated market makers (AMMs): liquidity pools that price trades from a formula instead of matching individual offers. Pools let anyone provide liquidity and earn fees, and they trade side by side with the order book on every pair. Chartui shows live pool reserves, price, fees and total value locked.
What is a liquidity pool on Stellar?
A liquidity pool is a shared, on-ledger reserve of two assets that anyone can trade against. Instead of resting buy and sell offers like an order book, a pool holds a balance of each asset and quotes a price from the ratio between them. Liquidity providers deposit both assets in proportion and receive pool shares representing their stake; in return they earn a cut of the fees from every trade that flows through the pool.
Because pools live on the public Stellar ledger, their reserves, price and size are fully transparent — exactly the kind of data Chartui surfaces in real time.
How AMM pricing works
Stellar pools use the classic constant-product model: the product of the two reserves stays constant as trades happen (x · y = k). The current price is simply the ratio of the reserves, so every trade moves the price along that curve. A large trade against a small pool moves the price a lot — this is slippage — while the same trade against a deep pool barely moves it.
That means a pool's depth (how much is reserved on each side) matters just as much as it does in an order book: more reserves mean tighter, more stable pricing.
Fees, pool shares & TVL
Every swap pays a small fee (commonly 0.30%) that is added back to the reserves, so liquidity providers' pool shares slowly grow in value as trading volume accrues. Two numbers summarize a pool's health:
- Pool shares — your proportional ownership of the reserves; redeemable for the underlying assets at any time.
- TVL (total value locked) — the combined value of both reserves, a quick read on how deep and liquid the pool is.
Chartui's Pool widget shows the live reserves, pool price, fee, total shares and TVL, plus the value of your position in XLM or USDC.
Pools vs. the order book
Stellar doesn't make you choose. The network's path-payment engine automatically routes a trade across both the order book and any relevant pools to find the best execution. So a single trade might fill partly from resting offers and partly from an AMM pool, whichever gives the better price.
For readers, that means the order book and the pools together describe the real liquidity for a pair — which is why it helps to watch both. (See our guide to the Stellar order book and live trade flow, and the broader overview of the Stellar DEX.)
Providing liquidity: fees vs. impermanent loss
Earning fees isn't free money. When the price of the two pooled assets moves apart, the constant-product formula rebalances your reserves — you end up holding more of the asset that fell and less of the one that rose, compared with simply holding both. The gap between "provided liquidity" and "just held the two assets" is called impermanent loss. It's only realized if you withdraw while prices are dislocated, and the trading fees you've earned can offset it — but on a volatile pair, fees don't always win. Stable-to-stable pairs (for example USDC against another dollar token) tend to have the least impermanent loss, while a volatile pair against XLM has the most. Watching a pool's TVL and the value of your position over time is the practical way to keep tabs on it.
Reading pool data on Chartui
Chartui's Pool widget streams the on-ledger pool state for any pair: the two reserves and their codes, the current pool price, the fee, total trustlines and shares, the TVL (in the pool's base or counter asset, or a value currency like USDC), and — if you connect an account — the value of your own liquidity position. It's the fastest way to see where AMM liquidity actually sits on the Stellar DEX.