A recent paper from a team of DeFi researchers proposes a new conceptual framework for liquidity mining.
A new paper released on Thursday from a team of crypto researchers hopes to add to a body of work that will eventually identify “the Black-Scholes of decentralized finance (DeFi)” — an equation that will allow investors and users to properly value DeFi projects and potential profit/loss metrics in popular DeFi verticals such as liquidity mining.
Why is such an equation important? At first blush, liquidity mining is simple enough to explain: in exchange for providing liquidity to automated market makers like Uniswap, users are rewarded with trading fees or governance tokens, often denominated in APY percentages.
However, users suffer "impermanent losses" related to fluctuations in demand for the trading pair, and a simple APY calculation on a user interface frontend isn't sufficient to paint a full picture for what the gains might look like for liquidity providers.
According to research from Tarun Chitra, founder and CEO of DeFi risk analysis firm Gauntlet.Network and one of the three co-authors of When does the tail wag the dog? Curvature and market making, liquidity mining is best thought of as a complex derivative.
⚠️ Paper Alert ⚠️Q: Have you wondered about math for the following?a) Optimal token qty to emit for yield farming incentivesb) Hedging impermanent loss w/ optionsc) When do LPs not get rekt?A: New paper from moi, @alexhevans, @GuilleAngeris https://t.co/VeJjtSK038— Tarun Chitra (@tarunchitra) December 17, 2020
“Most passive investment products often times have non-trivial derivatives-like exposure.
