Wick AMM

what is wAMM

wAMM (Wick AMM) is Wick's state-of-the-art AMM. It organizes liquidity into discrete price bins: each bin trades at a fixed price, so swaps within a bin have zero price impact.

Every wAMM feature runs on the bins themselves. Limit orders rest as real liquidity in a bin, and Wick arbitrage keeps every bin at fair value, so orders fill efficiently. Dynamic fees pay the liquidity for its risk, and options settle against it.

how wAMM works

wAMM uses DLMM as the base layer for active markets on Lighter EVM. LPs deploy liquidity into bins with preset or custom shapes; traders get zero price impact inside each bin. Hooks and dynamic fees layer onto that base, and the UI adds Paint and orderbook-style depth.

Swap fees compound automatically into your position. Bin liquidity, including resting limit orders and options, maps to CEX-style bid/ask depth:

Capital concentrates around the market price the way an orderbook concentrates depth, and full-range pairs and concentrated liquidity pools are available alongside DLMM.

how bins work

Bins are the price grid of a DLMM pool. Each bin is a single fixed price point. Consecutive bins are spaced by the pool's bin step, a percentage gap set at pool creation:

price_n = price_{n-1} × (1 + binStep / 10_000)

The active bin is the bin at the current market price: swaps execute there, and your position earns swap fees while price stays inside the bins where you deployed liquidity. Bins below spot act as bids; bins above act as asks.

bin step tiers

Wick pools are identified by bin step. Values below describe price granularity and typical pool fit; actual swap fees are dynamic.

competitive farming

Tighter bins and more focused shapes earn more swap fees per dollar deployed while price stays in your bins. LP incentives can layer on top to reward productive liquidity.

liquidity shapes

A liquidity shape is how capital is distributed across bins in your price range. Wick supports four deployment modes.

Spot

Uniform liquidity across every bin in the price range, with optional emphasis around the active bin for tighter spot exposure.

Curve

Bell-curve distribution centered on the active bin. Maximizes capital efficiency near spot while tapering toward the edges of the price range.

Bid-Ask

Inverse curve: capital weighted toward both ends of the price range. Captures larger volatility swings away from spot.

Paint

Paint is a free-form custom liquidity shape you draw on the bin chart. On release, Wick snaps your stroke into discrete bin heights and deploys liquidity to match the curve. The same price range, fee tier, and autocompounding behavior apply as with presets; only the distribution is custom.

hooks

hooks are optional contracts on a wAMM pool that run custom logic on swaps and liquidity updates. Wick uses them for limit orders and options, built directly on top of normal bin liquidity.

limit orders

On wAMM, when adding liquidity you choose which bins fill. Each bin is an order at its own price; swaps can fill a bin fully or partially, like an orderbook.

Price can reverse through the same bins. Per bin, you choose whether filled amounts stay locked:

• Fill — any filled amount locks and becomes claimable, including partials. A reversal cannot trade that fraction back. Whatever is still unfilled stays live and can keep filling.
• Normal — the bin stays live as regular liquidity. A reversal trades filled tokens back into the token you deposited, undoing the fill.

Claim filled amounts per bin or all at once. You pay the claim gas, not the swapper, so swaps stay efficient. Wick arbitrage keeps the pool price updating with the market so limit orders fill efficiently at fair value.

One position can mix behaviors across its liquidity shape: mark some bins as regular liquidity and others as fill-to-claim exits or bids and size each price level with Paint.

options

Wick also uses hooks for wAMM options anchored at a strike. You deploy real liquidity in a liquidity shape around the strike, and the hook settles the position against a programmed rule when your exit condition is met, similar to limit orders above.

Calls and puts, on bins. A liquidity shape plus hook rules settles against where price finishes.

• Call-like: you earn swap fees while spot trades through your bins; at settlement, you benefit if spot finishes above the strike.
• Put-like: the mirror layout; you benefit if spot finishes below the strike.

Unlike a traditional option, the position can earn swap fees while it waits. Like any LP position, it still takes normal impermanent loss from price changes.

other pool types

Alongside DLMM, Wick also offers full-range pairs and tick-based concentrated liquidity pools. Both use dynamic fees.

full range

Full-range V2-style pairs distribute liquidity across the full price curve with no range or shape selection. Positions stay in range and earn fees; swap fees auto-compound into the position.

Wick has two full-range pair types:

• Volatile (V2): equal dollar-weighted tokens using x * y = k.
• Stable (Correlated): pegged or correlated assets using xy(x² + y²) = k, with lower slippage near parity.

concentrated liquidity

Wick also runs tick-style concentrated liquidity pools. Set a min and max price, deposit into that range, and earn fees while price trades inside it.

dynamic fees

Wick replaces static fee tiers with a dynamic fee algorithm that adjusts in real time from market signals. Fees rise with volatility and compress when markets are calm.

The cost of providing liquidity is not constant. It rises when markets move quickly, toxic flow is more likely, and LPs face more adverse selection. It falls when conditions are calm and flow is mostly organic. Fees should reflect the cost of providing liquidity.

how it works

fee-volatility mismatch

Static fee tiers stay fixed whether the market is crashing or trading sideways. Wick tracks volatility live and moves fees with it, closing the fee-volatility mismatch continuously.

Wick vs static fee

Wick monitors DEX and CEX feeds to price risk before arbitrage arrives, adjusting fees continuously. Residual spread the fee barrier does not catch is recovered through Wick arbitrage at 0% internal pool fee.

The chart below compares Wick against fixed 0.30% and 1.00% tiers over 24 hours. Fees compress during calm windows and spike when volatility hits:

fee response

The comparison above is a daily snapshot. In practice, Wick adjusts continuously, widening the no-arb band as volatility rises and narrowing it as conditions stabilize. Spike and decay speed is tuned per pool category.

market response

When volatility spikes, fees ramp, reclaiming 86–95% of the value that would otherwise be extracted to arbitrage; when markets are calm, fees compress.

predictive, not just reactive

Wick uses a predictive fee model: unlike systems that only react to internal pool metrics, Wick monitors external CEX and DEX feeds (prices, cross-venue volume, on-chain signals) and runs adjustments as frequently as every second. When a CEX move signals the pool is about to become a target, fees are already elevated by the time toxic flow hits.

On wAMM pools, fees also adjust reactively when swaps cross bins, stacking on top of the predictive layer.

Higher fees shift who gets paid when prices move, not whether arbitrage happens: a larger slice comes back to the LP as fee revenue, a smaller slice stays with the arbitrageur. That is why Wick talks about "recapture" rather than "reduction". The share-not-total result is worked through on the concepts page.

Wick targets a fee-to-volatility ratio of roughly 10:1: the swap fee is about ten times the typical per-block price move, so LPs recover most of what would otherwise leak to arbitrageurs.

LP protection

An LP position leaks value when the pool is slow to reprice against external markets. Arbitrageurs buy the underpriced side, sell the overpriced side, and keep the spread. Wick cannot remove the directional risk of a two-sided position, but dynamic fees reclaim most of that split for LPs when volatility is priced correctly.

Dynamic fees are the first line of defense. What leaks past the fee barrier is recovered by Wick arbitrage.

For the formal split and fee-to-volatility math, see fee vs arbitrage and recapture, not reduction. Discrete bin pricing on wAMM pools also returns more of each move to LPs as fees.

fee ranges

Every pool runs between a base fee floor and a fee cap. The floor tracks bin step; the cap tracks pool category. The algorithm moves inside those bounds from live signals, combining the floor with the volatility surcharge. The base is a floor, not a fixed fee.

volatile pools

Pools like LIT/USDC or BTC/USDC ramp fees fast on volatility and decay deliberately so the band does not collapse early.

stable pools

USDC/USDT stays tight around the base fee and spikes only on real depeg risk. LST pools (wLIT/LIT) stay low-fee while the rate accrues. When redeem has a known cost (a fee, a cooldown, or both), the pool fee mirrors that economics so swapping is not the cheaper exit.