Profitability Condition
At its heart, pool evaluation is a comparison between two quantities:- Expected fee income from providing liquidity
- Option premium required to hedge impermanent loss
| Income Sources | Cost Sources |
|---|---|
| DEX trading fees | Transaction costs |
| Perpetual funding (when positive) | Realized loss due to rebalancing |
| Perpetual funding (when negative) |
Evaluating Opportunities: Fees vs. Option Premium
If a pool generates 30% annualized fees, but the straddle premium for that asset is 40% annualized, the position loses money. Conversely, if fees are 30% and the premium is only 15%, the position captures a 15% spread. Option premium is driven primarily by volatility. The more volatile an asset, the more valuable the option protection, and thus the higher the premium. This creates an important dynamic: high-fee pools often exist precisely because the underlying assets are volatile—traders pay more fees because there’s more price action. But that same volatility makes the hedge expensive. The protocol must estimate expected volatility accurately to price the hedge correctly. We use models that capture volatility dynamics across multiple time horizons—short-term swings, medium-term trends, and longer-term regime shifts. Small estimation errors compound into large differences in premium calculations. For each candidate pool, we project fee generation based on:- Historical trading volume: Recent activity levels and trends
- Liquidity depth: How much capital is competing for fees
Comparing Opportunities
With fee income and option premium estimates in hand, we calculate expected net return for each pool: This enables consistent comparison across pools with vastly different characteristics:| Pool | Fee APR | Volatility | Option Premium | Net Expected Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pool A | 50% | 80% | 45% | 5% |
| Pool B | 25% | 30% | 12% | 13% |

