An Economic Model of a Decentralized Exchange with Concentrated Liquidity
Abstract
We develop an economic model of a decentralized exchange with concentrated liquidity (e.g., Uniswap v3 and v4), with a particular focus on the economics of liquidity provision. We demonstrate that providing liquidity for a risky/risk-free asset pool is comparable to investing in a covered call, except that the call option therein is sold at intrinsic rather than market value. Hence, when providing liquidity, liquidity providers forgo the time premium of the call option in exchange for fees, and thus equilibrium liquidity provision decreases in the time premium. Finally, we provide an expression for equilibrium liquidity provision that is useful for empirical work.
This paper has been This paper was accepted by Lin William Cong for the Virtual Special Issue on Digital Finance.

