Introducing Stacks Pools
Stacks Pools run on Zest Protocol CLMM, Zest Protocol’s concentrated liquidity market maker: liquidity sits in price bins, so the same capital gives deeper markets around the current price. Liquidity providers earn a share of every swap’s fee, and traders swap against the pools in one atomic Stacks transaction.
Why Zest Protocol CLMM
Zest Protocol CLMM brings concentrated liquidity to Stacks. A liquidity provider picks a price range, and inside that range their capital trades with the depth of a much larger pool. Uniswap v3 made this model standard, and market makers use it on many other chains.
ZEST trades on BNB Chain, Ethereum and Base as well as on Stacks. On those chains, concentrated liquidity exchanges are the standard venue, with deep markets close to the price. Stacks had no equivalent, so Zest Protocol built one. Stacks users get the same trading experience, and market makers can bring the same strategies.
Zest Protocol CLMM is live on Stacks mainnet with two pools, STX/USDCx and ZEST/STX. See Pools on Mainnet for their settings.
How to Swap
Trading on Stacks Pools takes no extra steps. Swap on the Swap page of the Zest Protocol app, or on any site that uses the Zest Protocol aggregator, such as Tenero , and the aggregator routes your trade through Stacks Pools whenever they give the best price.
Concentrated Liquidity in Every Bin
A concentrated liquidity position covers a bounded price range. Inside that range it trades like a constant-product (x · y = k) pool with virtual reserves: the same capital gives the depth of a pool many times its size, and every trade moves the price a little along the curve.
Zest Protocol CLMM splits each pool’s price axis into bins, and each bin is exactly that: a bounded constant-product curve between the bin’s two edges, the same curve a Uniswap v3 position one bin wide trades on. Every provider in a bin shares its curve and holds SIP-013 share tokens that claim its reserves. The price moves smoothly inside a bin and continues into the next.
A liquidity provider chooses which bins to fill and earns fees only while the price trades through them. Bin widths of 1%, 5%, 10% and 20% suit everything from correlated pairs to volatile ones. All pools live in one contract, clmm-pool-v1, and each bin’s shares are a SIP-013 token. See How Concentrated Liquidity Works for bins, prices and the depth a bin gives.
Comparing CLMM and HODLMM
Bitflow’s HODLMM, also on Stacks, divides prices into bins too. Each HODLMM bin is a constant-sum pool that trades at one fixed price, like a level in an order book, so the price steps from bin to bin. Each Zest Protocol CLMM bin is a constant-product curve, so the price moves with every trade and continues into the next bin. See Comparing CLMM and HODLMM for the side-by-side comparison.
Who Benefits
For market makers
A range on Zest Protocol CLMM behaves the way a Uniswap v3 range does, so strategies built for concentrated liquidity on other chains carry over: choose a range around the price, earn while the price trades through it, and move it when the price leaves.
For traders
Liquidity concentrated near the price means less price impact. A trade walks the bins in price order, the price moves smoothly inside each bin, and a whole route through one pool settles with one transfer in and one transfer out. See Swaps, Fees and Price Protection for a swap step by step.
For liquidity providers
While the price stays in range, a provider earns more fees per unit of capital than in a pool spread across every price. When the price leaves their bins, they move the range. Deposits can be in any ratio, fees compound into the bins with nothing to claim, and each bin’s shares are SIP-013 tokens. Because shares are ordinary tokens, a contract can hold them for a provider, which is what makes Liquidity Vaults possible.
Liquidity Vaults
A Liquidity Vault lets a liquidity provider work with a market maker without handing over their capital. The provider’s tokens stay in the Liquidity Vault, the market maker runs the range in a concentrated liquidity pool, and the provider can withdraw at any time. Liquidity Vaults are part of Stacks Pools and are separate from Stacks Vaults.
Guarantees
Non-custodial positions
Liquidity providers hold their position as tokens. Only the owner can redeem them, and no administrator, upgrade or governance action can move a provider’s funds.
Exits always open
Pausing a pool stops swaps and new deposits, never withdrawals. A provider can always remove liquidity.
Exact token accounting
Every transfer into or out of a pool is checked against the balances it moved. A token that delivers less than it was asked to, such as a fee-on-transfer token, fails the transaction instead of leaving the pool short.
Price protection on every trade
Every swap carries a price limit, a minimum output and a deadline. If any of them is violated, the whole transaction reverts and no tokens move.
Built by Zest Protocol
Stacks Pools are part of Zest Protocol’s product suite on Stacks, alongside Stacks Market, Stacks Vaults and Stacks Swap.
Clarity Alliance audited the concentrated liquidity contracts, the Liquidity Vault contracts and their governance. See Security and Audits for the contracts and the report.
The Zest Protocol team has been building on Bitcoin since 2021 and operates Stacks Market, a Bitcoin credit market with more than two years on mainnet and $100M+ peak TVL.