01 / OVERVIEW
What is TIDE?
An ordinary AMM charges the same fee in dead-calm markets and during violent repricing. TIDE gives the fee a heartbeat.
Before every swap, the mechanism reads the state of the pool and prices the trade for the conditions it is actually happening in. Calm market and uninformed flow: the fee falls. Drifting market and likely-informed flow: the fee rises. LPs get paid for the risk they are carrying instead of being quietly arbitraged while the fee is too cheap.
so LPs get paid when it matters.
The problem with flat fees
A flat fee is a mispriced fee. When the market moves, the flow hitting a pool can know something the pool price does not yet reflect. A fixed fee lets that informed trade through at the calm-day price, and the LP absorbs the difference. TIDE closes this gap by making the fee a function of live conditions rather than a constant.
Rises and falls with market conditions.
Measures pool drift and volatile conditions.
Competitive fees for honest flow.
Higher fees compensate LP exposure.
02 / THE MECHANISM
One loop.
Every swap.
An LP provides liquidity to a TIDE-enabled pool.
The mechanism observes recent pool drift and its volatility proxy.
Calm flow pushes toward low tide; informed flow pushes toward high tide.
The bounded tide curve prices the current swap before it executes.
Honest traders pay less; riskier flow pays more; the difference stays with LPs.
The fee logic is on-chain and runs before execution, with no keeper and no external oracle call. Its signal is derived from pool state itself.
03 / ARCHITECTURE
Protocol
components.
Dynamic-fee hook
Runs before every swap, reads current pool conditions and sets the fee for that trade.
Conditions estimator
Turns recent pool drift and realized volatility into the swell signal using pool-native data.
Tide curve
Maps swell to fee through governed floor, ceiling and responsiveness parameters.
Fee accounting
Routes the protocol share of fees toward the real-yield distributor.
Staking & governance
Lets $TIDE stakers receive revenue share and govern curves and eligible pools.
PROPOSED REPOSITORY
/contracts Hook, estimator, curve config, distributor, staking
/sim Historical backtests and LP PnL comparisons
/backend Indexer, fee history and pool analytics
/frontend Current tide, earnings and LP dashboard
/docs Specifications and manipulation-resistance research04 / ECONOMICS
Real yield.
Real flow.
All returns begin with swap fees actually collected. Never with a promise created by token inflation.
Dynamic fees capture more value at the moments informed flow used to trade too cheaply.
A bounded share of collected fees funds the protocol and its distributor.
$TIDE staking receives a share of real protocol fees rather than newly minted yield.
When the market is calm and nothing is at risk, fees stay low because there is nothing to defend against. Yield is bounded by reality.
05 / TOKEN
The role of
$TIDE.
Revenue share
Stake $TIDE to receive a cut of the real fees the protocol captures.
Curve governance
Govern fee floors, ceilings, responsiveness and approved pool parameters.
Pool selection
Choose which pools can use the mechanism as the protocol expands.
The token and hook contracts are not live yet. No contract address is claimed in this documentation.
06 / HARD PROBLEMS
What must
be proven.
Signal integrity
The estimator must resist attempts to spoof calm conditions or force high tide. Internal references, smoothing and capped fee movement are essential.
Deployment dependency
The target environment must support the pool manager and dynamic-fee execution path required by the hook. Confirm this before committing the MVP.
Gas cost
The estimator runs on the hot path before every swap. Its cost must remain lower than the value the mechanism protects.
Curve calibration
A curve that is too flat adds little value. One that is too aggressive pushes honest flow away. Historical backtesting is required.
07 / ROADMAP
From one pool
to the ocean.
MVP
One dynamic-fee pool, a robust swell estimator and bounded fees. Prove better LP fee capture versus a static pool.
NO TOKENReal yield
Add the fee split and distributor, expand carefully to more pools and harden the mechanism.
PROVE & EXPAND$TIDE
Launch revenue-share staking and governance over the tide curve, parameters and pool selection.
TOKEN LAUNCHThe ocean
Introduce richer condition signals, pair-specific presets and deeper LP analytics.
LATER08 / NON-NEGOTIABLES
Before
shipping.
- 01Pool-native fee logic
No off-chain fee setter, no keeper and no external oracle dependency.
- 02Manipulation resistance
No cheap way to spoof the tide. Cap per-swap movement.
- 03Real yield only
Rewards come from swap fees actually collected, not emissions.
- 04Cheap hot path
Gas cost matters because the logic runs on every swap.
- 05Honest framing
Yield is variable and never guaranteed. TIDE improves fee capture; it does not promise a number.
- 06Start minimal
One pool. One curve. Prove it before expanding.
09 / GLOSSARY
Speak
the tide.
- Tide
- The dynamic fee level: high means expensive, low means cheap.
- Swell
- The measured drift or volatility signal that drives the fee.
- Tide curve
- The governed mapping from swell to fee.
- Low / high tide
- Calm cheap regime versus informed expensive regime.
- Real yield
- LP and staker returns funded by real swap fees, not emissions.