James Ding
Jan 19, 2026 22:40
Proprietary AMMs use predictive value feeds to rival centralized alternate effectivity on-chain. Here is how they work and why they’re controversial.
Skilled market makers have discovered a technique to function on Solana (SOL) with near-Binance effectivity—and it is altering how DeFi liquidity truly works.
Proprietary Automated Market Makers, or PropAMMs, resolve an issue that is plagued decentralized exchanges since Uniswap launched in 2018: passive liquidity suppliers constantly lose cash to arbitrageurs. The repair entails pushing predictive value feeds on-chain and encoding subtle buying and selling logic into good contracts.
The Core Downside With Conventional AMMs
Market makers survive by consistently updating their quotes. When Bitcoin drops from $100,000 to $98,000, they cancel previous orders and put up new ones at present costs. Miss that replace, and knowledgeable merchants will decide you off—shopping for your stale $100,000 quote when the actual value is $98,000.
On Binance, putting and canceling orders prices nothing. On-chain, each transaction burns charges. Even Solana’s low cost fuel provides up while you’re updating quotes a whole bunch of occasions per second.
Uniswap’s x*y=ok formulation eradicated order administration solely, however created a unique downside: the AMM has no thought what the actual market value is. If Uniswap quotes Bitcoin at $100,000 whereas each different alternate reveals $98,000, arbs drain the pool till costs converge. Liquidity suppliers eat the loss.
Uniswap v3’s concentrated liquidity helped capital effectivity however did not repair the basic difficulty. LPs nonetheless get picked off except they manually rebalance—which brings again the transaction payment downside.
How PropAMMs Truly Work
PropAMMs flip the mannequin. As a substitute of ready for trades to maneuver costs, they:
- Keep predictive value fashions off-chain
- Push minimal value updates on-chain (typically simply 8 bytes)
- Let good contract logic calculate quotes in real-time
When a dealer hits a PropAMM, the contract checks present market value, volatility, counterparty id, latest commerce historical past, and the way contemporary the final replace was. Then it quotes accordingly.
The effectivity acquire is substantial. Updating a single value variable prices a fraction of changing 10+ orders on an on-chain order ebook. PropAMMs can replace a number of occasions per Solana slot whereas remaining worthwhile.
The Centralization Commerce-off
Here is the place it will get controversial. As business analysts famous in October 2025, PropAMMs “echo the identical constructions crypto as soon as sought to flee.”
Not like Uniswap swimming pools the place anybody can deposit, PropAMM liquidity comes primarily from the operators themselves. The good contracts are closed-source. Integration with aggregators like Jupiter requires permission. Customers cannot confirm they’re getting one of the best out there value.
There’s additionally a validator downside distinctive to Solana. Some block producers run their very own PropAMMs and should prioritize their very own value updates whereas delaying rivals’. Others extract MEV by together with updates as late as attainable to maximise stale-price arbitrage.
The Anza staff is reportedly engaged on fixes (referenced as “MCP”), however for now, PropAMM efficiency varies relying on which validator is producing blocks.
What This Means for Merchants
PropAMMs at the moment deal with important quantity on main Solana pairs, significantly by Jupiter routing. For liquid property, they typically present tighter spreads than conventional AMMs.
However they will not work for every thing. The transaction payment ground means long-tail tokens with skinny quantity cannot be profitably market-made this fashion. And the closed-source, permissioned nature means customers are trusting black containers operated by nameless groups.
The know-how works. Whether or not DeFi ought to embrace these trade-offs is a unique query—one the Solana ecosystem is actively debating as PropAMMs seize extra market share from clear, permissionless alternate options.
Picture supply: Shutterstock
