Abstract: |
This paper presents the results of a comprehensive empirical study of losses
to arbitrageurs (following the formalization of loss-versus-rebalancing by
[Milionis et al., 2022]) incurred by liquidity on automated market makers
(AMMs). Through a systematic comparison between historical earnings from
trading fees and losses to arbitrageurs, our findings indicate an insufficient
compensation from fees for arbitrage losses across many of the largest AMM
liquidity pools (on Uniswap). Remarkably, we identify a higher profitability
among less capital-efficient Uniswap v2 pools compared to their Uniswap v3
counterparts. Moreover, we investigate a possible LVR mitigation by
quantifying how arbitrage losses reduce with shorter block times. We observe
notable variations in the manner of decline of arbitrage losses across
different trading pairs. For instance, when comparing 100ms block times to
Ethereum's current 12-second block times, the decrease in losses to
arbitrageurs ranges between 20% to 70%, depending on the specific trading pair. |