Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Today: We explain liquidity pools.

If you want to exchange one token for another, you have to have a market, meaning you'll have to find another person to swap you at the rate you both agree to.

Remember: Centralized exchanges like Binance have enough users to match them directly when they want to swap – for a fee.

Liquidity pools take this concept and decentralize it, so that you don't need a massive amount of users on centralized exchanges anymore.

For that to work, people who hold both tokens of a pair you'd like to swap, send those to a liquidity pool. The tokens then disappear from their wallet and get transferred over to that pool, and in exchange they get a third token that proves ownership over the amount they committed. They can exchange that back at any time.

That's how the pool is getting filled.

But back to you: if you want to exchange two tokens and the corresponding liquidity pool is full enough to fulfill your swap, it'll do that using those tokens that are already in it. You exchange for the token you wanted and pay a fee. That fee is then distributed to the people who originally funded the pool, letting their money work for them. And those rewards can add up quickly if a pool has a lot of activity.

And next we explain staking - in plain English, like always. Hear you then!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.