Illiquid Markets

The role of bonds in an illiquid market.

During the early stages of Shade Protocol (pre-ShadeSwap) there is a significant amount of illiquidity as it pertains to acquiring SHD. The more illiquid the market, the more of a disparity there is in reflecting all market participants being able to express their degree of demand within the context of limited supply.

Due to inaccurate pricing, Shade bonds should be issued at a premium to market price until enough price discovery has been explored with bond issuance or until DEX liquidity has deepened.

Bond issuance in an illiquid market is analogous to an order-book model whereby bond issuance should be carefully used to discover the real exchange rate demand for SHD. Because there is no slippage with Shade bonds, large entities will prefer acquiring SHD (even if its issued at a premium to market) because they will be able to obtain more SHD with their purchase order size through the bond then they could through an illiquid DEX.

Bond vs DEX

The following is an example of a $50,000 purchase of SHD using sSCRT using the SecretSwap DEX price of $9.65:

With 44.36% slippage, the user is essentially acquiring SHD at a 44.36% premium to market due to slippage incurred due to illiquidity. As such, a user such as this would prefer to acquire SHD at a 10-30% premium to market spot price using a bond assuming they will experience no further slippage.