Rethinking DEX Design, Pricing, and Bonding Curves

​Decentralized exchanges are typically built around fixed invariants that constrain how prices evolve and how liquidity is expressed.

​At the Ethereum Research Symposium (EthReS), affiliated with ETH Prague 2026, Dr. Mark Richardson, Project Lead at Bancor, will present new research exploring alternative approaches to DEX design, pricing, and bonding curve construction.

​Mark introduces a new mathematical framework for defining exchange rates from first principles. Rather than specifying a curve and deriving its behavior, the approach inverts the process: the desired rate behavior is defined first, and the unique bonding curve that satisfies it is constructed from that definition.

​At the core of this work is a novel predicate — the Mean-of-Derivatives (MoD) property — which requires that the effective exchange rate over a trade is a chosen mean of the marginal rates at its endpoints. From this, a general method emerges for constructing bonding curves in closed form, expanding the range of possible pricing behaviors beyond those supported by existing AMM designs.

​The session will explore:

• ​The limitations of invariant-based DEX design

• ​How bonding curves can be constructed from rate definitions

• ​A generalizable framework for exchange rate formation

• ​Implications for the next generation of onchain trading systems

​This is a research-focused session for those interested in the mechanics of onchain markets and the future direction of exchange design.