Reference gate & pacing
A 10-minute EMA and a volume-paced bucket keep the pot unplayable. V1/V2 still shield sells.
V3 dropped the sell-side shield. The pot now pumps behind every swap — buying main behind buys and buying the dip behind sells — and a reference gate plus a volume-paced bucket keep that firepower from being farmed. This slug stays /docs/shield so existing links don't break.
Pools on the V1 and V2 hooks still absorb sells at the pool's exact price via beforeSwap / quoteShield. New pools launch on V3 and never intercept the seller. The rest of this chapter is the V3 gate.
The four ceilings
Every pump spend is the smallest of four ceilings, then an 80% haircut:
| ceiling | size | what it closes |
|---|---|---|
| fee | fee · depth | the sandwich: bracketing the pump loses whenever spend ≤ f·R |
| bucket | at most one fee ceiling; credited 4× the fee every swap pays, plus one ceiling per 30 minutes | the rush: manufactured volume unlocks only 4× what it cost in fees |
| demand | a share of the secondary the swap moved | gradualism: a dust trade unlocks a dust pump |
| gate | 60% at or below the reference; fee / premium above it | farming a pushed price: f/d is the exact break-even |
The reference
A time-weighted tick each funded pot keeps — a ten-minute time constant. An observation dt after the last moves it min(1, dt/τ) of the way to the tick that stood in between. It is fed only by ticks that stood across a block boundary: a swap in the same block as the last one adds nothing, and the pot's own pumps never enter it. It may fall freely (a dip reopens the gate at once) but rise at most ~3% a minute (296 ticks).
At or below the reference the share is 60%. Above it, min(60%, f / d) where d is main's premium over the reference. Pushing the price inside your own transaction never moves the reference, so the push reads as a premium and the gate shrinks every pump you summon.
FAQ
Does V3 still absorb sells?+
No. V1 and V2 still shield sells via beforeSwap. V3 dropped that path: the pot is a standing buy that can fire behind every swap, including sells (buying the dip). The seller always hits the curve.
What keeps the pot from being farmed?+
Four ceilings, then an 80% haircut: the sandwich bound f·R, a volume-paced bucket (at most 4× the fee per unit volume), a share of the swap's secondary, and a 10-minute EMA gate that may rise at most ~3%/min. Above the reference the share collapses to fee/premium.
What is the reference?+
A ten-minute time-weighted tick each funded pot keeps. It is fed only by ticks that stood across a block boundary; the pot's own pumps never enter it. It may fall freely (a dip reopens the gate) but rise at most 296 ticks a minute.
How do I read the live gate?+
pumpShareOf(poolId) returns (shareWad, spotTick, referenceTick). At or below the reference the share is 60%; above it, min(60%, fee/premium).
Can a pump ever make my swap fail?+
No. The pump body is wrapped so any internal failure is swallowed and the carrying swap lands normally — the machine can only ever add to a trade, never block one.