$30k Liquidity Generates $4M Trading Volume in 30 Days: How Stabull Does It

How ~$30k in Liquidity Supported $4m in 30-Day Trading Volume

By Jamie McCormick, Co-CMO, Stabull Labs

The eleventh article in the 15 part “Deconstructing DeFi” Series.

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At the time of writing, one Stabull pool held approximately $31,000 in liquidity.

Over the preceding 30 days, that same pool supported around $4.05 million in trading volume.

If you’re used to evaluating decentralized exchanges based solely on their total value locked (TVL), this ratio might seem strange. However, it becomes clear when you consider how liquidity is used in today’s DeFi transactions.

Why TVL and volume are often misunderstood

In much of DeFi, TVL is treated as a proxy for success.

Generally, a higher Total Value Locked (TVL) is thought to indicate more available funds, smoother transactions, and increased trading. However, TVL simply shows the amount of money deposited in a pool and doesn’t reveal how actively that money is being traded.

A large, inactive pool typically earns very few fees. However, a smaller pool that’s used frequently can consistently generate significant revenue.

The pool we examined falls squarely into the second category.

Parked liquidity vs working liquidity

The key distinction is not size, but utilisation.

In the transactions we traced, this pool was rarely the destination. Instead, it functioned as:

a stable execution leg
an FX-anchored pricing step
a reliable mid-path conversion

With each transaction, only a little bit of the available funds were used, but these transactions occurred constantly.

Throughout the month, these consistent, small interactions resulted in a total of $1.85 million in transactions.

Where the yield actually comes from

Many people new to decentralized finance (DeFi) often wonder how platforms can actually pay interest on stablecoin deposits.

As a crypto investor, I’ve noticed a lot of projects rely on lending to generate returns. Basically, you deposit your crypto, it gets lent out to others, and you earn interest as they pay it back. While this *can* work, it always comes with risks. There’s the chance borrowers won’t pay back the loan – that’s credit risk. Plus, if the value of the borrowed asset drops, you could face liquidation. Ultimately, the whole system depends on borrowers being able to actually repay what they’ve taken out.

Stabull works differently.

Liquidity provision on Stabull is closer to a toll booth than a lending desk.

Liquidity providers (LPs) aren’t making loans to be paid back. Instead, they’re supplying funds that are used immediately when someone makes a trade. Each time a trade happens within a pool, LPs earn a small fee.

No repayment risk. No leverage. Yield comes directly from usage.

The maths in practice

Using the example we analysed:

Pool TVL: ~$31,000
Trading volume (30 days): $4.05 million
Swap fee: 0.015%
LP share of fees: 70%

Fees generated (30 days)

$4,050,000 × 0.015% = $607.50 in total swap fees

LPs receive 70% of this:

$604.50 × 70% = $425.25 paid to LPs over the 30-day period

These fees are paid out in the currency the swap uses, so liquidity providers (LPs) receive their earnings directly in readily usable stablecoins.

Annualised view (illustrative)

If this level of activity were sustained over a full year (an assumption, not a guarantee):

$194.25 × 12 = $2,331 in annualised LP fees

On ~$31,000 of TVL, that equates to:

~6.7% annualised return from swap fees alone

This figure:

comes purely from transaction activity
does not rely on lending or leverage
is generated in liquid assets

Your actual earnings will depend on how much you use the platform and the total value locked in, but this example shows how activity generates returns.

Why execution quality matters more than depth

Execution systems — bots, solvers, and aggregators — do not route trades based on pool size alone.

They care about:

predictable pricing
low slippage for the trade size
reliability inside atomic execution
failure risk

Stabull maintains stable transaction prices even when external markets fluctuate, thanks to its use of oracle-based pricing. This reliability makes it ideal for use within automated trading strategies that require consistent performance.

The pool kept getting chosen, not because it was the biggest, but because you could always rely on it.

Fees accumulate quietly, but consistently

There was no single large trade responsible for most of the volume.

Instead, activity came from:

frequent, smaller swaps
automated execution
non-UI flows

Each interaction paid swap fees. Over time, those fees accumulated steadily.

This is very different from sales boosts based on incentives, which tend to be short-lived – spiking quickly and then fading away just as fast.

Yield beyond swap fees

Swap fees are only one part of the picture.

Liquidity providers on Stabull can also earn STABUL tokens through the Liquidity Mining Program, which is managed using Merkl.

These incentives are separate from swap fees and can:

supplement organic yield
attract additional liquidity
be held, sold, or used to participate in protocol governance

Swap fees reflect real usage. Incentives are designed to accelerate growth.

Why this pattern is durable

Nothing about this case relied on special conditions.

There was:

no liquidity mining campaign driving usage
no marketing push
no exclusive partnership

The pool was simply useful.

This system is still valuable as long as platforms require consistent and reliable pricing. And, as more people use DeFi, these pricing mechanisms will be used more often.

That is how relatively modest liquidity can support disproportionate volume.

What this tells us about Stabull’s role

Stabull pools aren’t trying to be the places where people take the biggest risks. Instead, they’re focused on being:

reliable
predictable
easy to integrate into automated execution

When a network effectively achieves this, its growth is driven by how much activity happens within it, rather than simply by attracting new users.

Looking ahead

With Stabull connecting to more platforms and services, we expect to see similar results in other liquidity pools as well.

Liquidity does not need to be enormous to be effective. It needs to be usable.

Our next article will explain how liquidity providers earn rewards on Stabull. We’ll also discuss why trading volume from sources other than individual users can lead to better fee earnings compared to typical retail trading.

About the Author

Jamie McCormick is a Co-Chief Marketing Officer at Stabull Finance. He’s been with the company for over two years, focusing on how the protocol fits into the changing world of DeFi.

He also founded Bitcoin Marketing Team in 2014, which is known as Europe’s longest-running agency specializing in crypto marketing. For the past ten years, the agency has partnered with many different projects in the digital asset and Web3 spaces.

Jamie started exploring cryptocurrency back in 2013 and has always been fascinated by Bitcoin and Ethereum. More recently, over the past couple of years, he’s become particularly interested in decentralized finance – specifically, how it actually works in the real world, not just in concept.

2026-03-26 01:05