Orderbook
CLOB
A list of resting buy + sell orders at successive price levels — the dominant pricing mechanism on centralised exchanges and emerging on-chain venues.
On-chain orderbooks (Hyperliquid, dYdX, Drift, Vortex, Aevo) compete with AMM (automated market maker)-based pricing; orderbooks tend to win for tight-spread / large-size flow, AMMs win for long-tail assets. Stablecoin-stablecoin pairs trade well on either model.
Related terms
- AMM (automated market maker)A smart contract that prices assets via a pricing curve over a pool of reserves rather than an order book.
- Liquidity poolA pool of token reserves that a smart contract uses to facilitate swaps, lending, or other on-chain activity.
- MEV (maximal extractable value)Value an entity ordering transactions in a block can extract from rearranging, inserting, or censoring them.