16min
Drift AMM

Introduction 
Drift uses a backstop AMM as a source of guaranteed constant liquidity for the exchange. 
The AMM acts as both the exchanges' price discovery mechanism for assets and as a constant market maker that provides constant liquidity to be taken against asynchronously.
Drift's v1 featured a Dynamic AMM (DAMM) which was an iteration on top of Perpetual Protocol's innovation - the virtual AMM (vAMM), except with configurable parameters, namely: 
Peg: a price multiplier
K: liquidity depth
Fee Pool: comprised of taker fee amounts (multiple methods for fee discounts to be implemented in the future)
Fee Tranches: percentage allocations from the fee pool to be distributed amongst the following operations:
Adjusting Peg (alternatively, "repeg")
k adjustments
(Capped) funding payments
To read more about Drift's v1 DAMM, read here. 
Drift AMM 
Drift’s v2 AMM will be an improvement on top of the original, featuring the following major innovations:
Inventory adjusted spreads
Oracle live pricing
Inventory Adjusted Spreads
In a typical constant product AMM, the AMM quotes the same price for buys/sells and charges a flat fee. 
To implicitly utilise a dynamic fee, Drift v2's AMM quotes different prices for buys and sells. The offset from the mid price is dynamic based upon current inventory. 
To do so, there will be 3 points tracked on the constant product curve: the bid price and ask price, and a point between for the reservation price. 
Base long spread and short spread are currently set as: 
bid/ask price = reservation price ± base_spread + f(inventory, balance) 
The long and short spread can be asymmetric due to changes in the underlying inventory skew and market buy/sell pressure. Ultimately, the ask - bid can never exceed the max spread (percentage calculated using current valid oracle price). 
The bid/ask points on the curve are calculated as follows: 
bid_quote_reserve = quote_reserve - (quote_reserve / (100%/short_spread))
ask_quote_reserve = quote_reserve + (quote_reserve / (100%/long_spread))
The quote_reserve is defined as the total AMM reserves of the quote asset. Then using the same k to back out the base_reserve for the bid/ask curves as well.
Oracle Live Pricing
The AMM's reservation price gets updated regularly through Drift's live oracle-based pricing. 
This pricing mechanism updates an asset's mark price towards its oracle price, achieving:
more accurate pricing; and
better entries and exits closer to oracle price. 
The mark price is updated each time the oracle updates its price and when the contract is interacted with.
Oracle Live Pricing Sequence
Every time a trader wants to fill against the AMM, the AMM will be updated in the same slot with a valid oracle price (see Oracles).  
The sequence is: 
The AMM checks the oracle price
The AMM move its peg﻿ toward the oracle price
The AMM sets its bid/ask spread 
The order will fill according to the bid/ask spread if the JIT auction has expired
The overall spread will increase if the AMM has a large effective leverage. The oracle price and reservation price are always within this spread. Effective leverage is a function of many market stats, including Inventory P&L and collateral within fee pool in the terminal state.
The reservation (AMM) price is the quote/base reserves * peg.