Blackhole AMM
Rejected venues wait the longest for re-review; a rejection has to earn another look before the scheduled date.
Blackhole is a decentralized exchange on Avalanche. Its liquidity pools pay providers with trading fees, and in return the provider’s deposit is rebalanced against every price move between the paired assets. That is impermanent loss, and it cannot be explained to a mass-affluent client in two sentences or defended when it bites. The class rule rejects the whole AMM category on those grounds, regardless of how well any one exchange is built. At the 2026-08-16 survey Blackhole held about $1.13M on Avalanche.
- Ships a product line without impermanent-loss exposure that merits its own review
The research file
Mechanism applicability
Blackhole offers volatile constant-product, stable-swap and concentrated-liquidity AMMs on Avalanche. In every measured pool type, LP capital supplies paired reserves to traders; concentrated positions additionally choose active price ranges. Fees, BLACK emissions and automated range managers can change compensation or maintenance, but do not remove reserve-composition risk. The shared version-1 amm-lp dossier therefore applies.
Current observation and perimeter
The DefiLlama protocol API read on 2026-08-16 classified Blackhole AMM as a DEX and reported approximately $1.13M entirely on Avalanche. Current Blackhole documentation describes the live DEX, weekly gauge epochs, v2-style, stable and concentrated pools, and Algebra Integral plugin-based concentrated liquidity. The existing Avalanche perimeter and AMM classification remain current.
Control, loss and exit applicability
Pool formulas and price ranges determine how arbitrage changes LP inventory. veBLACK voters direct weekly BLACK emissions; staked v2 LP fees flow to gauges, while concentrated-pool fees flow to gauges, so incentive and staking choices affect realized return. Governance, fee-manager and plugin roles add control dependencies. Removing liquidity returns the position’s then-current paired inventory; narrow ranges can magnify one-sided outcomes.
Why the class rule decides
Blackhole’s own documentation expressly identifies impermanent loss, constant-product reserves and concentrated range risk, creating direct claim-to-source fit. Multiple pool formulas, audits, gauges and ALM integrations do not convert the client claim into single-asset yield. The shared version-1 amm-lp dossier therefore decides. Reopen only for a separately measured Blackhole product without paired or synthetic market-making exposure, followed by a fresh control, incident, liquidity and alternatives review.
Sources
The claims above trace to these. Where a number could not be independently verified, the thesis says so.
- Blackhole — protocol and AMM overview · primary · accessed 2026-08-16
Supports: Avalanche, AMM models, fees, emissions, gauges, current lifecycle - Blackhole — pool formulas and risks · primary · accessed 2026-08-16
Supports: constant product, stable pools, concentrated ranges, impermanent loss, ALM - Blackhole — LP fees and gauge rewards · primary · accessed 2026-08-16
Supports: LP fees, BLACK emissions, staked positions, gauges, weekly epoch - Blackhole — contracts, roles and audits · primary · accessed 2026-08-16
Supports: audits, Algebra Integral, plugins, upgradable architecture, monitoring - DefiLlama — Blackhole AMM survey record · secondary · accessed 2026-08-16
Supports: current TVL, Avalanche, DEX category, survey observation
Inherited controls
The verdict above grades the protocol layer. Every position also inherits the asset it holds and the chain it settles on. The least safe layer sets the position’s grade, and the position table names which one that is.
| Chain | Verdict | Grade | Control constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avalanche | Approved · limits | crypto-backed | no party can freeze or seize C-Chain funds, but one vendor writes the only production client and Messari measured over a third of stake hosted on AWS. |