Knowla / Learn / Pools guide / Lesson 4
Lesson 4 of 7
TVL and depth
What total value locked tells you about slippage and about how fragile a yield is.
TVL is the total value of the tokens sitting in a pool. For you it answers two questions.
Can I get in and out?
A swap moves the price inside the pool by an amount that depends on its size against the pool's. In a deep pool a trade barely moves it. In a thin pool the same trade moves it noticeably, and you pay for that slippage when you enter and again when you leave.
Is the yield stable?
APR is fees and rewards divided by the capital in the pool. In a small pool, one large deposit or withdrawal changes the capital and moves the APR with it. Small pools also tend to show a bigger gap between the headline and what you actually earn.
How Knowla uses it
The Pools table lists pools from $100,000 of TVL upward. The quick filters keep pools of at least $5M or $10M, and the checklist on a pool's page counts $5M or more as a pass. These are rules of thumb. A better one: your deposit should be a small fraction of the pool.
See it on the data.
Open the Pools table