Refactoring a Market-Making Strategy for a Zero-Fee Perpetual DEX
Summary
This article recounts adapting an older FMZ market making strategy for Lighter, a decentralized exchange described as offering zero trading fees to regular traders. It explains the exchange account configuration at a high level and argues that lower fees could make high turnover, tight grid, or arbitrage approaches more viable after fee erosion. The author then describes using AI to modernize an existing strategy while preserving its core logic, updating API use, and adding risk controls, logging, statistics, and display features. The included strategy excerpt identifies order book depth thresholds, order sizing, position limits, and stop loss settings as relevant controls.
The account is exploratory, not a demonstrated profitability study: the author says the refactored system appears unprofitable so far, despite accumulating trading volume, and gives no controlled comparison or performance statistics. Zero fees do not remove spread, liquidity, funding, gas, or operational costs. The article also notes DEX smart contract and network risks, possible fee policy changes, and the possibility of defects in AI generated code. Its example therefore illustrates integration and refactoring, not a validated trading edge.
Key ideas
- The author explores whether a zero trading fee venue can make older high turnover strategies more viable.
- AI is used to refactor an existing market making strategy while adding operational and risk features.
- The excerpt highlights order book depth, order size, position limits, and stop loss parameters.
- The author reports no evidence of profitability and describes the exercise as exploratory.
- DEX, fee policy, and AI generated code risks remain relevant even when trading fees are zero.
Tags
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.