Phoenix on Stellar: The Soroban AMM Explained

Phoenix by the numbers (October 2026)

Measure	Value	Source
TVL	$47.7K	DefiLlama, 9 Oct 2026
Peak TVL	$6.36M (18 Jul 2025)	DefiLlama
First DefiLlama reading	$292K (20 Jul 2024)	DefiLlama
Pools in the mainnet factory	13, all constant-product	Factory query_pools, pool query_config
Swap fee	0.50% (11 pools), 1.00% (2 pools)	Pool total_fee_bps
Largest pool by XLM held	XLM/PHO, about 23,500 XLM	Pool query_pool_info
Trading volume	Not tracked	DefiLlama Stellar DEX overview lists no Phoenix entry
For scale: Stellar DeFi TVL	$250.0M	DefiLlama chains, 9 Oct 2026
For scale: Aquarius TVL / 30-day volume	$38.0M / $96.9M	DefiLlama, 9 Oct 2026

One caveat on the headline number: DefiLlama's token breakdown for Phoenix currently shows a single stablecoin line, while the pools on-chain hold a mix of XLM, USDC, EURC, PHO and smaller assets. The order of magnitude matches what the pools hold, but treat the exact figure as approximate. For the network-wide picture, see Stellar DeFi TVL in 2026.

How to choose whether to use it

• You want to swap: use an aggregator rather than Phoenix directly. Soroswap's aggregator has a Phoenix adapter and will only route there when the price is better, which with these reserves will be rare for any meaningful size.
• You want to earn from liquidity: with a 0.50% fee that goes to a fee address and almost no volume, Phoenix offers little. Pools that pay emissions are compared in the best DEX on Stellar.
• You still have an old position: withdraw liquidity and claim any staking rewards. The v2.0.0 release added automatic unbonding when withdrawing.
• You are studying Soroban AMM design: the source is open (GPL-3.0) and the audit is public, which makes Phoenix a useful case study.

Phoenix — what it is

Phoenix calls itself a "DeFi Hub on Soroban". In practice it is a decentralised exchange: a factory that deploys liquidity pools, the pools themselves, a staking contract per pool for liquidity-provider tokens, and a multihop contract that routes a swap through several pools. Token and vesting contracts sit alongside them; the pools include a PHO token.

The DEX went live in May 2024; the v1.0.0 release in the project's GitHub is dated 8 May 2024. Decrypt's August 2024 profile named Jakub Bogucki, Milan Steiner and Griffin Williams as the co-founders and described plans for an NFT marketplace and further protocols. As of October 2026 the DEX is still the only product. The design document describes four core contracts, Pool, StablePool, StakingContract and Factory, with the factory owner creating each new pool.

That last point matters. Unlike Soroswap, where anyone can create a pair, Phoenix's factory restricts create_pool to its owner, so the pool list is curated by the team. On 9 October 2026 the factory returned 13 pools: XLM paired with USDC (two pools), PHO, EURC, USDX, EURX and GBPX; USDC paired with PHO (two pools), VEUR, VCHF, EURX and GBPX.

The pools — constant-product only, in practice

Phoenix's contracts support two pool types: a constant-product pool (x × y = k, as in Uniswap V2) and a stable pool using a Curve-style invariant for assets that should trade near each other. Every one of the 13 pools in the mainnet factory reported pool_type 0, the constant-product type, on 9 October 2026.

So even the pairs that look like stable pairs, such as USDC/VEUR and USDC/VCHF, are priced on a constant-product curve, which produces more slippage near the peg than a stable invariant would. The reserves are small. The main XLM/USDC pool held about 9,800 XLM and 1,900 USDC; the XLM/EURC pool about 13,500 XLM and 2,350 EURC; the two euro and franc pools about 5,000 USDC each. One of the two PHO/USDC pools held no tokens at all. With balances this size, a trade of a few hundred dollars moves the price noticeably.

Each pool also stores a maximum allowed spread and slippage. Most are set to 10,000 basis points, which means the contract itself imposes no limit, leaving slippage protection to the parameters a trader passes with the swap. Set them yourself if you trade directly. For the mechanics of constant-product pricing, see the Stellar DEX explained.

Fees — 0.50%, and who receives it

Each Phoenix pool has its own fee, stored as total_fee_bps. On 9 October 2026, 11 pools charged 50 basis points (0.50%) and USDC/VEUR and USDC/VCHF charged 100 (1.00%). In the published pool contract, the fee is not added to the reserves: the swap function transfers it to the pool's fee_recipient address.

We checked this at the v1.0.0 and v2.0.0 tags and on the main branch: after paying the trader, do_swap sends the commission to config.fee_recipient. Two addresses act as fee recipients across the 13 pools. This differs from Uniswap-style AMMs such as Soroswap, where the fee stays in the pool and raises the value of every LP share. It is a design choice, not a hidden charge, but it means Phoenix LPs did not earn from trading fees directly.

A more recent contract in the repository, a "blended" pool that is not in any release, takes the other approach: a July 2026 commit is titled "route fees back to the pool". Nothing indicates it is deployed. For comparison, Soroswap charges a fixed 0.30% that goes to LPs, and Aquarius pools charge between 0.01% and 1% depending on the pool. See Aquarius vs Soroswap for that comparison.

LP staking and the reward boost

Instead of fee income, Phoenix pays liquidity providers through a staking contract attached to each pool. LPs stake their pool-share tokens and earn rewards distributed by the contract. The design document says rewards rise by 0.5% for each day liquidity stays staked, up to 30% after 60 days.

The v2.0.0 release in June 2025 made staking automatic when providing liquidity, added automatic unbonding on withdrawal, and restored the staking implementation from v1.0.0 after an intermediate rewrite. The rewards themselves depend on someone funding the staking contracts. Phoenix does not have an emissions system like Aquarius, where 7M AQUA a day is split by vote; how Aquarius decides which pools earn is covered in the Aquarius Asset Registry and reward zone.

That dependence is the weak point of the model. When rewards are generous, a time-weighted boost encourages LPs to stay. When rewards dry up and fees go elsewhere, LPs have little reason to keep capital in the pools, which is consistent with the TVL history below.

TVL history: peak versus now

DefiLlama's Phoenix series starts at $292K on 20 July 2024, passes $1M in December 2024, and peaks at $6.36M on 18 July 2025. It falls through 2026: about $4.6M in early January, $2.5M in early February, $1.5M through the spring, $555K on 5 July and $59K by 4 August.

Date	Phoenix TVL (DefiLlama)
20 Jul 2024	$292K
18 Dec 2024	$1.09M
8 Jun 2025	$4.65M
18 Jul 2025 (peak)	$6.36M
6 Jan 2026	$4.60M
5 Feb 2026	$2.49M
5 Jun 2026	$1.62M
5 Jul 2026	$555K
4 Aug 2026	$59K
9 Oct 2026	$47.7K

We found no announcement explaining the July 2026 drop, so we do not attribute it to any event. What the on-chain balances show is that little is left: all 13 pools together hold under 50,000 XLM. Aquarius, by comparison, held about $38M on 9 October, with AQUA emissions paying its LPs to stay.

Status in October 2026

Phoenix is quiet rather than closed. The website still invites users to launch the app and shows no shutdown or migration notice. The contracts respond to queries, the GitHub repository is not archived, and it received commits as recently as July 2026, including a staking bug fix on 30 June.

That 30 June commit is titled "Stake rewards are withdrawn before the unstaking" and fixes "another bunch of expect panic errors", which suggests maintenance is still happening. On the routing side, Soroswap's on-chain aggregator lists Phoenix as one of three registered adapters, alongside Soroswap and Aquarius, so Phoenix pools are still reachable from wallets that use Soroswap's API. See what is Soroswap for how that routing works.

What we could not verify: any current team statement on the project's plans, any live PHO incentive programme, or volume figures, since DefiLlama does not track Phoenix volume. We have left those out.

Audits

Veridise audited Phoenix over four person-weeks in January 2024, issuing an official report on 31 January and a second version on 3 May 2024. It found 35 issues: nine high or critical, four medium, six low, 11 warnings and five informational. Veridise recommended a follow-up audit once fixes were reviewed.

The critical and high findings included a negative referral fee that could drain a pool, incorrect access control on pool configuration updates, a factory that could be made to deploy malicious pools, and staking logic that any user could block. The referral feature is now disabled in the swap code, with the referral fee hard-set to zero. DefiLlama lists the Veridise report as Phoenix's audit link.

The report covers code from early 2024. The v2.0.0 release of June 2025 changed every contract, moving to a newer Soroban SDK, adding constructors and changing staking, and we found no public audit of that version. For what an audit does and does not tell you, see smart contract audits.

Risks

• Thin liquidity. Pools holding a few thousand dollars give poor prices and can be moved cheaply, which matters for anyone pricing assets from them.
• No fee income for LPs. The published pool contract routes fees to a fee address, so LP returns depend entirely on funded staking rewards.
• Unaudited current code. The only public audit predates v2.0.0, and the auditor itself asked for a follow-up review.
• Admin control. Pool creation is restricted to the factory owner, and configuration such as fees and fee recipients can be updated by the pool admin.
• Project uncertainty. With TVL near zero and little public communication, the chance of the front end or staking rewards being discontinued is real. Keep exits simple.

How Phoenix fits into Stellar DeFi

Phoenix was part of the first wave of Soroban AMMs, alongside Soroswap, and both have lost most of their liquidity to Aquarius. The reason is incentives. Aquarius pays AQUA emissions to pools chosen by ICE votes, and liquidity follows rewards. Phoenix relied on rewards it funded itself through staking contracts and sent swap fees to a fee address, so once rewards fell, LPs had nothing holding them. Its remaining role is as one more source for aggregators.

The takeaway

Phoenix is a working, open-source Soroban AMM with a thin layer of liquidity left. Swap through an aggregator if it happens to offer the best price, but do not provide liquidity expecting fee income, because the contract does not pay it to LPs. If you still hold a position from 2025, the sensible move is to withdraw it.

Sources: DefiLlama protocol, chains and Stellar DEX overview endpoints, 9 October 2026; read-only simulations of the Phoenix factory (query_pools) and 13 pools (query_config, query_pool_info), 9 October 2026; github.com/Phoenix-Protocol-Group/phoenix-contracts (README, architecture document, CHANGELOG, pool source at v1.0.0, v2.0.0 and main, mainnet scripts, commit history); Veridise audit report, version of 3 May 2024; Decrypt, 15 August 2024; phoenix-hub.io.