AMPO: Mechanisms with minimal trust

Duration: NaN:NaN:NaN

Speaker: Keating

Type: Lightning Talk

Expertise: Some familiarity with the topic

Event: Devcon

Date: Nov 2026

On-chain mechanisms that rely on external dependencies, such as oracle operators, tend to focus on decentralizing them. AmPO demonstrates another path: to design them away. AmPO removes the need for the mechanism to know the market price through an external dependency by making the option decay in a predictable manner over time and requiring a fixed exchange of assets at exercise time. During my talk, I will explain this mechanism and Uniswap’s Token Jar mechanism, which also removes the need to know the market prices of assets. As DeFi continues to be adopted and relied on, building mechanisms with fewer trusted external dependencies reduces the attack surface and the ability to censor protocols. I will close by going through some other potential candidates where external dependencies could similarly be designed away.