Liquidity Pools
Liquidity pools help facilitate both crucial functions of ZetaChain and improved user experience (lower fees, more fluid exchanges, more versatile financial applications) for the entire crypto ecosystem. the pools in ZetaChain's environment fall into three main buckets: core ZETA pools, additional zEVM pools, and external ZETA pools.
Core ZETA Pools
A [ZETA] / [Gas ZRC-20] Uniswap Pool (on zEVM) is the core pool needed by ZetaChain to write outbound transactions to that chain. Whenever a chain's support is added, a corresponding pool between ZETA and that chain's native gas asset is also created.
Here, you can visualize how a UniswapV2 contract controls ZETA / gas pools. Liquidity is provided to TSS addresses on connected chains, and then Uniswap (or any exchange contract) can use those assets (ZRC-20) against ZETA or any other asset.
For example, you can see how cross-chain messaging functions using these core pools that pair native gas (ZRC-20) with ZETA to pay for outbound transactions:
Additional zEVM Pools
Any liquidity pool may be created on zEVM. One can deploy normal ERC-20 tokens onto ZetaChain, incorporate external chain tokens through ZRC-20, and make any permutation of liquidity pool required for their applications, just as one would on a single-chain EVM. For example, one could create useful [ZETA] / [Stablecoin] or [Gas] / [Stablecoin] pools that let users trade more fluidly against different assets.
As another example, you can see how one could swap using a DEX that uses ZRC-20 tokens in a pool directly against each other. This depicts a swap between native MATIC and ETH. Of course, if needed, tokens could use ZETA as an intermediary (MATIC -> ZETA -> ETH) if a certain pool does not exist.
External ZETA Pools
ZETA is an omnichain token that exists both on ZetaChain as well as on any connected chain, as it is for both smart contract gas fees and cross-chain messaging. Certain pools such as [ZETA] / [Gas] on each chain will be helpful for applications to facilitate cross-chain value transfer through messaging. Developers also need pools on external chains to acquire ZETA, in order to use it for messaging.