Swaps are the primary function of any DEX. But, for them to work, the decentralized protocol needs both tokens of the pair, that by taking one to give the user the other. For this purpose, #DeFi invented liquidity pools - smart contracts that store tokens that can be obtained during swap. But the funds in the pools need to be taken from somewhere. For this purpose, everyone who supplies their coins to the liquidity pool gets a share of the swap in both coins. People who add their coins to the liquidity pool are called liquidity providers.

Due to the rewards for supplying liquidity, which depend on the volume of swaps, liquidity pools can have quite high APRs. For example, on STON.fi, the most popular DEX of the $TON blockchain:

- $WOOF/TON, APR: 287%.

- $MAJOR/TON, APR: 76.71%

- $PX/USDT, APR: 232%

Also available on STON.fi is staking $STON with awards in $GEMSTON and ARKENSTON, which gives DAO voting power.

To visualize information about TVL (Total value locked) specific to DEX, I prepared an infographic on STON.fi: