D. Together

Costs and risks

What the two activation trees' own way of trading has cost them, and what it leaves them exposed to.

Published

October 2, 2026

Ledger index

107030551

Contents

• A price made by few transactions
• Less and less left to trade against
• XRP put into the pool, and what is left of it
• Transactions that worked against each other
• The largest price falls the activation trees caused
• Since the peak
• Buying from outside every tier
• Selling below what it paid, and buying back higher
• What the rise cost the pool's other providers

Accounts marked “flow-connected to” an activation tree are those the CULT and OBEY token flow reaches from it at its widest flow threshold, 10 CULT paid in total one way; the token-flow article sets out how it is followed, and the groups at every other threshold. Accounts flow-connected to both activation trees: 17 at 10 CULT, 0 at 30 CULT, 0 at 50 CULT. Being flow-connected does not make an account the activation tree's.

This article gathers what the record shows the two activation trees' own way of trading has cost them, and what it leaves them exposed to. It is a selection: only the findings that count against them are here. The articles before it give the whole record, including the findings that go the other way — the money flow, the combined effect on the price, connection profiles and the whole picture. Nothing here says why anyone did anything: the ledger records transactions, not intentions.

A price made by few transactions

From the CULT/XRP pool's opening to the last ledger, the price multiplied by ×1,451.484. Every transaction that moved it is counted, and each tier's share is the sum of its own transactions' moves. The two columns on the right show how much of the trading those same accounts did. All three shares are of the whole market, the 32 automated traders included: they signed 8.3% of the transactions and 1.5% of the swap volume.

Two things to read carefully. A share of the price move can be large while the share of swap volume is small, because taking CULT out of the pool alone moves the price and is not swap volume at all. And a transaction counts for the account that signed it: when one of these accounts had a standing offer filled inside somebody else's transaction, the price move counts for that somebody — which happened 144 times for 2,353.34 XRP, 0.2% of the volume.

Table 1. Each tier's part in the CULT/XRP pool's whole price move, beside its part in the trading. The tiers overlap and do not form one chain: the flow rows and the connection-profile rows are two separate ladders built out from “both activation trees”. No column is to be added down the rows.

every row: download costs-price-against-volume.csv.

Less and less left to trade against

Table 2. At the end of each quarter: the pool's own price, what it still held, and what all CULT was marked at beside the XRP actually in the pool. The last two columns are the activation trees' withdrawals of CULT alone in that quarter.

every row: download costs-pool-by-quarter.csv.

The table reads the pool at each quarter's end. At its fullest, on 2024-11-05 03:47:30 UTC, it held 6,440.27 CULT; at the last ledger it holds 428.09. Everything the market is marked at rests on that much CULT being tradeable against 63,783.00 XRP: a mark of 1,038,312.23 XRP, 16.3 times the XRP in the pool, against 4.6 times at the end of the first quarter.

XRP put into the pool, and what is left of it

Putting XRP into a pool and taking CULT out alone leaves the XRP in the pool. Anyone who sells into the pool takes XRP out of it, and whatever stays belongs, share for share, to whoever holds the pool's LP tokens at the time. At the last ledger the pool holds 63,783.00 XRP, and that is the limit on what selling into it can pay at those balances, however high the marked price goes: taking CULT out alone adds no XRP to it. Two things could lift the limit rather than the mark: buyers paying new XRP into the pool, and other venues — though the 11 other pools holding CULT pair it with other tokens and hold 0 XRP between them, and the order book holds no reserve at all, only whatever offers stand at the time. A pool of this kind also never pays out its whole balance, however much is sold into it.

Table 3. Each tier: the XRP its transactions left in the CULT/XRP pool, the CULT they took out of it, and where it stands if everything it holds were sold into the pools at once.

every row: download costs-xrp-left-in-the-pool.csv.

Three notes on the columns. Each row's “would fetch” sells that tier's whole holding into the pools at once, so the rows cannot be added to each other — the two activation trees selling together is its own row, not the sum of theirs — and it is priced against the pools only, so it is a limit rather than what a careful seller might realise across venues. “XRP paid in” and “XRP taken out” count only XRP that moved: CULT and OBEY that arrived by payment or as a reward cost no XRP here. And of the 43 accounts in the two activation trees, 27 ever held or traded either token; the other 16 never did, so they move none of these figures.

Pheanor's activation tree has paid 114,477.16 XRP into this market and taken 26,718.61 out: 87,758.54 XRP more in than out. Its transactions left 65,022.27 XRP in the CULT/XRP pool, and its LP tokens can take 5,209.92 XRP of that back out. Everything it holds would fetch 56,419.82 XRP sold into the pools at once, 31,338.72 XRP short of what it has paid in.

Hodler's activation tree has paid 20,603.69 XRP into this market and taken 9,830.88 out: 10,772.81 XRP more in than out. Its transactions left 9,301.27 XRP in the CULT/XRP pool, and its LP tokens can take 0 XRP of that back out. Everything it holds would fetch 35,903.69 XRP sold into the pools at once, 25,130.89 XRP more than it has paid in.

Transactions that worked against each other

Taking CULT alone out of the pool raises its price; putting CULT alone back in lowers it, and each move pays the pool's fee. Buying from the pool costs more once a withdrawal has raised the price. This table counts both, for each activation tree and for the two together.

Table 4. Each activation tree's withdrawals of CULT alone and deposits of CULT alone, how many of those deposits came within a day of one of its own withdrawals, and what the deposits and the buying after its own withdrawals cost.

every row: download costs-against-itself.csv.

The last column is an approximation: it values each buy at the price the withdrawal added, which is close for buys this size but is not the pool's exact curve. Everything else in the table is counted, not estimated.

The largest price falls the activation trees caused

Selling into a pool moves its price down as the sale goes through, so a large sale receives less than the price showed before it. These are the activation trees' own sales that took the pool's price down furthest. “At the price just before” values the CULT sold at the price the pool showed beforehand; the difference is what the sale gave up to the pool's fee and its own price move. Deposits of CULT, which also lower the price, are counted in the table above.

Table 5. The 10 sales by the activation trees that took the CULT/XRP pool's price down furthest, largest fall first.

every row: download costs-largest-falls.csv.

Since the peak

The pool's price peaked at 290.9880 XRP on 2026-06-17 14:50:31 UTC and is 148.9931 at the last ledger, ×0.512 since. Each tier's share of that fall is the sum of its own transactions' moves; a share above 100% means the rest of the market moved the price the other way over the same stretch.

Table 6. Each tier since the peak: its share of the fall, and the XRP and CULT its transactions moved.

every row: download costs-since-the-peak.csv.

Table 7. The accounts counted in any tier that took the price down most since the peak, each with the narrowest tier it belongs to.

every row: download costs-since-the-peak-accounts.csv.

Table 8. Accounts in no tier, automated traders left out, that bought CULT in the quarter the price peaked, and where each group stands over its whole history.

every row: download costs-peak-quarter-buyers.csv.

Buying from outside every tier

Table 9. Month by month: the pool's whole swap volume, and the buying by accounts in no tier with the automated traders left out — how many bought, how many for the first time, and how big the buying was, per buyer and per transaction.

every row: download costs-demand-by-month.csv.

In 2024-11, 184 accounts outside every tier bought CULT, 184 of them for the first time, and the middle one spent 156.94 XRP over the month. In 2026-09 it was 47 accounts, 13 for the first time, and the middle one spent 10.39 XRP. The pool's swap volume went from 303,334.40 XRP that month to 19,114.65.

The per-transaction columns fall much further — a middle single buy of 5.0937 CULT in 2024-11 against 0.001913 CULT in 2026-09 — but part of that is buyers splitting a purchase into more transactions: 3.8 buys each in 2024-11 against 5.3 in 2026-09. Very small buys are also the work of a few accounts: of the 12 buys under 0.01 XRP in 2026-09, 50% came from one account. Read the per-buyer columns for how much the buying shrank, and the per-transaction columns for how it was split up.

Selling below what it paid, and buying back higher

Matching each activation tree account's own pool sales to its own earlier pool buys, oldest first, 1,039 matches sold below what that CULT had cost, 293.82 XRP in all. This counts trades against the pool; the same accounts also took 641 trades on the order book, which are left out here and would change the total either way.

Table 10. The 10 largest of those, each a sale matched to the buy it sold, worst first.

every row: download costs-sold-below-cost.csv.

Table 11. Each activation tree's pool selling, and its pool buying after its first sale: what it sold CULT for, and what it paid for CULT afterwards.

every row: download costs-sold-then-bought.csv.

What the rise cost the pool's other providers

An AMM pool sells whichever asset is rising as it rises, so an LP token is worth less than simply holding the two assets would have been. With the pool's price ×1,451.484 since it opened, LP tokens held from the opening to the last ledger are worth 5.2% of what holding the same two assets would be, before any trading fees the position earned along the way, which work the other way. This table counts it for the providers that only ever put both assets in and took both out — the ones the mechanism falls on hardest — valuing everything at the pool's price at the last ledger — a deliberate choice, so that what went in years ago and what came out last week are compared in the same money. Providers that moved one asset alone are in the money flow instead.

Table 12. Everything each group of providers put into the pool and took out of it, and what its LP tokens can take out now, all valued at the pool's price at the last ledger. The last column is what the position came to against simply holding what was put in.

every row: download costs-providers.csv.

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