# Chapter Nine: Pip and Pop and the Two Barrels

By [Lista DAO](https://blog.lista.org), 2026-11-12

---

At the top of the square stood two barrels, and on top of each barrel sat a frog.

Pip sat on the barrel with the apples while Pop sat on the one with the nuts. They had sat there for eleven years and they disagreed about nearly everything, including the weather, even though they were at the same exact location.

Nailed to the post between the barrels was a board, and the board said:

THE APPLES AND THE NUTS MUST ALWAYS MULTIPLY TO THE SAME NUMBER.

On Monday there were twelve apples in one barrel and twelve nuts in the other.

"Twelve twelves," said Pip. "A hundred and forty-four."

"A hundred and forty-four," said Pop, who only agreed with him about this and nothing else in the world.

Bao wanted four apples. She lifted four out, which left eight.

"Eight," said Pip.

"Then we need eighteen nuts in here," said Pop, "because eight eighteens is a hundred and forty-four, and there are twelve nuts in the barrel already."

So Bao counted six nuts into the nut barrel. The frogs looked at eight and eighteen, and nodded, and that was the price.

Four apples for six nuts. Nobody had said so. Nobody had haggled. The two of them had simply worked out the only number that would keep the board true.

"Who decided six?" said Bao.

"Nobody decided six," said Pip.

"The barrels decided six," said Pop.

"Barrels cannot decide anything, they are barrels, they are made of wood—"

Bao left them to it.

She came back on Thursday wanting two apples, and the market had been busy all week. There were six apples in one barrel now and twenty-four nuts in the other.

"Six twenty-fours," said Pip. "A hundred and forty-four."

Bao lifted out two apples, which left four, and four thirty-sixes is a hundred and forty-four, so she counted twelve nuts in.

Twelve nuts for two apples. On Monday, six nuts had bought her four.

"You have put the price up," she said.

"We have not moved," said Pop.

And they had not. They had sat on their barrels all week doing the same sum they always did. Everybody else in the market had been taking apples out and pushing nuts in since Monday, and the barrels were simply where the market had left them.

Bao looks at the two numbers before she walks over now.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/9dafd21de913ed29a76553b4b0b809faa8dfce0e2f23c371180d103df71f6113.jpg)

* * *

**Margin Note:** Nobody in the pool decides the price. The pool does.

**The Honest Bit:** The barrels are a liquidity pool, and the board is very nearly the real rule. A real pool holds two kinds of coin and multiplies them to the same number after every single swap, which is why the price falls out of how much is left instead of out of anybody's decision. Pip and Pop are liquidity providers. They do not set prices and they could not if they wanted to. They keep the barrels stocked and take a small cut of every swap for doing it, and what that actually costs them is Chapter Ten.

**The Question of the Day:** On Monday four apples cost six nuts. On Thursday two apples cost twelve. Pip and Pop never moved and the board never changed. Say who put the price up.

**Try It:** Open any pool and find the two amounts it is holding. Multiply them together. Come back tomorrow and do it again. Notice how far the two numbers have moved and how little the answer has.

**Leave Your Feedback Here:** [https://forms.gle/HfRNH7uixagrm1dVA](https://forms.gle/HfRNH7uixagrm1dVA)

---

*Originally published on [Lista DAO](https://blog.lista.org/chapter-nine-pip-and-pop-and-the-two-barrels)*