Liquid is the only way to build a Bitcoin primitive AMM protocol right now. At least it seems the only way to build one that has script enforced invariants with the least amount of trust, without using a shit chain. But it's still not fast enough for instant swaps and such... This is a big problem for real decentralized finance. I'm not a shitcoiner but I do believe in investment and savings beyond Bitcoin. I don't do much of that right now because 1. The tools do not exist natively to Bitcoin. They're all shitcoins. Hence why I'm researching And 2. While Bitcoin is monitizing, is CAGR will likely beat most of everything. But there absolutely should be a decentralized commodities and securities markets that run on AMMs and are permissionless. You shouldn't have to create a brokerage account and live in the USA to invest in the market where you see fit. Bitcoin must exist in a world where there are other real commodities. Gold, steel, oil, silver, they all have a lot of subjective value. They're useful. I wouldn't mind owning a few ounces more of gold but I'm tired of paying ultra premiums and big quantities. I'm okay with tokenized gold. I'll take the tradeoff. Especially if it's easy to off ramp to BTC through an AMM... But I don't want to hold it with a bank or on a shitcoin chain, I won't take that tradeoff. I want it on a native chain that interacts with Bitcoin. I don't want to trust the intermediary of the shit chain on top of centralized token I already have to trust. So for now I have enough gold to bribe someone at the border and that's about it. 

If anyone knows any other developments in this area, please share.  

Ps. You could do some interesting multi level architecture with spark or ecash to make a tiered trading system of instant free trades with trust or slower trades with less trust. But that's building beyond a protocol. 

Runes/ordinals/BTC20 is a joke

Spark has more trust tradeoff
Same with ecash

While tap assets are initially intriguing they're heavily tied to LND and not BOLTS. Theres nothing interesting on lightnings protocol level for tokens. 
nostr:nprofile1qqs9pk20ctv9srrg9vr354p03v0rrgsqkpggh2u45va77zz4mu5p6ccpzemhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejz7qgkwaehxw309a5xjum59ehx7um5wghxcctwvshszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qrxnfk I'm brainstorming what real users want. 

nostr:nprofile1qqs0zuj4s6jq9sr2ajqc69rc53d25rwpd3afcjrfm97r2qek69hcuscpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qy2hwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytn00p68ytnyv4mz7qg6waehxw309aekwmpwwf6hxarrdae8qtnrdakjuct49uz22d2l H/T for focusing CLN on a great lightning implementation and not focusing on shitcoins on top of CLN