Concepts
Pool dispersion
How far the widest pool price sits from the tightest, measured at the same instant.
Dispersion is the distance, in basis points, between the best and worst normalized price for an asset across every tracked pool, at a single block. A tight dispersion means the market largely agrees on what an asset is worth right now. A wide one means pools have split — often before a reference price has caught up to whichever pool moved first.
A worked example
AMD's Markets row currently shows a dispersion of 84bp — the widest of any tracked asset, which is also why it's called out directly in Markets' "Widest State" metric card. That figure comes from the pool divergence matrix: AMD's WETH 0.30% pool deviates +84bp from reference while its USDG 0.30% pool deviates +47bp, and the gap between those two readings (not either one against the reference alone) is what dispersion measures.
By contrast, TSM's tracked pools stay within a 22bp band of each other. Same kind of asset, same number of possible failure points, very different current shape — which is exactly the comparison dispersion exists to make visible.
Reading it over time
A single dispersion reading is a snapshot; it doesn't say whether the gap is opening or closing. Replay's dispersion metric exists for exactly that — the same asset's dispersion tracked block over block, so a spike and its resolution are both visible rather than just whichever moment you happened to check.
What dispersion doesn't tell you
It doesn't say which pool is "wrong," because there's no ground truth being compared against beyond the reference itself, and the reference is only ever one more read, not an arbiter. It also isn't a measure of opportunity — a wide dispersion is a description of disagreement, not an invitation.