I hope you didn't mind my driving up the price of STEM in these last two weeks.

No problem. "Decentralized exchange" is just a fancy way to say "crypto bidding." I bought a bunch of STEM a few months ago for @holovision.stem so I know how it is. Whatever STEM @learn2code is able to buy will be deposited as LP reward for the pool(s). There's no goal of how much STEM @learn2code needs to get.

I assume that I will need equal parts STEM and BYTE when the pool goes live.

Yes, 1:1 ratio relative to each token's SWAP.HIVE value on the exchange for how much of each token to pair. So 1 SWAP.HIVE worth of STEM needs 1 SWAP.HIVE worth of BYTE to add 1 SWAP.HIVE of STEM to the pool.

With sufficient liquidity being provided and a few enterprising Hive users (or bots) doing arbitrage the price of STEM should become somewhat more stable. Or at least the pool(s) will be an alternative to playing footsy with a bid bot.😁

I'll answer the second part with my own personal account and not the @learn2code account.