Work with the usual commutative unital ring convention. Write , where is a unit, and seek . Since has zero constant term, every coefficient of the composition of these formal power series involves only finitely many terms.
The linear coefficient forces . Suppose have been chosen. The coefficient of in is
Indeed the term involving can only come from : in with , using a degree- term forces total degree at least . Choose . This recursive construction of a compositional inverse uniquely gives .
To check the other composition rather than assume it, construct satisfying . At degree , its new coefficient is plus terms already determined; is a unit, so the same recursion works. Composition is associative, as can be checked coefficientwise, or after truncation modulo for every . Therefore
Consequently the compositional inverse of a formal power series is unique and satisfies