Navigating Concentrated Liquidity Pools: Everything You Need to Know (2024)

Introduction

Concentrated liquidity is a game-changing concept in the DeFi, allowing liquidity providers to optimize their capital by focusing it within specific price ranges. This innovative approach, primarily utilized by Automated Market Makers (AMMs) like Uniswap v3, enhances the efficiency of liquidity provision, ensuring that more of the capital is actively used in trading.

In traditional AMMs, liquidity is spread evenly across the entire price spectrum, often resulting in inefficient capital usage. Concentrated liquidity solves this by enabling liquidity providers to allocate their funds within narrower, more targeted price ranges.

What Problems Does Concentrated Liquidity Solve?

Concentrated liquidity addresses several key problems associated with traditional Automated Market Makers (AMMs), enhancing their efficiency and effectiveness.

Liquidity Usage Efficiency:

Concentrated liquidity allows liquidity providers (LPs) to focus their capital within specific price ranges where trading is most likely to occur, making the provided liquidity more efficient and utilized.

Higher Fees:

By concentrating liquidity within narrower price bands, LPs can earn higher fees from the same amount of capital since it is more likely to be used in trades within these active ranges.

Enhanced Price Depth:

Concentrated liquidity improves price depth within the specified ranges, reducing slippage and providing a better trading experience for users.

Impermanent Loss Management:

While it doesn’t eliminate impermanent loss, concentrated liquidity allows LPs to more actively manage their positions and potentially mitigate some risk by choosing specific price ranges based on their market outlook.

Adaptability to Market Conditions:

Concentrated liquidity offers greater flexibility, allowing LPs to adjust their positions as market conditions change, thereby staying relevant and competitive.

How Does It Work?

Let’s look at an example to understand how concentrated liquidity works:

1. Bob wants to provide liquidity for the ETH/USDC trading pair on Uniswap v3. The current price of ETH is $2,000 USDC.
2. Bob believes ETH will trade between $1,900 and $2,100. He decides to concentrate his liquidity within this range.
3. Bob deposits 0.5 ETH and 1,000 USDC to cover her chosen price range. he receives an NFT representing his liquidity position.
4. As trades occur within the $1,900 to $2,100 range, Bob earns fees because his liquidity is being used.
5. Price Movement:

• If ETH’s price drops below $1,900, her liquidity becomes inactive, and he ends up holding mostly ETH.
• If ETH’s price rises above $2,100, his liquidity also becomes inactive, and he holds mostly USDC.

Alice can withdraw and adjust her liquidity range if she believes the price will move to a new range. When Alice decides to exit, she removes her liquidity, burns the NFT, and receives her remaining ETH, USDC, and the fees earned.

Cons of Concentrated Liquidity

While concentrated liquidity offers many benefits, it also comes with several challenges and drawbacks that liquidity providers need to consider:

Increased Complexity:

LPs need to actively manage their positions, regularly monitoring the market and adjusting their price ranges to remain within active trading zones.

Higher Risk of Impermanent Loss:

Concentrating liquidity in narrow price ranges can expose LPs to higher impermanent loss if the price moves significantly outside their chosen range.

Inactive Liquidity:

If the price of the asset pair moves outside the specified range, the liquidity becomes inactive, meaning it doesn’t participate in trades and doesn’t earn fees.

Potential for Lower Overall Liquidity:

As LPs concentrate their liquidity in specific ranges, the overall liquidity spread across all ranges can be lower, potentially leading to higher slippage for trades outside these focused zones. This can reduce the depth of the order book outside popular ranges, impacting large traders who face higher slippage.

Frequent Adjustments and Higher Gas Fees:

Active management requires frequent updates to positions, leading to higher gas fees, especially on blockchains with high transaction costs like Ethereum.

USD+ Concentrated Liquidity Pools

Overnight Finance has launched several USD+ concentrated liquidity pools this month. The first platform for these new pools is our oldest partner, Aerodrome Finance. Currently, there are six concentrated liquidity pools with more to come!

1. Go to https://aerodrome.finance/
2. On the Liquidity page select ‘Concentrated’ and type ‘USD+’ in the Search field

3. Pick a pool you are interested in. Here we will choose WETH/USD+

4. Click ‘Deposit’

5. Then click ‘New Deposit’

5. Here you need to set the desirable price range. The price range is changed by 1 tick which for the WETH/USD+ pool equals 1% of the current price.

6. After you set up your price range, fill in the deposit amount and click ‘Deposit’

And that’s it!

Concentrated liquidity pools represent a significant advancement in DeFi, allowing for more efficient and effective use of capital. While they come with complexities and risks, the potential for higher returns and improved trading experiences make them an attractive option for savvy liquidity providers. With platforms like Aerodrome Finance offering USD+ concentrated liquidity pools, now is a great time to explore this innovative approach to liquidity provision. Happy investing!