whitepaperMarkets2021
Uniswap v3 Core
Uniswap. Hayden Adams, Noah Zinsmeister, Moody Salem, River Keefer, Dan Robinson.
The 2021 paper that replaces the uniform reserve curve with concentrated liquidity. A provider chooses a price range. Inside the range their capital acts like a constant-product pool. Outside it, their position is entirely in one asset.
The problem the paper names
In v2, most of the capital sits far from the current price and rarely trades. v3 asks whether a provider can post liquidity only where they are willing to quote, and whether the pool can still present one curve to traders.
What the design proposes
- Ticks discretise price. A position is an interval of ticks.
- Fees are no longer automatically mixed into the reserves. They accrue to the position.
- The same pair can have several fee tiers, which are separate pools in the core design.
How the mechanism is specified
- Crossing a tick updates which positions are in range. That is why the implementation is more intricate than v2.
- Concentrated liquidity increases capital efficiency and increases the speed at which a position goes one-sided.
- The paper specifies the core accounting. Periphery contracts, routers and later hooks are not the core.
What this page does not treat as proven
- Capital efficiency is not the same as profit for a liquidity provider.
- A narrow range that is not managed becomes a one-asset position. The paper describes this; it does not staff the manager.
- We do not quote fee revenue or volume.
Why a venture studio still reads it
v3 is the specification to read before a venture invents 'ranged liquidity' under a new name. The accounting of ticks and fees is the part that is easy to get wrong and expensive to discover in production.
This is Blockchain Lab's reading of a public design paper. It is not the paper, not a copy of it, and not an offer of tokens, equity, custody or a partnership. Later network behaviour can diverge from the text. Nothing here is investment, legal or technical advice.