Single-Sided Liquidity: The Pump-Style Launch

What is single-sided liquidity?

Single-sided liquidity means you deposit only one asset into a liquidity pool instead of the usual pair. Normally, to provide liquidity to a TOKEN/WETH pool, you hand over both TOKEN and WETH in a balanced ratio. With single-sided liquidity you supply just one of them. For a launch, that means only the token, and no ETH at all.

This is not a special product or a separate contract. It is a natural consequence of how Uniswap v3 concentrated liquidity works. On Uniswap v3 you provide liquidity across a specific price range, not across the whole curve. When the range you choose sits entirely above the current price, the position holds 100% of one token and 0% of the other. That is single-sided liquidity.

For a token launch this is the whole game. You can create a real market for a brand-new token without owning any ETH to pair against it. The token itself is the entire starting inventory, and the pool sells it into buyers who bring the ETH.

Single-sided liquidity provision is the engine behind pump-style launches, and it is exactly how Bubblepad seeds every pool it creates in a single transaction.

Why Uniswap v3 makes one-sided liquidity possible

On Uniswap v2 and older constant-product AMMs, every position spanned the entire price range from zero to infinity. To add liquidity you always needed both tokens in the current pool ratio. There was no way to be one-sided, because your capital was spread across every possible price.

Uniswap v3 changed this with concentrated liquidity. Instead of one infinite range, you pick a lower price bound and an upper price bound and your capital only works inside that band. This is what makes one-sided liquidity on Uniswap v3 natural.

Think about where your position sits relative to the live price. If the current price is inside your range, you hold a mix of both tokens. If the price is below your entire range, your position is 100% of the token you are selling. If the price is above your range, it is 100% of the token you are buying.

So if you set a range that starts at the current price and extends upward, and the pool has no trades yet, your position is entirely token and entirely single-sided. You have posted an inventory of token for sale at prices above where trading begins, and the pool will hand out that token to anyone who sends ETH.

How a token-only position behaves as a launch mechanism

Picture a fresh pool with a single-sided position: 100% of the token supply, zero ETH, with a price range that opens at a low starting valuation and climbs from there. Nobody has traded yet, so the price is sitting at the bottom of the range.

The first buyer sends ETH. The pool gives them token and, because it is a v3 curve, the price ticks up as they buy. The next buyer pays slightly more. Each purchase walks the price further up the range along the concentrated-liquidity curve. This is the pump-style shape: price starts low and rises as demand arrives.

The ETH that buyers send does not vanish. It accumulates in the pool. As the price moves up through the range, the position gradually converts from all-token toward holding more ETH. In effect the pool is selling the token into the market and banking the ETH proceeds, automatically, with no order book and no market maker.

Because the launcher never had to supply ETH, there is no barrier to launching. The token is the liquidity. This is why single-sided seeding is described as no-ETH-needed: the creator provides supply, and the market provides the ETH.

The math intuition: a position above the current price

You do not need the full Uniswap v3 formulas to get this. The intuition is about which side of your range the price sits on.

• Price below your range: the position is 100% token. It is a standing offer to sell that token as the price rises into your band.
• Price inside your range: the position is a mix, converting from token to ETH as price climbs.
• Price above your range: the position is 100% ETH. Every token has been sold.

A single-sided launch just starts at the first case. The starting valuation you pick (the fully diluted valuation, denominated in ETH) sets the lower tick where trading opens. Everything is ETH-denominated because ETH is the pair asset. There is no USD oracle involved; the FDV you choose in ETH is what maps to the v3 start tick.

Pick a lower starting valuation and the token opens cheap with lots of room to run. Pick a higher one and it opens richer. Either way, the position is entirely token at the start and sells into ETH demand as price moves up the curve.

Single-sided vs two-sided liquidity: pros and cons

Two-sided liquidity is the standard way to LP. You deposit both tokens, the position is balanced around the current price, and you earn fees on trades in both directions. It is the right tool when a token already has a market price and you want to provide depth around it.

Single-sided liquidity is the right tool for a launch, when there is no price yet and no ETH to pair.

• Pro: no ETH required to launch. The token supply alone bootstraps the market.
• Pro: a natural low-to-high price discovery curve. Early buyers get in cheaper, later buyers pay more, all enforced by the AMM math rather than a promise.
• Pro: no counterparty needed. The pool is the market maker.
• Con: single-sided token-only positions are subject to impermanent loss as they convert to ETH. In a launch this is the point, since you are selling the token into ETH, but it is worth understanding that a rising price means the position is trading token away.
• Con: less flexible than picking a tight two-sided range if your goal is fee farming around a stable price rather than launching.

For a fair launch the tradeoffs line up perfectly. You want price discovery from a low start, you do not want to front ETH, and you want the market to set the price. Single-sided provision delivers all three.

How Bubblepad seeds launches single-sided

Bubblepad turns single-sided liquidity into one click. In a single transaction it mints a brand-new ERC-20 (a minimal-proxy clone of a locked template), creates the token's Uniswap v3 pool paired with WETH, seeds that pool single-sided with 100% of the supply, and locks the resulting liquidity position NFT for 10 years in a locker contract.

Because the seed is single-sided, you bring no ETH. The token supply is the inventory, the price opens at the FDV you choose (in ETH), and it rises along the v3 curve as buyers arrive. It is the pump-style launch, made fair: 100% of supply goes into the locked pool, with no pre-allocation, no team tokens, no presale, and no admin key.

You still get to collect the upside on volume. Bubblepad stays the pool's fee receiver, so the original launcher can keep collecting trading fees even though the position NFT itself is locked for a decade.

If you want to snipe your own launch with no MEV window, you can add an optional first buy of a little ETH in the same launch transaction. And if you already hold a token, existing-token mode lets you seed and lock a single-sided v3 pool for it too.

On Base, Bubblepad exposes the 0.3% and 1% Uniswap v3 fee tiers; on BSC it uses PancakeSwap v3 at 0.25%. Whichever you pick, the seeding mechanism is the same single-sided position. Head to /launch and seed a pool with nothing but your token.