Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the terms used in the app and in these docs.
A
- Allowance
- The amount of a token a contract is currently permitted to spend from your wallet. Set by an approval.
- AMM (automated market maker)
- A smart contract that lets people trade against a pool of tokens at a price set by a formula, instead of matching orders.
- Approval
- A transaction that gives a contract permission to move up to a stated amount of your tokens.
B
- Base asset
- The asset being priced in a pair, for example ETH in ETH/USDC.
C
- Capital efficiency
- How much more concentrated your liquidity is than a full-range position of the same size.
- Collect
- The v3/v4 action that sends the tokens and fees owed to a position to your wallet.
- Concentrated liquidity
- Liquidity placed within a chosen price range rather than across every price.
- Constant product
- The rule x × y = k used by Uniswap v2 and, within ranges, by v3.
D
- Deadline
- A time after which a transaction will refuse to execute. Self-Quantum Liquidity uses 20 minutes.
E
- ERC-20
- The standard interface for fungible tokens.
- ERC-721
- The standard interface for NFTs. v3 and v4 positions are ERC-721 tokens.
- EOA
- Externally owned account: a normal wallet controlled by a private key, as opposed to a contract.
F
- Fee tier
- The fee a v3 pool charges on each swap, such as 0.05% or 0.30%.
- Fork (local)
- A private copy of a blockchain's state used to test code without real funds.
- Fully diluted value (FDV)
- A token's price multiplied by its total supply: the value of every token that exists, if all were priced the same.
G
- Gas
- The fee paid to the network to process a transaction, in the network's native coin.
H
- Hook
- An optional smart contract attached to a v4 pool that can change how it behaves.
I
- Impermanent loss
- How much less your position is worth than simply holding the same tokens, caused by price movement. It can become permanent if you withdraw.
- In range / out of range
- Whether the current price is inside or outside your position's price range. Only in-range liquidity earns fees.
- Indexer
- A service that reads and organises blockchain data so it can be searched quickly, for example to list every pool or every position.
L
- Liquidity (L)
- Uniswap's internal measure of how much depth a position or pool provides. It is not a dollar amount.
- Liquidity provider (LP)
- Someone who deposits tokens into a pool so others can trade, and earns fees.
- LP token
- In v2, a fungible token representing your share of a pool.
M
- Mint
- To create something new. Here, to create a position and its NFT.
- MEV
- Maximal extractable value: profit that block builders and bots can make by ordering or inserting transactions.
- Multicall
- A single transaction that performs several calls in order.
N
- Native token
- The coin that pays gas on a network, such as ETH on Ethereum or AVAX on Avalanche.
- Network (chain)
- A blockchain. Self-Quantum Liquidity reads 15 of them.
- NFT
- A unique token. In v3/v4 your position is represented by one.
P
- Pool
- A smart contract holding two tokens that traders swap against.
- PoolManager
- The single v4 contract that holds the state and tokens of every v4 pool.
- Position
- Liquidity you have provided within a specific range, owned by whoever holds its NFT.
- Price impact
- How much a trade moves the pool's price, larger for bigger trades in thinner pools.
- Protocol fee
- A share of swap fees directed to the protocol instead of to liquidity providers.
Q
- Quote asset
- The unit a price is expressed in, for example USDC in ETH/USDC.
R
- Range
- The lower and upper price between which a position provides liquidity.
- Range order
- A position placed on one side of the current price so it behaves like a limit order.
- Revoke
- Setting a token allowance back to zero so a contract can no longer spend it.
- RPC
- The endpoint your browser or wallet uses to read from and send transactions to a blockchain.
S
- Sandwich attack
- A bot trades before and after your transaction to profit from the price move your transaction causes.
- Seed (recovery) phrase
- The words that recreate your wallet's private keys. Never share them.
- Simulation
- Running a transaction against the current chain state without sending it, to see whether it would succeed.
- Singleton
- A design where many pools are stored inside one contract, as in v4.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you expected and the price you get. A slippage limit is the worst you will accept.
- Spot price
- The pool's current price.
- StateView
- A v4 helper contract used to read pool state.
- Starting price
- The price a new pool begins at, chosen by whoever creates it. Traders can trade against it immediately.
T
- Tick
- A discrete step in price space. In v3/v4, each tick is a 0.01% change in price.
- Tick spacing
- The spacing between ticks a pool allows positions to use, tied to its fee tier.
- Token0 / token1
- The two tokens of a pool in address order. The pool's raw price is token1 per token0.
- TVL
- Total value locked: the value of the tokens held in a pool. Self-Quantum Liquidity shows it in the quote asset.
U
- Unlimited approval
- An approval for the largest possible amount. Convenient, and dangerous if the spender is ever compromised.
W
- Whitelist
- A list of approved addresses. In Self-Quantum Liquidity it unlocks some Lab tools, and it is only a front-end convenience, not real security.
- Wrapped token
- An ERC-20 version of a native coin, such as WETH for ETH, 1:1 redeemable.
These docs are educational. They are not financial, legal or tax advice. Providing liquidity carries risk, including loss of funds. Self-Quantum Liquidity is new software and has not been audited.