# Opening a range with one token

> Uniswap V3 normally wants both sides of the pair. One operation takes a single token and works the range out on-chain from where the price is.

- Source: https://defiloops.com/blog/opening-a-range-with-one-token
- Published: 2026-09-16
- Category: Strategy
- Tags: uniswap, liquidity, ticks
- Author: DeFiLoops

---
Providing liquidity on Uniswap V3 normally asks for both sides of the pair in a ratio that
depends on where the price sits relative to your range. Work it out wrong and you are left
holding a remainder you have to do something with.

So the ordinary path to an LP from a single asset is: swap half of it, get the ratio slightly
wrong, put both in, keep the dust. Three decisions, two of them arithmetic.

One operation takes a single token and does it.

## What it does differently

Two things, and the second is the interesting one.

<Spec rows={[
  ['One side is zero', 'You supply one token and leave the other at zero. This is enforced — exactly one of the two amounts must be nothing'],
  ['The ticks are computed on-chain', 'You do not name the range. It is derived from the current tick at the moment the transaction executes'],
]} />

That second row is the reason this exists. Any range you compute in advance is a range around
a price that has already moved by the time the transaction lands. Deriving it on-chain means
the position is built around where the price is, not where it was when you were
planning.

<Callout type="note" title="Which is also the trade-off">
  You give up naming your own range. If the range is the strategy — a view about where price
  will spend its time, a deliberately wide band, a deliberately narrow one — this is the wrong
  operation, and the ordinary mint that takes explicit ticks is the right one.
</Callout>

## The fee tier is still yours

You choose the pool. And the tiers are named in the pool's own millionths rather than basis
points, which catches people out constantly: a 0.05% pool is `500`, a 0.3% pool is `3000`, and
a 1% pool is `10000`. Base carries some tiers that do not exist elsewhere.

The tier is not a fee setting on your position — it selects which pool you are in. Different
tiers on the same pair are different pools, with different liquidity and different prices.

## When this is the right tool

- You hold one asset and want it working, without a view on the range.
- You are following a swap with an LP in the same plan, and the amount arriving is not known
  exactly in advance.
- You want the position centred on the real price rather than on your estimate of it.

And when it is not: any time the range *is* the decision. A one-spacing range around the
current price is also
[not splittable afterwards](/blog/splitting-a-range-down-the-middle-was-always-wrong), which is
worth knowing if a split is in your plans.