How LadderVault works

Introduction

LadderVault is a non-custodial protocol for providing liquidity to Uniswap v3 and v4 and PancakeSwap. Instead of choosing a single price range and hoping the market cooperates, you deploy a ladder: many concentrated liquidity positions spread across a band of prices, opened together in a single transaction. The ladder is weighted — heavier near the current price where trading is busiest, lighter toward the edges. When you are finished, the whole ladder closes in one transaction too.

Every ladder you open lives inside a personal vault contract that belongs to you and only you. LadderVault never takes custody of your assets. Funds can leave your vault to exactly two places: back to your own wallet, or to the protocol's fee collector for the small share of earned pool fees — a rate that starts at zero. This documentation explains the ladder, how to create and manage one, how the fee model works, which chains are supported, and, plainly, the risks involved.

Why a ladder

Modern AMMs let liquidity providers concentrate their capital into a chosen price range. Concentration is powerful: within its range, a concentrated position earns far more in trading fees than the same money spread thinly across all prices. But concentration cuts both ways, and a single range forces an uncomfortable bet.

• Pick one narrow range and you earn heavily — right up until the price drifts out of it. Once the market leaves your range, your capital sits idle and earns nothing until you come back and reposition.
• Pick one wide range and you stay in the money longer, but your liquidity is diluted across all those prices, so the fees you collect at any moment are thinner.

A ladder resolves the trade-off by refusing to pick one range at all. Your deposit is split across many concentrated ranges at once — a step near the current price, then steps above and below it — so you capture fees across the whole band instead of guessing a single window.

Crucially, the ladder is weighted, not uniform. The rungs sitting near the current price hold the most liquidity, because that is where trades cluster and fees accrue fastest. Rungs toward the edges are lighter, held in reserve for when the market moves. The result behaves less like a single bet and more like a standing order book that keeps working as the price wanders.

Getting started

Opening your first ladder takes about a minute and five steps. Nothing is committed on-chain until the final signature.

1Connect your wallet

LadderVault is non-custodial from the first click. There is no account to create and no deposit to an exchange — you connect a wallet you already own. Your address is used to read balances and to build transactions that only your wallet can sign.

2Pick a token

Choose the market you want to provide liquidity to. Quotes and pool data are read directly from the chain — LadderVault uses native Uniswap and PancakeSwap pools, with no aggregators and no external market-data APIs.

3Choose a preset

Presets set how the ladder is shaped without making you tune every rung by hand. Advanced users can adjust the parameters directly; most people start with one of three:

4Review the shape

Before you commit, LadderVault shows the exact ladder it will build: every rung, how much liquidity sits where, and the total cost. The transaction is priced and simulated on-chain so that what you preview is what your wallet will sign. If a Simple flow is all you need, that is the default; an Advanced flow exposes the full set of controls.

5Open in one transaction

Approve once. Every rung is minted together into your personal vault in a single transaction. From that moment the ladder is live and earning, and you can manage or close all of it just as quickly.

Your vault (non-custodial)

The first time you open a ladder, LadderVault deploys a personal vault contract for you — a lightweight clone created from the vault factory. Every ladder you open afterwards lives inside that same vault. It is yours: you are its owner, and ownership is set at deployment.

The vault is deliberately hard to abuse, by construction rather than by promise:

• Funds move to two destinations only. Assets can leave the vault to its owner — you — or to the protocol's FeeCollector for the earned-fee share (capped in code by MAX_FEE_BPS). There is no third path. This is enforced as an invariant in the contract test suite.
• Ownership cannot be transferred. There is no function to hand your vault to someone else, and no way for anyone to seize it.
• The contract is not upgradeable. The code that governs your vault today is the code that will govern it tomorrow. It cannot be swapped out from under you.

Managing positions

Once a ladder is live, you manage the whole thing from one place. The common actions are automated exits, single-token entry, fee collection, and closing.

Take-profit & stop-loss

Set a target price to take profit, a floor price to stop losses, or both. LadderVault watches the pool price on-chain and closes the ladder for you when a level is reached — automatically, without you needing to be online.

The automation runs through an operator with strictly limited rights: it can only close and collect. It cannot choose a new recipient, and it cannot withdraw to itself. Whatever it closes, the proceeds go to one place — the vault owner.

Zap-in (enter with one token)

A ladder normally needs both sides of the pair. Zap-in lets you enter with a single token: LadderVault buys the other side inside the very same transaction, then mints the rungs. No manual swapping beforehand, and no leftover dust to clean up afterwards. As with every action, the swap and the mint are simulated before you sign.

Collect fees

Concentrated positions accrue trading fees as the pool is used. You can collect the fees your ladder has earned without closing your positions, so your capital keeps working while you realize what it has made.

Close & migrate

Closing is the mirror of opening: the entire ladder unwinds in a single transaction, and everything returns to your wallet. Because closing is one clean action, migrating is straightforward too — close a ladder and open a fresh one with a different shape, token, or range whenever your view changes.

Fees

LadderVault's fee model has one rule: the platform is paid only out of the trading fees the pool earns for your positions. Your deposit is never charged, and gains from price movement are never charged.

Think of what you get back when a ladder closes as three separate parts:

Supported chains

LadderVault runs on four chains and builds only on native Uniswap and PancakeSwap pools. There are no aggregators in the path and no external quote APIs — pricing and pool data come straight from the chain.

The same laddering and the same vault design apply on every chain — only the pools and token addresses differ. Contract addresses for each network are held in one place and each is covered by a fork test against live chain state.

Security

LadderVault is built to minimize the trust you have to place in it, and this section is deliberately candid about where the limits are.

What protects you

• Non-custodial by design. Assets live in a vault only you own, with no ownership transfer and no upgrade path. Funds can move only to you or to the fee collector, and only up to the capped fee share.
• Simulation before signing. Every transaction is priced and simulated on-chain before it reaches your wallet, so you approve the actual outcome, not an estimate. Slippage limits and deadlines are applied on swaps and mints.
• Limited operator rights. The automation that powers take-profit and stop-loss can only close and collect. It cannot change the recipient of funds — proceeds always return to the vault owner — and it cannot withdraw to itself.
• Keys are isolated. Signing keys used by the service live in a separate, isolated signer process whose only job is to sign; they are not spread across the rest of the system.

What you are trusting — read this

Data we collect

Using the application involves some data collection. LadderVault may collect your IP address, User-Agent, your Telegram ID (only if you choose to link Telegram), your wallet address, and your actions within the application. See the Privacy Policy for details on how this is handled.

FAQ