Pricing and slippage

Where to check price today

  • The Uniswap pool UI for the vault’s pair shows spot, recent volume, and fee tier.

  • On chain, read slot0.sqrtPriceX96 and convert to price, or read reserves for constant product pools.

  • XVault’s upcoming price API will expose spot, TWAP, depth, and slippage estimates. A beta is available for custodians.

Spot price, constant product intuition

For a constant product pool with reserves X (vault token) and Y (USDC), the invariant is X · Y = k. The spot price of one vault token in quote terms is p = Y / X.

Spot price, concentrated liquidity

In a v3-style pool, price is tracked as sqrtPriceX96, a fixed-point representation of √P. The human price is P = (sqrtPriceX96 / 2^96)^2, adjusted for token decimals. Liquidity earns fees only while the current price is inside your chosen range.

Time-weighted average price (TWAP)

For stability and monitoring, use the pool’s built-in oracle. Call observe([T, 0]) to fetch two cumulative ticks, compute the geometric average tick over window T, convert that tick to price with TickMath, and compare to spot. A large spot vs TWAP gap can indicate a transient move.

Quoting expected slippage before a trade

To estimate execution price and slippage without trading, use a quote helper for the exact pair and fee tier. Provide your intended input or output size and read the returned amount and price limit behavior. For multi-hop paths, pass the route along with fee tiers.

Worked example, constant product:

  • Reserves: X = 100,000 vault tokens, Y = 2,000,000 USDC.

  • Spot p = 20.00. A buyer sends ΔY = 100,000 USDC.

  • Fee tier 0.30 percent, so pool adds 99,700 USDC.

  • New Y' = 2,099,700, k = 200,000,000,000, so X' ≈ 95,217.9.

  • Buyer receives ΔX ≈ 4,782.1. Effective price ≈ 20.91.

  • Slippage ≈ 4.55 percent.

Worked example, concentrated range intuition

  • Inside a live band with liquidity L, moving from √P_a to √P_b consumes Δtoken0 = L · (1/√P_b − 1/√P_a) and mints Δtoken1 = L · (√P_b − √P_a).

  • Use these to size bands so typical tickets stay within your range.

Last updated