How to Create a Liquidity Pool on Arc and Price Your Launch

A deployed token is not a market. Until there is a pool holding your token against USDC, there is nothing for a buyer to buy from and no price to quote. Creating that pool is the single most consequential transaction of a launch, because the ratio you seed is the opening price and the depth you seed decides how violently every subsequent trade moves it.

The Arc Liquidity Pool Creator creates the Uniswap pair on Arc Mainnet and adds your initial liquidity in one flow, showing the implied price and FDV before you sign. This guide focuses on the part the tool cannot decide for you: how deep to go, and what that says about your valuation.

Before you start

• A wallet on Arc Mainnet. Chain id 5042, RPC https://rpc.mainnet.arc.io, explorer https://explorer.arc.io. Add the network manually or follow Arc's connect guide.
• The ERC-20 you are pairing. Any ERC-20 on Arc works, whether you deployed it with Arc Token Launch or somewhere else.
• USDC for both the fee and the pool. 50 USDC covers the service, and both sides of the pool come out of your wallet. Gas is charged in USDC too, so keep a small amount of headroom above the deposits.
• A valuation you can defend. The opening FDV is arithmetic, not negotiation. If you place 1,000,000,000 tokens and 5,000 USDC, your opening FDV will be 10,000 USDC — decide in advance that this is a number you are happy to be judged on.

One Arc-specific trap to understand before you touch the form. USDC on Arc is a single balance with two interfaces: native at 18 decimals (gas, msg.value) and ERC-20 at 6 decimals at 0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000. Pools use the ERC-20 interface because pool math is denominated in ERC-20 units. There is no wrapped USDC, and a pool pairing native USDC against ERC-20 USDC would be pairing an asset with itself. The tool always uses the ERC-20 interface; if you are doing this by hand, read Arc's EVM differences first.

1. Connect your wallet and check both sides of the pair

Connect the wallet holding the token and the USDC. Check the two balances the tool displays against your wallet. If the token balance is missing, you are almost certainly on the wrong chain or reading a spoofed token with the same ticker — the ticker proves nothing, the contract address proves everything.

2. Enter the token and let the tool detect any existing pair

Paste the token contract address. The tool derives the pair address deterministically from the factory and checks whether it already exists.

If a pair already exists, the flow becomes an add-liquidity operation against the live reserves, because a second creation would revert. That is the correct behaviour, but it also means you cannot "reset" a pool you have already created: the reserves and the resulting price are what they are, and the only way to change the ratio is to trade against the pool or remove and re-seed liquidity.

Uniswap V2, V3 and V4 are all live on Arc Mainnet, and V2 alone has several hundred pairs. Arctools uses V2 for launches because it mints a single fungible LP token, which is far simpler to lock, burn or verify than a V3 non-fungible position. If you need concentrated liquidity, V3 is available — but for a first pool, the ability to lock or burn the LP token in one readable object is worth more than capital efficiency.

3. Decide how much of the supply goes into the pool

This is the most strategic number in the launch, and it is usually set carelessly.

Price is simply the ratio of reserves, so the share of supply you place in the pool directly scales the price. Placing 500,000,000 tokens against 5,000 USDC prices the token at 0.00001 USDC. Placing 250,000,000 of the same supply against the same USDC doubles the price to 0.00002.

It also determines how much of your supply is actually purchasable. If the pool holds 25% of supply, buyers can in principle buy 25% of supply at rising prices. Holding supply back for treasury, team, future liquidity or a distribution is normal; keeping most of it while telling buyers the pool is the float is not.

A useful discipline:

• Place enough supply that the pool is not a bottleneck. Between roughly a third and two thirds of supply is the common range for a launch.
• Keep the remainder accountable. Every token not in the pool should have a stated purpose and, ideally, a public address.
• Check your wallet limit settings. If the token has a max wallet percentage, the pair must be exempt or the pool cannot hold its own tokens.

4. Set the USDC side and read the opening FDV

Enter the USDC amount and read the implied price and FDV. The relationship is worth memorising:

Opening FDV = pool USDC ÷ share of supply placed in the pool.

So 5,000 USDC of pool capital with 50% of supply in the pool implies a 10,000 USDC FDV. 20,000 USDC with 40% of supply implies a 50,000 USDC FDV. Both the capital and the float move the number, which is why "we are launching at X" is always two decisions, not one.

Depth is the other half of the story, and it is where launches are quietly ruined. On a constant-product pool, a buy of size B against a USDC reserve of R moves the price by approximately B ÷ (R + B). Concretely, against a 10,000 USDC reserve, a 1,000 USDC buy moves the price roughly 9.1% before fees, and a 5,000 USDC buy moves it around 33%. Against a 50,000 USDC reserve, that same 1,000 USDC buy moves the price about 2%.

That single formula answers most depth questions:

• Thin pools look cheap and behave terrifyingly. A shallow pool produces huge percentage candle moves on trivial volume, which attracts arbitrage and repels anyone trying to hold a position.
• Deep pools cost real capital. You are committing USDC to the pool, and you keep it as LP tokens, but it is capital that cannot be spent elsewhere.
• A practical floor for a small-cap launch is 5,000 to 10,000 USDC of depth, more if you expect volume. Below that, ordinary trades move the price more than they should.
• Depth should match the story. If you expect daily volume in the thousands of USDC, a 5,000 USDC pool will be permanently distorted. If you expect a quiet launch, a very deep pool just parks capital.

Finally, remember that the market arbitrages mispricing immediately. Price too low and the first informed buyers take the bargain, which re-rates the pool upward. Price too high and sellers arrive, which re-rates it downward. The pool is not a promise about your valuation; it is a starting quote that arbitrage will correct within seconds.

5. Choose where the LP tokens go

The LP tokens represent your claim on the pool. Three destinations:

• Your wallet. You can remove liquidity whenever you like. Honest, and also the configuration buyers distrust by default.
• The Arctools Liquidity Locker. The LP tokens are held until an unlock date that anyone can read. This is the most common choice for a first launch; see how to lock liquidity on Arc.
• A burn address. The strongest commitment, and permanent. Burning LP means the liquidity can never be withdrawn, including by you.

Whichever you choose, the Arc Token Checker reports it, so the answer will be public either way.

6. Approve, pay the fee and create the pool

Approve the token for the amount you are depositing, then sign the flat 50 USDC service fee and the pool creation. The tool creates the pair if needed and adds both sides in the same flow, so there is never an empty pool sitting on the explorer.

Both transactions finalise deterministically in under a second; one confirmation is final. Afterwards, verify the pair on https://explorer.arc.io: the reserves should match what you deposited, and if you locked the LP, the locker should hold them.

What it costs

Item	Amount	Notes
Arctools service fee	50 USDC flat	One payment per pool creation
Gas	Cents	20 Gwei floor; 100,000 gas = 0.002 USDC
USDC deposit	Your choice	Not spent — it stays in the pool as your liquidity
Token deposit	Your choice	Not spent — it stays in the pool
Optional liquidity lock	50 USDC	Separate service if you lock the LP

A concrete example. A 1,000,000,000 supply token, 500,000,000 placed in the pool with 8,000 USDC. Opening price 0.000016 USDC, opening FDV 16,000 USDC. Immediate outlay: 50 USDC of service fee, 8,000 USDC of liquidity (owned by you as LP tokens, recoverable later), the token side which you minted, and a few cents of gas. If you lock the LP, add 50 USDC. The liquidity is not lost capital — it is capital at work, exposed to impermanent loss, as add and remove liquidity on Arc explains.

Common mistakes

• Pairing the wrong USDC interface. Native USDC and ERC-20 USDC are the same asset on Arc. Always use 0x3600…0000 for pool math.
• Setting FDV by accident. Supply share and pool capital both move FDV. Change them deliberately, one at a time, and read the preview each time.
• Seeding a pool too shallow to trade. A 500 USDC pool turns a routine buy into a 50% candle.
• Forgetting the pair exemption. If the pair pays tax or is inside a max-wallet limit, trades revert or silently under-deliver.
• Mismatching the pair address. Copy the pair from the explorer entry your token just created, not from a chat message. Address poisoning targets exactly this moment.
• Leaving the LP unlocked without saying so. An unlocked pool is a finding in every scanner; disclose it or fix it.
• Burning LP too early. Burning is permanent. If you might want to migrate or reclaim the capital, lock instead.

Where to go next

Deepen the pool with the add liquidity flow as volume grows, and learn the exit side in add and remove liquidity on Arc so you understand what a partial withdrawal returns before you need it. Before you announce the launch publicly, spend one session on making your Arc token safe: ownership, taxes and liquidity status are the three things every serious buyer checks, and you can clear all of them yourself.