Impermanent loss calculator
Providing liquidity often pays less than simply holding. See the gap as a heat map of price moves against time in the pool, and tighten the range to watch it multiply both the fees and the losses.
Pool
Deposit
$Just HODLing
$110,000+10.0% | ||
| Fees earned | – | |
| Impermanent loss | – | |
Classic LP
$109,873+9.9% down $127vs holding | ||
| Fees earned1.0× | up $329 | +0.3% |
| Impermanent loss | down $456 | −0.5% |
What is impermanent loss?
Deposit two tokens into an AMM pool and the pool keeps them in balance for you: as one token rises, arbitrage traders buy it out of the pool, so you end up holding less of your winner and more of the other side. Impermanent loss (also called divergence loss) is the gap between what your LP position is worth and what simply holding both tokens would be worth.
Depositing 1 ETH + 3,000 USDC, after ETH’s price moves 2× over a year
HODLing
$9,000
the do-nothing baseline
vs
Providing liquidity
$8,485
−5.7% impermanent loss
The loss is symmetric (a 2× pump and a 50% dump cost the same) and it accelerates with the size of the move, no matter how long the move takes. If prices round-trip back to your entry, the divergence cancels out entirely: the loss only locks in when you withdraw after a move. What offsets it while you wait is income that accrues with time: trading fees, and on Ammalgam, lending yield. That is why the maps above have a time axis: the real question for any LP is whether income outruns the loss, and that is a race between price moves and days elapsed.
Want the slower, chart-by-chart walkthrough? Read the plain-language explainer.
How Ammalgam changes it
The DLEX is an AMM and a lending market in one pool, the first where you can borrow not just tokens but liquidity itself. That single unlock turns impermanent loss from a fate into a choice:
Market Making
Same position, more yield
An Ammalgam LP earns the same swap fees as a classic AMM, plus lending interest from traders borrowing tokens and liquidity from the pool.
Best when: You would LP anyway and want lending yield on top of fees.
Delta Neutral Market Making
Cancel the direction
Borrow the volatile token against your LP position to go delta-neutral. What remains is the small, symmetric cost of impermanent loss, steadily outrun by fees and lending yield.
Best when: You want the yield without calling the direction.
Straddle
Own the other side
Borrow liquidity itself and the payoff inverts: big moves in either direction pay you. That is impermanent gain. Borrow interest is the premium, exactly like owning a straddle.
Best when: You expect a big move soon, but not its direction.