1. What a ladder is
A ladder is one deposit spread over many narrow price ranges, called rungs, in a trading pool. Each rung is a small standing order. Rungs under the price hold ETH, USDG or LOOM and buy the token if the price falls to them. Rungs over the price hold the token and sell it if the price rises to them. When trades pass through a rung, the rung earns a share of the pool's swap fee.
You draw the band on the token's chart by dragging its two green lines, or with the sliders. Everything the ladder will do happens inside that band. Outside it, the ladder does nothing and earns nothing until the price comes back.
2. Reading the rungs
Low price on the left, high on the right. Gold rungs are under the price and hold the quote asset: bids, waiting to buy. Green rungs are over the price and hold the token: offers, waiting to sell. The rung with the outline has the price inside it and is the one earning right now; it fills with gold as the price climbs through it. A taller rung holds more of your money. When the price crosses a rung it changes colour: a bid that was filled now holds the token, an offer that was taken now holds the quote. That is the ladder working.
3. One asset or two
Every rung holds one asset only. So what you bring decides what gets built. Bring only ETH or USDG and only the gold half under the price is built. Bring only the token and only the green half over it is built. Bring both and you get the whole band. The chart shows the rungs that will be built filled in, and the ones that will stay empty as dashed outlines, before you sign.
Split it for me builds the whole band from one asset. Part of what you brought is swapped for the other asset in the same pool, and then every rung is built, all in one transaction. You pay that pool's swap fee on the part that is swapped, and the swap moves the price a little. On a launchpad pool the fee can be several percent; the site asks the chain what the swap really returns before you sign, so your slippage setting only has to cover the price moving.
4. The shapes
Spot puts the same amount in every rung: simple, no opinion. Curve puts most of it near the price, where most trading happens, so it earns the most fees while the price stays calm and is used up fastest when it runs. Bid-Ask puts most of it at the edges: small orders near the price, big ones far away. It is the shape for buying deep dips and selling big pumps. Hybrid is half Spot and half Bid-Ask in one: a floor of liquidity in every rung for the fees, rising toward the edges for the swings. With the autopilot following the price it is the shape that keeps the price near the middle of the band and the big orders out at its ends. Custom is a shape you paint yourself: lesson 17.
5. Picking a pool
A token usually trades in several pools. The picker lists the ones a ladder can be built in, the real markets first. For each it shows the swap fee, how much it takes to move the price 2% (depth), what traded in a day, the fees that paid, and what fees came to as a share of liquidity over a week.
Watch for no fees to liquidity. A new token often trades only in its launchpad's pool, where the launchpad keeps the whole fee. A ladder there still works as a grid of buy and sell orders. It just earns nothing on top. A deep pool with a real fee and real volume is where a ladder earns.
6. Opening your own pool
If a token has no pool that pays, you can open one: Open a LoomDesk pool on the token's page. You choose ETH or USDG and a swap fee of 1% or 3%. Traders pay that fee; LoomDesk's share is a tenth of the base fee; a royalty or burn you set is also taken from the fee, and whoever provides liquidity keeps the rest. It costs about a dollar (1 USDG or 0.0004 ETH) once, and after that anyone can build in it for free.
Be clear about who will trade in it. Mostly arbitrage: when the token's main market moves by more than your fee, someone trades your pool back into line and pays the fee. Routers also send ordinary trades when your price is better. A new pool starts with neither. Arbitrage only trades against you after the price has already moved, so the fee is the pay for that. On a token that moves a lot it can more than cover it. It can also fall short.
7. What it costs
0.25% of what you put in, taken out of the rungs the moment they are minted and paid to the book as USDG, whatever the pool (a slice of your token is sold in the same pool when your USDG side is short; ETH is sold for USDG on the way; LOOM is never sold, a cut that falls in it is taken as it is). If someone's link brought you here, 0.1% of that goes to them, on every ladder you build from then on; if you copied a ladder off the leaderboard, 0.1% goes to its owner while theirs is open. Adding to a ladder later pays the same 0.25% on what you add. Then LoomDesk takes 5% of the trading fees your ladder earns, when you collect them, and nothing of a gain when you take liquidity out (ladders opened before 30 September 2026 pay 5% of it). Every cut is paid to the book as USDG whatever the pool: a slice of your token is sold in the same pool when your USDG side is short, ETH is sold for USDG on the way, and LOOM is taken as it is. Stake 100,000 LOOM for a week from the same wallet and it is 3.5%. In a pool on our own hook LoomDesk's share is a tenth of the base fee, taken as trades happen, and a pool's creator may take a royalty of up to 30% of it. You also pay gas, which is higher than for an ordinary trade because a ladder is many positions at once. A limit order costs the same: 0.25% to place, 5% of the fees it earns.
8. Getting out
Claim fees pays you what the ladder has earned and leaves it working. Compound puts those fees back into the rungs at the price instead, so they start earning too; Auto-compound has LoomDesk's keeper do that for you once a day, and pay the gas. Nothing is swapped, the usual 5% comes off the fees first, whatever no rung can take comes to your wallet, and what goes back in counts as money you put in, so it is never charged again as a gain. The keeper can do nothing else with your ladder, and you can switch it off at any time. Ladders opened before compounding existed do not have it: close one and build it again to get it. Partial withdraw takes a share of every rung out and leaves the rest working. Close pays the fees and returns everything in the rungs. Take NFTs hands you the Uniswap positions themselves, even if new ladders are paused, and from then on you manage them on Uniswap. Because nothing is closed, there is no result to share, so it pays 5% of the ladder's value at that moment instead (3.5% for holders), gain or loss: settled from the fees waiting in the rungs first, then from a thin slice of the rungs. Every cut, on every exit, reaches the book as USDG: it comes off the USDG in your fees or your proceeds, a slice of your token is sold in the same pool when that is short, and ETH or LOOM is sold for USDG on the way. The contract holds your positions so the fee can work, and it was built so that holding them can never become a trap: the operator can always hand any ladder's positions back to their owner, untouched.
9. What can go wrong
A ladder buys on the way down and sells on the way up. If the token falls through your band you end up holding the token, bought at falling prices. If it rises through your band you have sold it all into the money side (ETH, USDG or LOOM) and missed the rest of the move. Your card shows the PnL in three parts that add up to it: Price move, what simply holding what went in would have made; Trading, what the rungs' buying and selling did against that holding: zero when the price is back where it started, negative the further it has moved away, and above zero only after a re-lay, an exit or a withdrawal at a good moment; and Fees, what the trades through your rungs paid, which is where a price that goes back and forth pays you. In a move that runs one way, trading is negative and fees are not guaranteed to cover it.
Tokens can also be traps. The marketplace tests whether a stranger can sell each busy token and hides the ones that fail, but a test passed yesterday is not a promise about tomorrow. The contracts here were reviewed by us and tested against live pools. ContractWolf audited the ladder contracts: its report names the contracts new ladders open on and marks all 17 findings resolved.
10. Reading the marketplace
The marketplace reads every swap on Robinhood Chain from our own node. Trending is by real volume: volume that comes from almost nobody is someone trading with themselves, and cannot lead. Established means two weeks of trading on most days, real depth, and a sell test that keeps passing. Keeps is the share of its fees a pool still had an hour after each trade, once the price had moved: high means its flow is mostly ordinary traders, low means mostly arbitrage. Prices and the last candle arrive as they happen. Your profile lists everything you hold and everything you have done.
11. The autopilot
A ladder does its work on its own, but three things still need a hand: laying it again once the price has walked out of it, closing it when it has done what you wanted, and turning the fees into dollars. The autopilot is rules for those three, set once on the ladder's card and kept for you by LoomDesk's keeper, which pays the gas. Re-lay takes every rung out and lays them again around the price, in a width, count and shape you choose, once the price has left the band on the side you named: up, down or either way, or, with follow the price on, as soon as the price has drifted a set distance from the middle of the band while still inside it, so the band keeps moving with the price. You can ask it to wait until the fees earned since the last re-lay reach a share of the ladder, so a choppy price does not re-lay it over and over, paying the pool's fee on the swap each time. A re-lay charges no opening fee and takes no cut of a gain; what you put in carries over. Take profit and stop loss close the ladder for you once what the rungs hold is worth that much more, or less, than what went in, paid as USDG if you ask. A ladder sells on the way up, so take profit is for rungs laid over the price; stop loss is for rungs under it that bought on the way down. Harvest collects the fees, sells them for USDG and sends them to you once they are worth a size you name. Close once filled is a fourth rule, for limit orders: lesson 14. Enter first holds the other rules until the price has come into the band once, so a band laid away from the price is not re-laid or closed before it has traded.
The rules live in the contract, and the contract checks each one itself before it lets the keeper act. The keeper can do exactly those three things with your ladder and nothing else, at most once in twenty minutes, never selling more than 3% under the pool's price, and a re-lay whose swap would cost more than 5% of the ladder is not made at all. Nothing it does can send anything anywhere but into your rungs or to your wallet. You can run each action yourself with the same buttons, and switch the rules off any time. Ladders opened before 25 September 2026 do not have it: close one and build it again to get it. On the current ladder the owner may set that gap, from a minute to two hours.
The gas is yours. Every action the keeper takes on your ladders is paid from a gas tank you fill with ETH, on the ladder's card or in the builder; a few thousandths of an ETH covers a long time, since an action costs about half a million gas and this chain's gas is cheap. The keeper is charged at no more than a gwei a unit whatever it paid, and the tank is yours to take back at any time. While the tank is empty the pilot leaves your ladders alone; nothing else happens.
12. Models
A model is a band, a shape and a set of rules that belong together, set with one click in the builder. Fee max: a tight band that follows the price both ways, for a token that trades a lot and trends slowly. Precision hybrid: half even and half at the edges, following the price so the band re-centres as it moves and the swings keep being caught. Swing: wide, weighted to the edges, left alone, with a take profit once the rungs have sold their way up. Accumulate: a band entirely under the price that buys on the way down and then holds what it bought, with a stop loss to bound the damage. Distribute: a band entirely over the price that sells into strength and pays you out as USDG once the price has gone up through it. Every field stays editable after you pick one.
13. The lab
The lab runs any band, shape and rules over a pool's real hourly candles and volume, against simply holding what went in, and shows the result in the card's three parts (price move, trading, fees), the hours out of range, how often it would have been re-laid and what the swaps cost. It runs every model on the same history too, and week by week, so you can see what each model's trading and fees came to where the price went back and forth and where it ran one way. It is a model over past prices with the pool's liquidity as it stands today, for comparing choices on the same history. It is not a forecast, and nothing here is advice.
14. Limit orders
A limit order is a ladder with one job. A limit sell holds your token in rungs over the price and sells it as the price rises through them. A limit buy holds ETH, USDG or the pool's other quote in rungs under the price and buys the token as the price falls through them. Nothing is swapped when you place it, and nothing happens until the price gets there. While it fills it earns the pool's swap fee, like any rung.
You name a price, or two. One price is one rung, as narrow as the pool allows, and a rung is a small range of its own: in a pool with a 1% fee it is 2% wide, so "sell at $1.20" starts selling at $1.212 and is complete at $1.237. Pools with higher fees move in wider steps, up to 22% in a pool with a 10% fee. The builder shows the prices as the pool can hold them and asks you to take them before anything is placed. Two prices make a range of up to forty rungs, and the order fills step by step between them.
A part fill is not final. A rung trades both ways. If the price rises half way through your limit sell and turns back, the rungs buy the token back on the way down, at the prices they sold at, and you keep the pool's fees of both passes. Your card shows what the order holds at this moment, not a record of trades. If you want each step to be final, place separate one-price orders: each is closed on its own.
Close once filled makes the whole order final: once the price has passed all the way through, the keeper closes the order and pays you what it holds, as it is: the money for a sell, the token for a buy. Your share is not sold. The contract checks that the order really is filled before it lets the keeper act, and the keeper's gas comes from your gas tank. The keeper looks several times a minute. If the price comes back faster than that, the order is part filled again and keeps working, and your card says so.
An order fills only when someone trades in its pool. In a small pool that can be long after the market has passed your price.
To cancel an order, close it. You get back what it holds at that moment. Nothing is taken of a gain. The 0.25% paid to place an order does not come back.
A take profit or a stop loss can stand beside "close once filled", but they look at what the whole order is worth, not at your prices. A take profit set under what the order earns on its way closes it before it has sold at your prices. The card warns you with the order's own figures.
15. Reading your result
A ladder's card splits its result into three parts that add up to the total. Price move is what holding what you put in would have made or lost: it has nothing to do with the ladder. Trading is what the rungs did by buying as the price fell and selling as it rose, against simply holding: it is zero once the price is back where it started and negative the further the price has run one way. Fees is what the pool paid you for that. A ladder is doing its job when fees are larger than what trading gave up. The lab shows the same three parts for a model run over a pool's past.
16. The pool where arbitrage pays
The LOOM/ETH pool is LoomDesk's own, and the protocol's book stands in it. Its fee is set on every swap: never under 4%, and a swap that closes a gap of more than 5% between the pool and the market pays 1% plus 60% of the gap, up to 40%. The pool page shows the fee for a buy and for a sell right now. Every fee is taken in ETH. This one pool takes full-range liquidity only, so a ladder or a limit order cannot be built in it; build a LOOM ladder in LOOM's main pool against USDG, or in any other pool. What the book earns there buys LOOM, and every purchase is on the Buyback page.
17. Paint your own shape
Pick Custom under Strategy and a grid appears: one column for each rung, low price on the left, eight levels each, half full to start, which is Spot. Click or drag across it to set how much each rung takes; the chart under it follows. Double-click to start over. Give the shape a name and Save keeps it in your browser, nothing leaves it, so the next position can use it with one click. The rungs are laid out exactly as painted, whichever asset pays: the heights are the shares of each side's amount, so a column twice as tall holds twice as much. Agents can paint too: a plan takes the shape as a list of heights.
18. Send or delegate a position
Positions opened from 6 October 2026 have two more tabs on their Manage panel. Send hands the position to another wallet: its rungs and the fees waiting in it. Its rules and daily compounding end with the send. It is final; the panel asks twice, and the new owner can do everything with it while you can do nothing. Delegate lets another wallet, or an agent, run it for you without owning it. You pick what it may do: add, remove, collect, set the rules. Whatever a delegate takes out comes to you, never to it; what it adds is its own. You can take the delegation back at any time, and only you can send or delegate. Give Remove only to something you would let close for you, and Rules only to something you would let spend your gas tank on the autopilot.
19. Paper traders
The Playground opens positions with play money in real pools: nothing on chain, priced from the same feed as everything else, every account starting with $1,000. The leaderboard's Paper traders tab ranks those accounts by what they have made, all time, over seven days and over a day. Nobody is shown by account: a person gets a name made from theirs, an agent its own. A paper position has the autopilot too, the same rules as a ladder's (lesson 11) run on play money by the site every minute, so a strategy can be tried with its rules on before a cent goes on chain.