How to Create a Liquidity Pool on SUI: Guide for Project Creators
A liquidity pool on SUI is a token pair deposited on a DEX like Cetus, Turbos, or Aftermath that lets other traders buy and sell your token without needing a direct counterparty. No pool, no movement for your token.
In this guide you’ll see exactly what a liquidity pool is, which DEX you can create one on inside the SUI ecosystem, how much it costs, the risks involved (slippage, impermanent loss), and the 4 steps to set one up with no coding using the Smithii tool.
The full process takes under 3 minutes, but understanding what you’re doing and why cuts down on expensive mistakes before and after launch. Let’s break it down.
What a liquidity pool on SUI is
A liquidity pool is a smart contract holding two paired tokens (for example, your token and native SUI or a stablecoin) that acts as the automatic counterparty for any buy or sell on a DEX. Instead of the traditional order book model, where you need someone willing to buy at the same price you’re selling, a liquidity pool uses an AMM (Automated Market Maker) model that prices trades based on the ratio between the two tokens in the pair.
On SUI, most of the liquidity is concentrated on Cetus, which uses the concentrated liquidity model (similar to Uniswap v3) and lets liquidity providers define specific price ranges instead of covering the full curve. For your token, that means less capital needed to get solid market depth in the range where trading actually happens.
Why you need a liquidity pool for your token on SUI
If you don’t have a SUI token created yet, read how to create a token on SUI first. Once you have the token, without a liquidity pool nobody can buy or sell it on a DEX: the token exists on-chain but has no market.
Creating the pool gets you three things at once:
- You list your token on a DEX like Cetus so it shows up on screeners and trackers.
- You enable instant buying and selling for holders and new buyers.
- You earn fee income from every transaction that routes through the pool, in proportion to the share you contribute as a liquidity provider.
How to create a liquidity pool on SUI: step by step
You don’t need to know how to code to launch a liquidity pool on SUI. The SUI Liquidity Pool Creator by Smithii lets you do it in 4 steps that take under 3 minutes.
- Open the SUI Liquidity Pool Creator and connect a wallet compatible with SUI (Sui Wallet, Suiet, Phantom with the SUI extension).
- Select the token pair: “Base Token” is your new token, “Quote Token” is the quote asset (native SUI or a stablecoin like USDC).
- Set the initial price and the fee tier: the initial price defines the launch valuation; the fee tier available on Cetus ranges from 0.01% to 2% (tiers 0.01%, 0.05%, 0.1%, 0.25%, 1%, and 2%) and is the fee you’ll earn on every trade that routes through the pool.
- Hit «Create Liquidity Pool», sign the transaction with your wallet, and the pool goes live on Cetus. From that moment your token shows up on screeners and is tradable on the DEX.
That’s it. The liquidity pool is created on Cetus with no coding and no manual contract deployment. The tool handles the deployment on the DEX and the pair configuration.
DEX where to create a liquidity pool on SUI: Cetus, Turbos, and alternatives
Cetus is the leading DEX in the SUI ecosystem by TVL and volume, which makes it the default option for listing a new token: more existing liquidity means better discovery and less slippage for your buyers. The no-code tool by Smithii deploys directly on Cetus.
Before picking a DEX, it’s worth comparing the three main ones in the SUI ecosystem by pool model, native token, and differentiating features.
| DEX | Pool model | Native Token | Additional products on the platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cetus | CLMM (concentrated liquidity) with multiple fee tiers | CETUS / xCETUS | Aggregator swap, DCA, limit orders, farming, and token launchpad |
| Turbos Finance | CLMM (concentrated liquidity) | TURBOS | Spot trading, perpetuals, and margin trading |
| Aftermath Finance | Multi-token pools (up to 8 assets) and stableswap | Not documented on the official site | Smart router aggregator, perpetuals, DCA, limit orders, and liquid staking (afSUI) |
For most new tokens on SUI, Cetus is still the obvious pick because it concentrates discovery flow and shows up first on aggregators and screeners.
Either way, the flow inside SUI Liquidity Pool Creator is the same: connect wallet, set Base Token and Quote Token, decide how many coins go to liquidity, pick a fee tier and hit «Create Liquidity Pool».
What to weigh before creating a liquidity pool: slippage, impermanent loss and fees
Before spinning up the pool, there are three concepts worth understanding, since they affect both the creator and the traders who route through your token.
- Slippage: the gap between the expected price of a trade and the actual price it executes at. In thin pools, a large buy moves the price noticeably and the buyer gets fewer tokens than expected. The more liquidity you seed, the less slippage your buyers eat.
- Impermanent loss: the unrealized loss a liquidity provider takes when the price ratio between the two tokens in the pair drifts significantly from the deposit point. If your token rips against SUI or a stablecoin, pulling liquidity later is worth less in terms of one of the assets than if you had simply held them. It only crystallizes once you withdraw, hence the “impermanent”.
- Fee tier: Cetus offers six tiers (0.01%, 0.05%, 0.1%, 0.25%, 1% and 2%). The low tiers (0.01% to 0.1%) make sense for stable pairs with tight spreads; the high tiers (1% or 2%) are the usual pick for new tokens with high volatility, since they offset the impermanent loss risk with fatter fees per trade.
The other critical point: the pool launches with the full initial supply you contribute on the Base Token side. Put in too little and the price swings on tiny volume, leaving the token wide open to manipulation. Put in too much and you starve real buyers of circulating supply. There is no magic number; it depends on the free float you plan and the marketing you have lined up afterward.
How much it costs to create a liquidity pool on SUI
With the Smithii tool the fixed creation cost is 5 SUI, plus SUI network gas fees (negligible, usually fractions of a cent) and whatever capital you seed as initial liquidity on the pair. For how much liquidity to add at launch, we published a dedicated guide with a reference table: how much liquidity you should add to your token.
How a liquidity pool makes money: fees and yield
As a liquidity provider in your own pool, every buy or sell that routes through it pays the fee for the tier you chose, and that fee gets split among the providers in proportion to their share. In practice, if you are the only provider, you collect 100% of the fees. As other providers come in (which happens if your token gains traction), your share drops but total volume can climb enough to make up for it.
The upside for the creator is not just fees: if the token appreciates, the SUI or stablecoin on the other side of the pair has been swapped for your token at lower prices along the way, and the LP position captures part of that upside. The trade-off is the impermanent loss mentioned above. For creators who keep liquidity in place long term and have designed tokenomics well, it usually pays off.
Marketing strategy after launching the liquidity pool
A pool without traffic does not generate fees. Once the liquidity pool is live, the next step is pulling in buyers: one proven option is running an airdrop, distributing part of the supply to wallets likely to care, which sparks early trades and builds community. If the pool ties into a well-narrated meme coin launch on SUI, the combo works especially well.
If you want to go deeper on airdrop execution, we have a dedicated guide on how to run an airdrop on SUI.
FAQ on liquidity pools on SUI
Do I need technical knowledge to create a liquidity pool on SUI?
No. With the Smithii tool the process is no-code: connect wallet, define the two tokens in the pair, set the initial price and fee tier, and sign the transaction. No deploying contracts by hand, no CLIs.
Which wallet do I need to create a pool on Cetus?
Any wallet compatible with SUI: Sui Wallet, Suiet, OKX Wallet or Phantom with its SUI extension. We recommend Sui Wallet or Suiet for compatibility and native ecosystem feature support.
Can I withdraw the liquidity after creating the pool?
Yes. As a liquidity provider you keep the LP position that represents your contribution and can withdraw fully or partially whenever you want from the Cetus dashboard. Keep in mind that withdrawing locks in the impermanent loss if prices have moved since the deposit.
What happens if the token price drops a lot after the pool is created?
The pool keeps working normally and traders can still buy and sell. For you as LP, a drop means you are “buying” your own token at lower prices with the SUI or stablecoin from the pair, which increases your exposure to the token. It is part of the risk of providing liquidity to a volatile pair.
Is Cetus the only DEX on SUI?
No, but it is dominant by volume. The main alternatives are Turbos Finance and Aftermath Finance. For listing a new token, Cetus concentrates the discovery flow, which is why it remains the default pick for most launches.
Conclusion
Creating a liquidity pool on SUI is a relatively simple technical step, but understanding the AMM model, impermanent loss and fee tiers is what separates a pool that generates sustained income for the creator from one that drains in the first market cycle. With the Smithii tool the deployment wraps up in 4 steps on Cetus, and the concepts above are the same ones that apply on any DEX using an AMM model.
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Industrial Engineer turned Solana trader. Marketing at Smithii and contributor to the $SHRIMP memecoin launch.
