Converting a price to an initializable tick

Last modified: April 16, 2026

A tick is "initializable" if it is evenly divisible by the pool's tick spacing.¹ The following procedure converts a target price into the nearest valid tick.

1. Express the price as a ratio in smallest units

Use 1 unit of token1 in wei and the target price formatted in token0's smallest decimals.

TickLow_USDC = 1000          (target: 1,000 USDC per CTN)
TickLowFormatted = TickLow_USDC * 10^(decimals of token0)

For USDC (token0, 6 decimals): TickLowFormatted = 1,000,000,000.

2. Compute the sqrtPrice ratio²

Token1ReserveRatio = 1000000000000000000   (1 CTN in wei)
Token0ReserveRatio = 1000000000            (1,000 USDC in 6-decimal units)
 
sqrtPriceRatio = Token1ReserveRatio / Token0ReserveRatio

3. Derive the tick

tickForPrice = floor(log(sqrtPriceRatio) / log(1.0001))

For this example the result is approximately 207,243.

4. Snap to the pool's tick spacing

Round down to the nearest multiple of the tick spacing:

closestLowTick = floor(tick / tickSpacing) * tickSpacing

For the upper bound, take the ceiling instead:

closestHighTick = ceil(tick / tickSpacing) * tickSpacing

This gives the tightest initializable range that contains the target price.