Whirlpool is the name for Orca's concentrated liquidity pool architecture on Solana. Liquidity providers in Whirlpool positions specify a price range within which their capital is active, earning fees only while the token price trades within that range.

Concentrated liquidity in Whirlpools allows providers to earn higher fees on the same capital compared to traditional full-range AMMs, because capital is deployed more efficiently. However, positions outside the active range earn nothing and may experience impermanent loss.

Whirlpool positions are represented as NFT-like position tokens rather than fungible LP tokens. These position tokens can be managed and transferred independently.