How it works in 90 seconds
Everything else in these docs hangs off this page. If you read one thing before poking around the app, read this: the complete life of a token, from the transaction that creates it to the open market it ends up on, in five steps.
The gist
You create a token in a single transaction. It trades immediately on a bonding curve - a formula, not an order book - where the price is decided by how much has been bought, not by a market maker. Once enough has been bought, the token graduates: the raised funds and the reserved supply are deposited into a real DEX pool whose liquidity is locked for good, and the token trades there like any other from then on. Every trade pays a fee, and most of it goes to the token’s creator.
No liquidity to seed, no code to write, no owner keys left behind. That is the whole product; the rest is detail.
The five steps
- Launch. One transaction deploys the token, opens its curve, and can fold in an atomic first buy for the creator (capped at
2%of supply). Name, ticker, supply and every economic setting are fixed at this moment, permanently - nobody, not even Degenland, can change them later. See Launching a token. - Bonding. The token trades against the curve. Price is deterministic: every buy moves it up, every sell moves it down, and it depends only on how much has been bought. An optional anti-sniper cap limits any one wallet to
2%of supply during this phase. - Completion. The curve has a hard target - by default it fills after
4 ETHof net buying. The buy that reaches the target is charged only what the curve still needs; anything extra is refunded in the same transaction. - Graduation. A keeper moves the raised funds plus the reserved (~
26.7%) supply into a full-range DEX position. That position is locked in the launchpad forever - its trading fees can be collected, but the liquidity can never be withdrawn - and the token’s owner powers are renounced at the same moment. See Graduation. - Open market. From here the token trades on the chain’s DEX like any other token. The creator keeps earning from the locked position’s trading fees. The curve is gone for good - that is the point of graduating.
On Solana a native-SOL launch runs the same curve idea on a Meteora engine, but you can also open a custom-pair pool (Raydium CLMM) that trades from block one with no curve and no graduation. Same destination, no bonding phase. See What works where.
Where the money goes
Two fees, and both are disclosed up front. A flat launch fee (0.002 ETH) to create the token, and a per-trade swap fee the creator fixes at launch (0.5%-3%, default 1%), split three ways between the platform treasury, the creator, and the trader’s referrer. The creator keeps the majority share and can take it in the native coin, burn it, route it to stakers, or - on Robinhood Chain, once live - convert it to tokenized stock. The full arithmetic is in Fees & earnings.
Across five chains
The story above is identical on every chain - it is written once because it does not change per chain. What does change is the graduation venue and a few chain-specific perks:
- Robinhood Chain - tokenized equities settle as ordinary tokens, which is what makes the stock-native features possible.
- BNB Smart Chain - reach and a gold-pairing thesis; graduates on PancakeSwap.
- Base - canonical Uniswap V4; tokens graduate straight into a hooked pool.
- Ronin - gaming-native, graduates on Katana. Coming soon.
- Solana - Meteora curves, Raydium custom pairs, and reward tokens that tax every transfer.
The one page that answers “can I do this on the chain I picked?” is What works where, and what is exercisable today is on Status & availability.
Read next
- The mechanics → The bonding curve and Graduation
- Creating one → Launching a token · Every launch option
- Who earns what → Fees & earnings
- What’s actually live → Status & availability
- Quick answers → FAQ · Glossary