Trading and pricing

Before it graduates, a token does not trade against other people's orders. It trades against a bonding curve, a formula held by the contract that sets a price from how much has been bought so far.

There is no order book, no waiting to be listed, and no counterparty. You buy from the curve and you sell back to it, and the price moves with every trade.

The words on the page

Price. What one token costs right now, at the current point on the curve.

Market cap. Price multiplied by circulating supply.

FDV. Price multiplied by the full token supply.

Curve progress. How much of the curve's 793,100,000 token allocation has been bought, from 0% to 100%. At 100% the curve has sold out and the token graduates. The tokens sold and remaining are shown underneath.

Price impact. How far your own trade moves the price. Bigger trades move it further, so the last token you buy costs more than the first. Across the whole curve the price rises about 14.7 times from first buy to last.

Slippage. The most price movement you will accept between pressing the button and the transaction landing. If the price moves more than that, the trade reverts instead of filling at a worse price.

Buying

Open any token and use the Buy side of the panel on the right. You can buy two ways.

By ETH amount. Enter the ETH you want to spend, or use the shortcuts. Your balance is shown above the field and turns red if you enter more than you have.

By token amount. Switch the unit and type the number of tokens you want. The contract charges only what they actually cost and refunds the rest. A Fill curve chip fills in exactly what is left on the curve, if you want to be the one who graduates it.

You receive shows the live quote. Min received shows the worst outcome your slippage setting allows, and that number is what the contract actually enforces. The panel also shows what share of total supply your buy represents.

Default slippage on the curve is 0.5%. Change it from the settings pill next to the Buy/Sell switch. Presets are 0.5%, 1% and 3%, or type your own between 0.1 and 100.

Buys near the end of the curve are clamped, not rejected

If you try to buy more than the curve has left, the contract fills exactly the remainder and refunds the difference. Your transaction succeeds; you simply get the tail of the curve and your change back. The panel tells you when this is about to happen.

Selling

Switch to Sell. Enter a token amount or use the 25%, 50%, 75% and Max shortcuts.

Selling takes two transactions the first time: an approval that lets the contract move that token on your behalf, then the sell itself. The app runs them back to back, so the button reads Approve, then continues into the sell once the approval confirms. Later sells of the same token need only one.

The opening window

For the first couple of blocks after a launch, in practice something like half a minute, buying is restricted:

• In the launch block, only the creator's buy goes through. Everyone else's reverts.
• For the rest of the window, no wallet may hold more than 5% of supply or buy more than 5.5% of supply cumulatively. The creator is capped too, by the same rules.
• After the window the limits are gone permanently.

Selling and wallet-to-wallet transfers are never restricted, at any point.

If a buy in the first moments of a launch reverts, this is almost always why. Wait a few seconds and try a smaller amount.

Trading does not need an account

A connected wallet is enough. You do not need to sign in to buy or sell.

When a trade fails

Common reasons, in plain terms:

• Rejected in your wallet. You dismissed the confirmation. Nothing happened.
• Slippage check failed. The price moved more than your tolerance while the transaction was pending. Retry, or raise slippage slightly.
• Trading stopped. The token just sold out its curve and is waiting to graduate. Nobody can buy or sell until it does. See Graduation.
• Blocked at launch. You tried to buy inside the opening window and hit the anti-snipe cap, or you were not the creator in the launch block.
• Not enough ETH. Remember gas as well as the trade amount.

A cost worth internalising

Every trade takes 1%. Buying and immediately selling always loses money, no matter which way the price moved in between. The round trip is not free.

After graduation

The trade panel routes through the Uniswap V3 pool instead of the curve. Default slippage becomes 1%, a Pool reserves card replaces the curve bar, and the fee stays at 1%, though Uniswap keeps a sixth of it before Moltion's split. See Fees and burns.