Fees & Revenue
There are four moments where fees happen: creating a token, trading on the curve, graduating, and swapping after graduation. Here's what each one costs and where the money goes.
Where every fee goes
1. Creating a token
Free. Deploying a token costs only gas.
2. Trading on the bonding curve
Every buy and sell on the curve pays a 1.5% fee in ETH, and it's split the same way every time:
| Slice | Share | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | 75% | The creator - or the address they routed their fees to |
| Protocol | 25% | The protocol |
This is the part most launchpads keep entirely. On Frontier the creator earns from the very first buy, long before graduation is in sight.
If you were referred to Frontier, your referrer earns a slice too - taken out of the protocol's 25%, never out of the creator's share and never on top of your trade:
| Your referrer earns | Their referrer earns | |
|---|---|---|
| You weren't referred | - | - |
| You were referred | 10% of the fee | - |
| Your referrer was also referred | 10% of the fee | 1% of the fee |
You pay the same 1.5% either way. See Referrals.
3. Graduation
A one-time fee, taken from the ETH raised, in the moment the token graduates:
| Slice | Share | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Creator fee | 5% | The creator - or whatever address they routed their fees to |
| Everything else | ~95% | The token's locked Uniswap liquidity |
At today's numbers, that's roughly $450 to the creator and $8.5K into liquidity (at ETH ≈ $2,000).
4. Swapping after graduation
Swaps on a graduated token pay the dynamic fee - 0.30% in calm markets, up to 1.20% in volatile ones. Two separate things then happen to it, and they're easy to mix up.
First: the swap fee is split three ways
This happens on every single trade, automatically:
| Slice | Share | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Liquidity | 70% | Whoever is providing liquidity to the pool |
| Vault + creator | 22.5% | The token's Staking Vault and its creator, split by the ratio the creator chose at launch |
| Protocol | 7.5% | The protocol |
A token without a staking vault sends the whole 22.5% to its creator.
Then: the POL LP fees
That 70% goes to liquidity providers - and for a Frontier token, the biggest provider is the position seeded at graduation, which is locked forever and belongs to the protocol. That makes it protocol-owned liquidity, or POL, and what it earns is what the app calls POL LP fees. It's collected periodically and split again:
| Slice | Share | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | 75% | The creator |
| Protocol | 25% | The protocol |
This second split only applies to the graduation position. If you add your own liquidity to a graduated token's pool, you keep your share of the 70% like on any Uniswap pool - the creator earns nothing from it.
Who earns what, in one table
| What they pay | What they earn | |
|---|---|---|
| Trader | 1.5% on curve trades; 0.30-1.20% on swaps after graduation | - |
| Creator | Just gas to launch | 75% of every curve trading fee + 5% of the raise at graduation + a share of every swap fee, forever |
| Staker | Nothing - just stakes the token | The vault's share of swap fees, paid in the token and in ETH |
| Referrer | - | 10% of the trading fee on every trade their referees ever make |
| Protocol | - | 25% of curve fees, referral rewards included, plus its slices of swap fees |
The through-line: fees follow activity. A token that trades hard pays its creator and its stakers continuously - there are no emissions, no inflation, and nothing anyone has to claim from an admin.