Trading phases
A coin created on a bonding curve trades in two venues over its life. The switch between them happens once, automatically, and is visible on the coin's page.
A coin whose creator seeded its pool directly skips the first venue entirely: it is in its Uniswap V4 pool from the block that created it, with no curve and no graduation.
| Bonding curve | Uniswap V4 pool | |
|---|---|---|
| Price comes from | a formula, moved by each trade | liquidity in the pool, like any Uniswap market |
| Counterparty | the curve itself, always available | the pool's liquidity |
| Fee | 1.5%, identical on every coin | set by the creator at launch, and readable on the coin's page |
| Transfers between wallets | blocked | allowed |
| Ends when | the curve fills | never |
On the curve
The price is a published formula rather than an order book. Each buy moves it up, each sell moves it down, and a trade is always possible because there is no counterparty to find. What a coin's curve looks like is known before its first trade, since the creator set it at creation.
Transfers are blocked during this phase so supply cannot be moved between wallets to fake activity or trade around the curve privately. Buying and selling on the curve is unaffected.
See The bonding curve.
Graduation
The buy that fills the curve moves the coin to its pool in the same transaction. Nothing is manual and nothing waits.
What matters for a trader is where the money goes: all the ETH raised during the curve, minus the creator's 5% fee, becomes the pool's liquidity, and that liquidity is locked forever. It is placed in a position held by a contract with no withdrawal function, so nobody — creator, team, anyone — can take it back out. Only the fees it earns are ever collected.
That is what a graduated coin's depth rests on, and it is the reason there is no window during which someone holds the raise. See Graduation.
In the pool
Trading continues on a standard Uniswap V4 market, with a fee that follows whatever the creator configured. The liquidity seeded at graduation is locked permanently, which is what a graduated coin's depth rests on.
See The pool.
Reading which phase a coin is in
The coin page shows a bonding progress bar while the coin is on its curve, with the ETH still needed to fill it. At 100% the coin has graduated and the same page shows pool data instead. The Discover page can filter to graduated coins directly.