How it works
How Fold works
from launch to payout
Short lessons on where trading fees go, how a market opens and what each option on the launch page sets up. Start with the Fee Router, then follow the money
- 04
- Launchpads
- 05
- Strategies
- 10
- Max destinations
Fee Router
Every launchpad charges a creator fee on each trade and pays it to the coin's creator. On Fold the creator is not a wallet: it is a vault, an address owned by the Fold program and made for this one market
The split between buyback and burn, holders and the creator is written into the market once. The program has no instruction to change it, so neither you nor the protocol can rewrite it later
- 01
Collect
The launchpad pays each trade's creator fee into the market's vault
- 02
Protocol share
A fixed 1% goes to the protocol treasury
- 03
Split
The rest is divided by the percentages fixed at launch
- 04
Settle
Each share is bought, burned or paid out on chain
Set at launch
Percentages and payout wallets are chosen before the coin goes live
No instruction
Nothing in the program can rewrite the split, for you or for us
Readable
The split is public in the market account, the same numbers the launch page showed
Buyback and burn
The buyback share buys the coin on its bonding curve or pool, and the program burns what it bought with the token program's own burn. The supply really goes down; nothing is parked at a dead address
Buybacks run in epochs. Only the creator, the payout wallet or the keeper can run one, each run sets a floor on the fill, and the program stops it if the launchpad takes more than the buyback share
Vault balance
Buyback share
Market buy
Floor on the fill
Burn
Supply goes down
Holder rewards
The holder share stays in the vault and is divided among holders by balance each round, in SOL or the coin itself. A split can also keep part of the bought-back coins for holders instead of burning them
Each round is published as a Merkle root. Holders claim with a proof whenever they like; a claim can only be paid once, and the program never pays out more than the holder share collected
What holders need to do
Open the coin's page and claim. Unclaimed rewards keep adding up, nothing expires
Launchpads
The launchpad creates the market; Fold takes its creator fee. Raydium and Genesis both end in a Raydium CPMM pool, so one buyback serves both, and pump.fun's Mayhem mode launches like any other pump.fun coin
Fee source: pump.fun's creator fee, on the curve and on PumpSwap
Fee source: the DBC creator fee, then the creator's locked DAMM v2 position
Fee source: the pool's LP fees, from liquidity locked for good with the fee NFT in the vault
Fee source: the Raydium pool's creator fee, forwarded by Genesis
Plug in a live coin
A coin already trading on pump.fun does not need to relaunch. pump.fun's fee sharing lets a coin hand its creator fee to a list of addresses and then locks that list for good
Name a Fold vault as the only shareholder and the coin starts buying itself back from the next trade. The lock is pump.fun's own, so nobody can take the fee back afterwards, the creator included
Fee sharing
On pump.fun
Fold vault
100% of the fee
Locked
By pump.fun
Strategies
A strategy is a ready split for one goal. Every one works on every launchpad, because the router treats every creator fee the same way
Flywheel
Fees buy the coin back and burn it, fill a pool holders claim, and pay you
Buyback & burn
Most of every fee buys the coin back and burns it, shrinking supply trade by trade
Holder rewards
Most of every fee builds a pool holders claim, over a light buyback
Creator royalty
The whole creator fee pays you, like a plain launch, through a router nobody can repoint
Custom
Set exact shares for buyback, holders and you, and add up to seven more wallets
Custom allocation
Custom sets exact shares for the buyback, holders and you, and adds up to 7 extra wallets, 10 destinations in total. The router pays every one of them itself, in SOL
A second split decides what happens to the coins the buyback buys: burn them, keep them for holders, or pay part to you
Add up
The shares always total 100%, or the launch page will not continue
Checked
Every extra wallet needs a valid Solana address
Owed, not lost
A wallet too new to receive a small payment is paid in a later epoch
What nobody can change
The split, the coin and the launchpad are fixed when the market is made. The payout wallet can move itself only while the creator leaves it unlocked, and a lock is for good
The keeper divides the holder share, but the program caps every round at what the holder leg collected, so it can never publish more. Once the program is audited its upgrade authority is revoked, so its code cannot be swapped either
Fixed split
No instruction exists to change it
Capped rounds
Holder rounds never exceed what accrued
Floors
Every buyback reverts rather than fill badly
Now put it to use

