What is a bonding curve?

At launch, a bonding curve stands in for a pool or an order book. The contract holds the supply and sells it along a fixed curve. First buyers pay the least. Selling back into the curve moves the price down. No one provides liquidity. The curve is the counterparty.

pump.fun and Raydium LaunchLab both use curves, so anyone can create a token for next to nothing and trade it in the same minute. The curve only needs buyers. When it hits its target, the token graduates to a normal AMM pool.

The shape decides who wins. A steep curve pays the earliest buyers heavily, and a flatter one spreads the gains more evenly. Launchpads show progress as a percentage, which is really a countdown to graduation.

Say a curve sits at 40 percent. A wave of buyers takes it to 90 percent in a few minutes, and the price is now several times the first trade. If the buying stops, early holders selling into the curve pull the price down just as mechanically.

Also called: token bonding curve.

In Launchpad radar, LaunchLab rows get a bar with the curve's percent to migration, read straight from LaunchLab. Cashboard does not estimate it. pump.fun rows just say on curve until the token graduates. Graduated tokens from either venue get a Graduated tag.

• Launchpad radar

• Token graduation
• pump.fun
• Raydium LaunchLab
• Memecoin launchpad
• Fully diluted valuation