Graduation

At 80% sold, the curve closes and a Uniswap v4 pool opens in its place.

The trigger

When 80% of the supply has been sold, the curve stops trading. Every further buy and sell against it reverts, and the launch waits to be moved into a pool.

Moving it is a separate transaction that anyone may send. Opening a pool is heavy and can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the trade that finished the curve — a pairing asset that has started restricting transfers, most obviously — and a buy that reverted because graduation failed would be a worse outcome than a launch that graduates a block later. Because it is permissionless, a launch cannot be stranded by us failing to act.

What the pool opens as

At the price the curve ended on. No gap between the last curve trade and the first pool trade.
Seeded with everything. The remaining 20% of supply and the whole of what the curve raised.
Across the full range. One position spanning every tick, so there is liquidity at any price the token ever reaches.
With a zero LP fee. The launch’s own fee is the only one a trader pays; nothing accrues to the position, so nothing is ever stranded in it uncollected.
With our hook attached, which is what collects that fee. See Fees.

The liquidity cannot be removed

The position is added by a contract that has no withdrawal function anywhere in it. Not a disabled one, not one behind a timelock — there is no code that can remove the liquidity, so nobody can: not the creator, not a holder, and not us.

This is a stronger guarantee than the usual arrangement, where liquidity is held as a transferable position and that position is locked in another contract. There is nothing to transfer and no lock to expire.

Locked liquidity means the pool cannot be pulled out from under a token. It does not mean the token holds its price. A launch with permanently locked liquidity can still go to approximately zero, and most do.

After graduation

Trading moves to the pool. Our router is what the interface trades through.
Fees continue at the same rate, collected by the hook and reaching the same recipients.
Dividends continue, and the new pool is registered as an address that holds supply for other people so it never earns them.
Prices stop being exactly quotable. See Trading.