What is a bonding curve launch?
A bonding curve is a contract that sells a new token at a price set by formula. There is no order book and no pool at the start. Each buy pushes the price up for the next buyer, and each sell moves it back down. When enough has been bought, the curve closes and the token graduates to a normal trading pool.
Launchpads use curves because they let anyone create a token for very little and start trading at once, without putting up liquidity first. On Solana the best known is pump.fun, and on Robinhood Chain it is Pons. NAVI also recognises Raydium LaunchLab, letsbonk.fun, Meteora's dynamic bonding curve, Moonshot, Moonit and boop.fun as curve venues on Solana. For a short definition, see the bonding curve glossary entry.
How does a bonding curve set the price?
pump.fun's curve uses the constant product rule, the same x times y equals k formula as a basic AMM pool, applied to reserves that include a virtual amount. The virtual part sets a starting price without anyone depositing real money.
The parameters NAVI read from pump.fun's on-chain settings on 28 September 2026:
- Total supply: 1 billion tokens.
- Sellable on the curve: 793.1 million. The other 206.9 million are held back for the pool the token migrates to.
- Virtual reserves at launch: 30 SOL and 1.073 billion tokens.
Worked through the formula (our arithmetic, before fees), those numbers mean the curve completes after about 85 SOL of real buying, and the last token sold costs roughly 15 times the first. The price is only about two and a half times its starting level when half the sellable tokens are gone, so most of the rise comes late in the curve. That arithmetic is a big part of why bots race to buy in the opening seconds.
Pons on Robinhood Chain also starts each ETH-quoted curve with a virtual reserve, 1.68 ETH, and graduates once the curve has taken in 4.2 ETH. NAVI has not verified Pons's exact pricing formula, so we do not work through its price path here.
What happens when a curve graduates?
Graduation moves the token from the curve to a normal pool, and the two launchpads do it differently:
- pump.fun: when all 793.1 million sellable tokens have been bought, the curve is complete and the token migrates to a PumpSwap pool, seeded with the SOL the curve collected and the tokens held back.
- Pons: when an ETH-quoted curve has taken in 4.2 ETH, the curve is swept and the proceeds seed a Uniswap v4 pool that uses the Pons hook. The liquidity position is held by the Pons launch locker.
After graduation the token behaves like any other pool-traded token, and the usual checks apply: liquidity, LP status and who holds the supply. How to track the pump.fun token lifecycle covers the stages on Solana, and Pons launchpad explained covers Pons.
How often do bonding curve tokens graduate?
Rarely. NAVI counted 51,046 Pons V2 launches between 23 and 30 September 2026 and 567 graduations, about 1.1%. pump.fun's graduation rate has historically been reported at around 1%, for example by Cryptopolitan. The base rate matters more than any single chart: a new curve token is far more likely to fade on the curve than to reach a pool.
Graduation is not a finish line either. A token that graduates in seconds may simply have been bought out by a few wallets, and many graduated tokens fall hard afterwards. The Pons graduation rate post has NAVI's full count and method.
What risks come from the launch design?
The curve itself is mechanical and public. The risks come from who buys, and when:
- Snipers: because the first tokens are the cheapest, bots buy in the opening seconds and sell into later buyers. See snipers.
- Bundled buying: one operator buys through many wallets so that ownership looks spread out. On Solana, NAVI's bubble map joins wallets that sent the token to each other or were funded by the same wallet.
- Exempt wallets on Pons: Pons V2 charges a 99% anti-bot tax on early buys, but creators can exempt chosen wallets, which a documented rug ring used to take most of the supply.
- Creator taxes: a Pons creator can add a tax of up to 10% on top of the 1% curve fee.
- Copycats: popular names are relaunched within minutes. Only the contract address identifies a token.
How should a trader read a bonding curve token?
Four things tell you most of what you need:
- Curve progress: how far the curve is towards completion. Low progress means each buy moves the price a lot. High progress means you are buying the expensive end.
- Who bought first: the opening transactions show whether a few wallets took most of the supply cheaply.
- Holder spread outside the curve: early on the curve itself holds most of the supply, so measure concentration among real wallets only.
- Progress direction: a curve losing progress means sellers are taking money back out.
On NAVI, paste a pump.fun token's address into the new token scanner to see how far it is through bonding, its chart and its rug check.
On Robinhood Chain, new Pons launches lists curves with their progress towards 4.2 ETH and a risk badge, and how to vet new Pons tokens turns these checks into a step-by-step list.
Where do you start on NAVI?
Use the new token scanner for fresh Solana launches, check any token with the rug check before you buy, and read pump.fun risk management before you trade curve tokens at all. Comparing launchpads? Pons vs pump.fun sets them side by side.
Most curve tokens go to zero, so decide what you can lose before you buy. pump.fun and Pons are both unavailable in the UK, and you should never use a VPN to get around a regional block. NAVI is not affiliated with either launchpad. Not financial advice.