Editing Bonding curve

**Bonding curve** is a pricing rule in which a smart contract sells a token at a price set by a formula of how much supply has already been sold, so buyers trade against the contract rather than against a pool funded by the creator.[^1] It is the default launch mechanism for [[Solana]] memecoins on [[pump.fun]] and similar launchpads.

## History
Bancor's "smart tokens", launched in 2017, held reserves of other tokens and priced issuance against them; Bancor's token sale raised about $153 million in June 2017.[^2] pump.fun applied a curve to memecoin creation so that creators need no starting liquidity.[^1] Other Solana launchpads followed: [[LetsBonk]] passed pump.fun's share of launchpad deployments in July 2025,[^3] and [[Meteora]] offers a permissionless Dynamic Bonding Curve whose launches graduate into its DAMM pools when a quote-token threshold is reached.[^4]

## How it works
pump.fun's program documentation describes a curve "based on Uniswap V2" that uses synthetic reserves.[^1] Each coin has a total supply of 1 billion tokens; the curve starts with virtual reserves of 30 SOL and 1.073 billion tokens, of which 793.1 million are real tokens for sale.[^1] A buy adds SOL to and removes tokens from both the virtual and real reserves, and a sell reverses this, so the price rises as tokens are bought; the documented fee is 1% on buys and sells.[^1] Under the constant-product rule, these parameters imply about 85 SOL raised when the curve sells out.[^1]

When real token reserves reach zero the curve is marked complete and stops trading; anyone can then trigger migration of the liquidity to PumpSwap, where the LP tokens are burned.[^1] Traders call this "graduating". Few coins do: a study of Q4 2024 found fewer than 2% of Solana memecoin launches reached a major decentralised exchange.[^5]

## Criticism
Solidus Labs argued that pump.fun's curve favours creators, because price rises with every purchase and late buyers take the losses when early holders sell.[^6] Wallets that buy in the first blocks through [[Sniping]] or [[Bundling]] capture the cheapest part of the curve, a frequent concern in the [[Trenches|trenches]].

## Timeline
- 2017-06: Bancor's token sale raises about $153 million[^2]
- 2025-07: LetsBonk passes pump.fun in share of Solana launchpad deployments[^3]

## See also
- [[Raydium]]
- [[SunPump]]
- [[Fomo]]
- [[Jupiter]]
- [[Hyperliquid]]
- [[Launch Coin]]
- [[Alon Cohen]]
- [[Ben Chow]]

## References
1. [Pump program README](https://github.com/pump-fun/pump-public-docs/blob/main/docs/PUMP_PROGRAM_README.md), pump.fun (GitHub), n.d.
2. [Bancor raises $153m from ICO in less than three hours](https://fintech.global/2017/06/14/bancor-raises-153m-from-ico-in-less-than-three-hours/), FinTech Global, 2017-06-14
3. [Pump.fun Revenue Plummets as Meme Coin Traders Tap Other Launchpads](https://decrypt.co/332091/pump-fun-revenue-plummets-meme-coin-traders-tap-launchpads), Decrypt, 2025-07-28
4. [Dynamic Bonding Curve](https://docs.meteora.ag/core-products/dbc), Meteora, n.d.
5. [The Memecoin Phenomenon: An In-Depth Study of Solana's Blockchain Trends](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.11850), arXiv, 2025-12
6. [The 2025 Rug Pull Report: Rug Pulls and Pump-and-Dumps on Solana](https://www.soliduslabs.com/reports/solana-rug-pulls-pump-dumps-crypto-compliance), Solidus Labs, 2025-05