Ponzunomics

A Ponzu project is a closed stack: one token, one presale, one launcher, one distributor. The recipe clones every contract the project will use and wires them before the transaction ends. Until graduation, circulating supply is zero. 31% of supply is minted to the Launcher, so the pool can be registered without being seeded. The remainder is sold through an auction or a curve, then claimed once under diamond-hand vesting. Swap fees and forfeits are paid to the Distributor, which splits them among Presale, Farm, and Contributors by locked LP.

One rule runs through every mechanism: a position may exit early, and the remainder stays with whoever is still in. A pre-launch refund keeps 10% in the Presale. An early vest claim forfeits unvested tokens. An early farm exit forfeits unearned LP. Nothing is minted to fund those payments.

After craft, vesting duration, the launcher allocation, and the pricing function have no setter. What remains before launch is a short list: when an auction opens, who may buy, and where leftover presale allocation is assigned. At graduation, token distribution no longer depends on further founder actions.

Nine named entities. Later sections use these words only — not aliases, not overlapping metaphors.

A project is not a token plus later wiring. The recipe clones the token, presale, launcher, vault, distributor, farm (if enabled), membership vault, and pricing strategy, and links them before the call returns. Either the full stack exists, or none of it does.

Until graduation, circulating supply is zero.

Supply is 1,000,000, minted once. The Launcher receives a fixed 31% (310,000). Presale, treasury, and team must sum with that 31% to the full supply; raising team or treasury reduces the presale, never the launcher. Those tokens are held by the contracts. Transfers from the project treasury revert until launch.

• Before launch, the founder may. Schedule an auction. Restrict who can buy. Assign leftover presale allocation (team vault, airdrips, membership sale) on a deferred auction. Raise the minimum raise — never lower it.
• The founder may not. Change vesting, the 31% launcher allocation, or the pricing function. Mint. Withdraw launcher inventory. Transfer treasury tokens to a wallet. Seed or trade the pool before graduation.

At craft, 310,000 tokens are minted to the Launcher. The same transaction registers an empty pool with the hook. Only that launcher may initialize the pool. External liquidity is rejected.

Until graduation the pool has no reserves, and no tokens are circulating, so there is nothing to frontrun. When the presale is ready, the Launcher initializes the pool at the raise-implied price, deposits its full inventory against the raised ETH, and locks 100% of the minted LP: 69% credited to Presale, the residual ~31% to Contributors. The Farm receives none. There is no withdraw.

The pool is registered empty. Initialize and seed are the same transaction.

The Presale is one contract in either mode: ETH in, a bottle NFT out, 90% refunds until launch, then diamond-hand vesting. Before launch a buyer cannot sell tokens at a higher price; they can only refund. The 10% retained on a refund stays in the Presale. The choice is how price is discovered.

Auction

A new token has no market price, so the auction does not quote one. A target raise starts high and falls with time. Each contribution reduces remaining time. When raised ETH meets the live target (and the minimum raise is met), every bottle settles at the same clearing price.

Early arrival is not a cheaper price. It is higher claim weight. ETH at the open earns up to 5×, decaying to 1× by the close. That weight is the bottle’s share of the presale allocation at settlement, and later of the Presale’s Distributor allocation.

Curve

The other mode is a rising line. Price starts at $p_0$ and climbs to $p_1$ as tokens sell. Cost of a fill is the area under that line — a trapezoid: the average of entry and exit price, times tokens bought.

On a rising line, the first fill is the cheapest, so the first hour of a curve taxes ETH sent. Only the remainder buys tokens. At graduation, on every launch, the swap fee opens at 20% and falls to 1% over the first hour of trading. Both amounts are paid to the Distributor.

After launch, a bottle may claim at any time, and only once. Tokens that have linearly vested by that moment transfer to the holder. The unvested remainder is forfeited to the Distributor. Claim on day one of a ten-day vest and the bottle keeps one tenth; wait the full duration and it keeps its full allocation, plus whatever early claims forfeited.

ETH may be refunded before launch. Tokens may be claimed once after it.

A 90% refund is available until launch. The bottle remains transferable after launch. The unvested remainder cannot be sold into the pool. At graduation the Presale is vesting and the Launcher inventory is locked LP, so circulating supply at the open is approximately zero.

Extra assignment — a team vault, airdrips, a membership sale — is taken from the presale allocation, never from the launcher’s 31%. It exists only as a phase before the public sale, and only a deferred auction has that phase. A curve begins at craft; it has no before. At launch the window closes.

Team vault

A deferred auction with unused presale allocation may assign a slice to a team vault. That slice cannot push the public presale below 39%. Tokens mint into the vault, not a wallet.

Unlock is a TWAP ladder against launch price: 5×, 10×, 20×, 50×, 100×. Clearing the nth rung entitles the recipient to n/5 of everything the vault has received. Nothing unlocks for the first 30 days, and a rung clears only if the pool traded through that price.

Airdrips

The recipe pre-approves the drop and market contracts to spend the project token. That is the only path. Tokens those contracts receive vest from the same launch timestamp, on the same diamond-hand terms as the Presale. An airdrip recipient cannot sell before a paying bottle can.

Swap fees, unvested token forfeits, and early farm-exit LP are paid to the Distributor. It has no admin. On each call it recomputes weights from locked LP.

Locked LP is the unit of weight. Genesis LP (Presale + Contributors) is treated as a permanent lock, multiplier 10×. Farm stake weighs by the lock chosen at deposit. The Farm has no genesis LP; its weight starts at zero and grows as LP is staked and as early exits forfeit LP into it.

Fees are charged on the input token, so buys pay ETH into the Distributor and sells pay project tokens. Holders can withdraw ETH without selling tokens.

Claiming vested tokens zeroes that bottle’s Presale weight in the Distributor. The Presale’s remaining weight decays with claimed claim-weight $C$ against active claim-weight $D$. The decay is quadratic: slow while few bottles have claimed, steep as the last bottles claim, so a handful of early claims do not empty the Presale allocation.

The two assets are routed differently. ETH that leaves the Presale allocation is paid to Contributors. Project tokens that leave are paid to the Farm. Contributors are never paid the project token through the Distributor.

ETH to Contributors. Tokens to the Farm.

The Farm does not mint. It pays from the Distributor and from LP forfeited by early unstakes. If there is no trading and no early exit, the Farm pays nothing.

Lock duration at deposit sets weight: just over 1× at seven days, 5× at four years, 10× if permanent. Permanent LP cannot be withdrawn. Project-token rewards on a timed lock are claimable once; ETH is claimable as it accrues. Unstaking before the lock ends returns LP earned on the clock; the remainder stays in the Farm.

Membership is a fixed supply of points minted at craft, held on MemberCards. Those points are the claim on the Contributors allocation — the ~31% of genesis LP that is not credited to Presale. A card holder receives Contributors’ ETH payments from the Distributor for as long as the pool trades.

The point supply exists at craft. A deferred auction can assign membership before the public sale. After launch the points keep earning ETH; they do not vest into circulating tokens. Contributors are not paid the project token through the Distributor.

Launch parameters are not votable. Operator control may be handed to futarchy, opt-in at craft. After that the governor can move assets the project already holds, or rotate itself. A proposal opens a market; traders price pass against fail; a bounded TWAP decides.

A proposal with no trading fails. Funds are escrowed at propose, so settlement cannot depend on a later treasury balance. The governor never holds the LP; the vault does. Operator control can transfer. The recipe cannot be rewritten.

Each mechanism reinforces the others.

Refunds let a sale open ambitious without a private round. The recipe makes the stack a guarantee at craft, not a promise after. An empty pool at registration means graduation cannot be frontrun. Diamond-hand vesting keeps circulating supply at the open near zero. The first hour of trading pays the Distributor, not the sniper. As bottles claim, Presale weight migrates to the Farm, so the people still locked keep earning after the vest. Members hold the Contributors allocation from the moment of craft. Fixed supply. No later mint. Extraction is allowed, and it pays the people who stayed.

Conviction is rewarded.