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When a token graduates, its liquidity pool is created on Zero, inside Zerolotl AMM, and swaps go through the pool’s router. Zerolotl adds a hook that applies each token’s fee rules to every trade in that pool.

Before that, a token trades on its bonding curve inside the Zerolotl launchpad. The curve hands over to the pool at exactly the same price, so the market never stops: from then on, the pool is where the token trades.

One transaction creates the token on Zero and starts its bonding curve; gas, paid in ZRO, is the only cost. Supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000 tokens, all of them on the curve at launch, so nothing is reserved for the team.

• Fee split: the creator decides how the creator side of every fee is split between the creator, a buyback and burn of the token, and the holders. The shares add up to 100% and cannot be changed after launch.
• Swap fee: 1% to 5%, in steps of 0.25%. The creator picks it and it is permanent, on the curve and in the pool.
• Anti-snipe: an optional higher fee on buys that starts at up to 30% and falls to the normal fee over up to 15 minutes. It protects the curve only: after graduation just the swap fee applies.
• Scheduled opening: open trading at a time up to 30 days ahead. Until then only the launcher’s first buy is allowed.
• First buy: an optional buy inside the launch transaction, with a flat 1.5% fee that goes to the protocol. The tokens go to the wallet that launched, which is not necessarily the wallet that receives the fees.
• Payment asset: ZRO, Zero’s native coin (see “The Zero chain” above). Other assets appear only when the owner approves them on chain.

Launch a token

Every token starts on a bonding curve inside the launchpad. The price rises with every buy and falls with every sell, and all 1,000,000,000 tokens sit on the curve: there is no pool yet. Market cap is always the price times 1,000,000,000, the same definition on the curve and later in the pool.

Tokens bought on the curve cannot be sent to another wallet until the token graduates. Until then the curve is the only market: you buy from it and sell back to it, at any time after opening.

The price keeper may re-price the curve for FUTURE launches, within strict bounds. A token keeps the curve it was launched with for its whole life.

The curve numbers are set in ZRO: the starting and graduation market caps, the graduation fee and the minimum payout. The launch form shows the current numbers before you sign.

The buy that fills the curve graduates the token in the same transaction. The pool opens at exactly the curve’s final price, so there is no gap and no moment without a market. Whatever you sent above what the curve needed comes back to you in the same transaction.

A graduation fee, a fixed amount of the token’s payment asset, is taken out of the raise and goes to the treasury. The rest of the raise, together with the tokens the curve did not sell, becomes one full-range liquidity position in the token’s pool on Zero, locked for 500 days in the locker contract.

Only the owner can extend a lock, never shorten it. When it ends, only the owner can withdraw the liquidity: the lock is a promise the owner keeps by extending it or leaving it alone, not something the code can force.

The completing buy does more work than a normal one, roughly 0.74 million gas against about 60 thousand. The site always sends it with a 1.5 million gas limit, and unused gas is refunded.

Every trade pays the swap fee chosen at launch, in the token’s payment asset, on the curve and in the pool alike. The protocol keeps 30% of it, the protocol share; the other 70% follows the creator’s split.

• Creator: paid to the fee receiver, first from the curve and then from the pool.
• Buyback and burn: buys the token on the open market and burns what it buys.
• Holders: streams to everyone who holds the token over one day, claimed by each holder.

If a token’s anti-snipe fee was higher than its swap fee, the extra goes to that token’s own buyback and burn.

Nothing pays out by itself. Fees collect in buckets, first inside the launchpad while the token is on the curve and then inside the hook once it has a pool. The creator claims each token and each phase on the Fees page: curve fees any time there is something, pool fees once the bucket reaches the token’s minimum payout. Open the Fees page

Anyone can trigger the other payouts once their bucket reaches the minimum: sending the holders’ share to the token, and the buyback. A pool allows one buyback per minute, and each may move the price by at most 0.5%.

Holders’ rewards stream for one day after each payout. Each holder claims their own, in one transaction per token, from the Fees page. Addresses that are part of the machinery (the launchpad, the hook, the pool contract, the token itself and the burn address) earn nothing.

On the curve you trade with the launchpad: a buy sends the payment asset and gets tokens, a sell sends tokens back and gets the payment asset. After graduation you trade in the token’s pool on Zero, through the pool’s router. Other apps may not route pools that use a custom hook, so the trade box on each token page is the dependable venue.

Buying with ZRO needs no approval. Selling on the curve needs one approval of the token to the launchpad. Selling in the pool needs two one-time approvals, token to Permit2 and Permit2 to the router, so the first sale asks you to confirm three transactions and later ones only one.

Gas is paid in ZRO, so keep a little ZRO in your wallet on Zero. The price you see is the price at that moment: set a slippage you are comfortable with. A trade that arrives after the token graduated is refused rather than filled at a different price.

Read this section before you put money in. It states what the code does, what it cannot do and who else you depend on.

• Not audited: the contracts were reviewed by AI workflows and tested extensively, but they have not had a professional audit.
• Zero only: every Zerolotl token exists only on Zero. Coins or tokens sent on the wrong network can be lost, and moving funds to or from Zero needs a bridge, a third-party service with risks of its own.
• Third parties: Zerolotl relies on services it does not run: Zero itself (a new chain run by others), the providers that serve chain data, your wallet and WalletConnect, block explorers and price services. Any of them can be slow, wrong or offline.
• The lock: liquidity is locked for 500 days. The owner can only extend it, and after it ends the owner is the only one who can withdraw it.
• What the owner can do: approve payment assets and stocks, set the curve of FUTURE launches, name the price keeper, pause new launches (trading is never paused), extend locks, connect the platform token and withdraw the treasury. Ownership changes in two steps and cannot be renounced.
• What the owner cannot do: change the fee, the split or the minimum payout of a token that exists, touch the tokens or the pool of a live token, or shorten a lock.
• The price keeper: a bot that may re-price the curve of future launches at most once every 10 minutes, by at most 10% a step, within a band of half to double the owner’s reference. It cannot touch money, locks, the owner or the pause.
• Depth changes at graduation: the price is continuous, the depth is not. The pool starts with the raise minus the fee and the unsold tokens, which is less depth than the curve had at its end, so the same trade can move the price more right after graduation.