Fees & cashback
Every trade pays a fee, in both directions, taken by the hook on the swap itself. The total is the same before and after the bond, and it is fixed for the life of a launch. While a token is on its ETH curve, fees accrue in WETH and creators claim ETH; after the bond they are in the quote token.
The split
| Component | Rate | Goes to |
|---|---|---|
| Base fee | 1% of the trade | 50% protocol, 50% creator |
| Creator fee | 0 to 2%, creator's choice | 100% creator |
| Cashback carve-out | 0 to 100% of the creator's combined take | Depends on mode (below) |
The cashback share comes out of the creator's money, never out of an extra charge to traders. A launch with 100% cashback and one with 0% cost a trader exactly the same.
There is also a flat 0.0005 ETH launch fee paid once at creation, and an anti-snipe tax that applies only in the opening seconds (it flows into the same split, so it funds the creator and their cashback mode rather than disappearing).
Worked example: $100 traded on any token
The default launch: no extra creator fee. Total fee: 1% of the trade, the same price as trading on Pons itself.
| Destination | Amount |
|---|---|
| Protocol (via the revenue splitter, below) | $0.50 |
| The token's creator (less any cashback pledge) | $0.50 |
A creator can add their own fee on top, up to 2% (Pons allows up to 10%); it is shown on the token page before anyone trades, frozen at launch, and entirely theirs to pledge or keep.
Where the protocol's share goes
The protocol's half of the base fee does not go to a wallet. It accrues to an on-chain revenue splitter that anyone can trigger. Revenue that arrives in WETH is market-bought into $PONS first, which makes distribution itself another public $PONS buy.
Per $100 traded on any token: $0.50 to the protocol.
Correction, and the reason this section changed. The splitter can pay a share of that revenue to holders of the platform token, and this page previously said 15% went to $POP holders. It cannot. That path pays by sending $PONS to the token contract and calling sync(), which only exists on the holder-rewards token variant, and $POP was launched in quote-burn mode. Every distribution reverted until the share was set to 0%, which is where it stands now. The pointer to the platform token is one-time and already spent, so restoring a holder share for $POP would take a new splitter; there is no promise here that it will happen. The splitter address is snapshotted into every launch at creation, so routing cannot be pulled out from under an existing token.
$POP's own fees: buyback and burn
$POP itself trades at the default 1% total, no extra creator fee. Its creator revenue (the creator half of the base fee) does not go to a wallet either: it goes to an on-chain buyback burner whose split is a constructor constant, checkable forever: 25% of $POP's creator fees market-buy $POP through its own pool and send it to the dead address; 75% goes to the protocol. The burner's keeper only chooses timing; nothing that enters the burner can leave as anything but burned $POP.
The three cashback modes
None
The creator keeps their whole take. Simple, and the right default if you are unsure.
Quote burn
A share is sent to the dead address, in the bond quote, permanently reducing its supply. It runs for the life of the token: during the ETH curve phase the carve-out accrues in WETH and is converted and burned at the bond, and after that every sweep burns the quote directly.
Post-bond this mode needs no swap and no price oracle, because the fee is already the quote token, so burning it is a single transfer. It is the mode that gives a quote token's community a direct reason to want your launch to succeed.
Holder rewards
A share is distributed continuously to everyone holding your token, pro-rata by balance, in the bond quote. During the ETH phase it accrues in WETH and converts at the bond; after that it is pushed to the token contract, which distributes it as trading happens. No staking, no snapshots, no claim windows, no operator publishing anything. Hold the token, accrue rewards, claim whenever.
The tradeoff to understand: rewards can only be split by how much you held and for how long, and that can only be measured where balances move. So this mode, and only this mode, deploys a launch token with a transfer hook. That hook does accounting and nothing else: it cannot block a transfer, cannot change an amount, and the token still has no owner, no mint, no burn, no pause and no blacklist. Every other mode deploys the completely inert token. Transfers of a rewards token cost somewhat more gas.
Contracts that structurally hold supply (the pool, the locker, the factory holding the curve position) are excluded from earning, so rewards go to real holders instead of being stranded in machinery. That exclusion list is fixed when the token is created and can never be edited.
Anyone can add to the reward pot by sending the quote token to the launch token address. A creator, a treasury, or a community member can fund holders directly.
Claiming
Protocol and creator revenue lands in a pull-payment escrow, in WETH during the curve phase (creators claim it as ETH) and in the quote token after the bond. Holder rewards accrue on the token itself. In both cases you claim on your own schedule; nothing is pushed to you, which is what stops a hostile or broken recipient from being able to wedge trading for everybody else.
Creators claim from the token page or from /creator/<your address>. Holders of a rewards token claim from the token page.
Changing your mind
You cannot. Fee percentage, cashback mode and share are immutable from creation. That is the point of them: they are the deal you offered your traders, and you should not be able to change it after they have bought. The one exception is the address your creator fees are paid to, which only you can update. See trust & security.
Something unclear or wrong? The contracts are the source of truth, and every claim here is checkable on /proof.