What is a bonding curve? Pump.fun graduation explained¶
A bonding curve is the price formula a new token trades on before it has a pool. Graduating means the curve is done and the token migrates to one.
Every token in the trenches is born on one. Most of what you hear about graduating is a dollar figure someone repeated from an old SOL price. The mechanics are simpler than that, and less flattering.
Curves filling and graduating, live, in three columns: pump.fun new pairs.
How a bonding curve works on Solana¶
A token normally needs someone to put up a pool before anyone can trade it. A bonding curve skips that.
The launchpad's program holds the tokens for sale and prices every trade from a formula. Buy and the price climbs the curve. Sell back and it slides down the same curve.
Until it finishes, the curve is the token's whole market.
A standard pump.fun bonding curve, priced in SOL, works like this:
- Supply: 1 billion tokens. A Mayhem launch mints 2 billion.
- For sale on the curve: 793.1 million tokens.
- Starting reserves: 30 SOL of virtual reserves. That is a number in the formula, not money anyone put in.
- Opening market cap: about 28 SOL.
Market cap on a curve is the current price times the whole supply. It is not the money that went in.
Pump.fun, LaunchLab and Meteora curves¶
Same idea, different finish lines.
| Launchpad | What 100% means | Where it migrates |
|---|---|---|
| pump.fun | Every curve token is sold | PumpSwap, pump's own pool |
| Raydium LaunchLab, which bonk.fun runs on | The launch's own sale amount is sold and its raise is met | A Raydium pool |
| Meteora's curve, used by Bags, Moonshot and Jup Studio | The SOL or other token raised reaches that launchpad's migration threshold | A Meteora pool |
Each LaunchLab launch sets its own sale size. Each Meteora launchpad sets its own curve and threshold. Some curves trade against another token instead of SOL, such as USDC, so their market cap moves with that token too.
Bonding curve progress: what the percent means¶
Progress is not one thing. On pump.fun and LaunchLab it is the share of curve tokens sold. On Meteora it is the share of the threshold raised.
The trap is on pump.fun. Progress counts tokens, not money, and the curve sells most of its tokens cheap:
| Progress | Market cap on a standard pump.fun curve |
|---|---|
| 0% | about 28 SOL |
| 50% | about 70 SOL |
| 60% | about 90 SOL |
| 75% | about 141 SOL |
| 100% | about 411 SOL |
So 50% bonded is half the tokens, and about a sixth of the market cap it finishes at. Progress also runs backwards. Sells put tokens back on the curve, so the percent can fall.
What graduating means: pump.fun graduation and migration¶
Graduating is two steps, and people mix them up:
- Graduation. The curve completes. On pump.fun that is the buy that takes the last curve token.
- Migration. Liquidity moves to the pool and trading restarts there. On pump.fun this takes seconds. In between, there is nothing to buy from.
Traders say bonded, graduated and migrated for the same outcome. All three mean the token left the curve.
Market cap at graduation¶
On a standard pump.fun SOL curve it is about 411 SOL. The rule is tokens sold, and the formula sets the price of the last token, so the figure is fixed in SOL and not in dollars.
The dollar number is that figure times the SOL price. A fixed dollar figure for graduation was only ever true on the day someone worked it out.
Everything else moves. A Mayhem token reads double at the same price, because its supply is double. LaunchLab and Meteora differ launch by launch, so there is no one number to quote.
Why graduation matters to a trader¶
Graduating is not a win. It is a change of market.
- The floor goes. An ordinary pump.fun curve can't fall below its opening market cap of about 28 SOL. A pool can go to dust. Of the 50 graduates we counted on 1 November, 45 were already under 28 SOL. Mayhem is the exception on the curve: pump's bot can sell tokens it never bought into it.
- It is a popular exit. Early buyers have been waiting for it. Snipers, bundles and devs can all sell into the buyers graduation brings. See exit liquidity.
- Market cap is not money in. It prices every token at the last trade. Most of them were never bought anywhere near it.
- Progress counts tokens, not people. A handful of wallets can fill a curve.
- A climbing curve is not a safe one. Our Alpha score takes 10 points off a token on the curve at 15% bonded or more. See Alpha score.
Where you see bonding curves in clusterz¶
Trenches: the ring round each logo is its curve.
Trenches sorts launches by their curve. New is under 50% or not known yet, Soon starts at 50%, and Graduated has finished.
The ring round a logo is green for progress, a fainter green for the highest it reached, and violet once graduated. Hover or tap the logo for the exact percent.
A token between curve and pool reads Migrating with its Buy waiting, for 20 seconds at most. See Migrating. The Bonding filter cuts a column by progress.
The ring says how far a curve got. It does not say who filled it, or who is about to sell. For that, read the holder checks.