How it works
A launch here is a memecoin whose trading fee has a job. This page follows the money from the trade that pays it to the model reply it eventually buys, and says plainly which parts are automated and which are not.
Overview
Every launch is an ordinary pons v2 token: the entire supply sits on a bonding curve, it trades from the first block, and when the curve sells out it graduates into a Uniswap v4 pool whose liquidity is locked for good. What is different is where the creator fee goes.
Each launch is paired with one model from the OpenRouter catalogue. Every trade pays 2% to the platform treasury, and the treasury has exactly one purpose: buying inference. The running total of everything claimed is the compute pool. Anyone who has launched a token can spend it, on any backed model, not only the one they launched.
Fees are pooled, not kept per launch. Your token funds everyone's compute, and you get access to the whole pool in return, rather than a private balance you draw down alone.
Lifecycle
01
Launch
Name the token, pick the model, pay the launch fee. The supply is minted to a curve and the treasury is set as the fee recipient in the same transaction.
02
Trade
2% of every buy and sell accrues as creator fee, in ETH. It sits on the launch's curve until swept.
03
Claim
The keeper sweeps each curve into the pons fee escrow, claims the escrow to the treasury, and writes down how much ETH at what price.
04
Spend
The claimed total is compute. Any launcher can talk to any backed model; every reply is billed against the pool.
The backing model
The model is chosen at creation and stored with the launch. It is an OpenRouter id such as anthropic/claude-fable-5.1, checked against the live catalogue before the launch is recorded, so a token cannot claim a model that does not exist.
A model becomes callable when a token launches for it, and not before. The catalogue lists hundreds of models; the ones you can talk to are the ones something funds. Several tokens can back the same model, and all of them feed the same pool.
The fee
- Creator tax
- 2.00%
- On every trade, paid to the treasury. Fixed by the platform, not a per-launch setting.
- Curve fee
- 1.00%
- The protocol's own fee on trades against the bonding curve.
- Launch fee
- read from chain
- Paid once, when the token is created. Shown on the launch form.
- Pool fee
- None
- The graduated Uniswap pool charges no fee of its own.
The tax is charged in the asset the token trades against, never in the token itself, so nobody is billed in the thing they were trying to sell.
The treasury
Every launch names the same treasury as its creator fee recipient. It is set in the launch transaction and cannot be changed afterwards. There are no per-token vaults because there is one pool to fund.
The treasury is also the keeper's wallet, and that is forced by the protocol rather than chosen for convenience: pons credits the escrow to whichever address a launch named and pays claim() to the caller, so only the owning wallet can collect. The treasury can hold fees and spend them on inference. It cannot mint, cannot reach locked liquidity, and cannot touch anyone's balance.
The keeper
Fees do not move on their own. Before graduation they sit on the curve until swept; the escrow holds them until claimed. The keeper walks every launch, sweeps what has accrued, then claims the escrow once.
curve fees → sweepFees() → pons escrow → claim() → treasury → compute pool
Nothing is swept until it is worth more than the gas it costs. Each claim's ETH is converted at spot and the rate is written on the record, since what ETH was worth at claim time cannot be recovered later. If no rate is available the claim is still recorded and credited on a later run rather than booked at a guess.
The compute pool
The pool is a ledger, not a balance. Every credit and debit is a row, and the balance is their sum. A stored total would drift the first time two calls settled at once.
available = Σ(claims credited) − Σ(inference billed)
Amounts are integer micro-USD. Model prices run to eight decimals per token and floating point does not stay exact over thousands of rows. Rows carry the launch they belong to, so a token page can show its contribution, but the balance is read across every row.
Who can use it
Anyone whose wallet has launched a token can talk to any backed model, permanently, regardless of what happens to their token afterwards.
Access is proven by signature, not by a claimed address. Each request carries a message signed by the wallet with a timestamp, valid for ten minutes. There is no session and nothing is stored: one signature recovery per request. The browser reuses one signature for its lifetime, so a conversation is one wallet prompt.
How a message is billed
Every reply is billed from the token counts the provider reports for that call, at that model's published price. Never an estimate, never a flat rate.
cost = prompt_tokens × input_price + completion_tokens × output_price
The result is rounded up to the nearest micro-USD so sub-cent calls cannot add up to free inference. Both counts are stored on the message and on the ledger row, so any charge can be checked against the catalogue.
Conversations are kept server-side and are public, like a chart. What a model has been asked is part of its token's record.
The API
Everything the chat does you can do from code. Mint a key on the keys page and point an OpenAI client at https://usesynapse.ink/api/v1.
POST /api/v1/chat/completions, Authorization: Bearer syn_sk_…
- Models
- Backed only
- A model is callable once a token backs it. GET /api/v1/models lists them.
- Max tokens
- 4,096
- Per request, so one call cannot drain the pool.
- Streaming
- Not supported
- Usage arrives after the response, so it could not be billed.
- Rate limit
- The pool
- No per-key quota; the shared balance is the limit.
Keys are stored as a SHA-256 hash and shown exactly once. A lost key cannot be recovered: revoke it and mint another. A key spends the shared pool, so treat it like a credential that can spend other people's money.
The bonding curve
A launch holds its whole supply on a curve from creation. The curve always sells and always buys back, at a price set by how much has been bought so far. You never wait for a counterparty. Large orders move the price more than small ones, as on any thin market.
Every launch opens with a buy tax that starts near 99% and decays to nothing within five seconds, so being first is not a strategy. Selling is never taxed by it, and the launching wallet is exempt.
Graduation
When the curve sells out, everything it collected seeds a Uniswap v4 pool together with the share of supply reserved for that purpose from day one. The position is locked permanently: no unlock, no expiring timelock, no privileged wallet. The function to withdraw does not exist.
Because the reserved share is fixed at creation, every launch on the same settings graduates into a pool of the same size at the same price.
Contracts
Everything runs on pons v2 on Robinhood Chain, chain id 4663. Each launch's curve and token are created per launch and should be resolved from the factory rather than hardcoded.
Status
Two parts of the path are not automated, and it is better to say so than let someone find out.
- Topping up the provider is manual. The keeper credits the pool, but nothing moves ETH into OpenRouter credit. The pool is our accounting of what was raised, not a reading of the provider balance. If the pool shows more than has been deposited, calls fail at the provider.
- Trade volume depends on the indexer. Trades are mirrored from chain logs by a scheduled job. Price and market cap do not depend on it; they are read live from the curve.
Risks
Launch tokens are volatile and can lose all value. Anyone can create a launch with any title, symbol and image, including ones that imitate an existing project. Titles and symbols are not unique and not verified.
- Token address
- The only identifier
- A title or image can be copied. An address cannot.
- Graduation
- Not a quality signal
- It means the curve sold out, nothing more.
- Model availability
- Not guaranteed
- A provider can withdraw a model from the catalogue.
- Pool balance
- Not a guarantee
- It is our accounting, not the provider's credit.
- Audits
- pons v2 is unaudited
- Use amounts you can afford to lose.
Transactions are submitted by your own wallet and may be irreversible. Nothing here takes custody of your tokens or funds.
FAQ
- Do I earn the fees my token generates?
- No. Fees go to the treasury and become compute that everyone who has launched can spend, including you. If you want fees paid to yourself, this is the wrong platform.
- Can I talk to a model without launching?
- No. Launching once buys access, and it is permanent for that wallet.
- What happens when the pool runs out?
- Requests are refused until the next claim refills it. Nothing is queued and nothing is charged.
- Can I change which model my token backs?
- No. It is fixed at creation, like supply and pricing.
- Can liquidity be withdrawn after graduation?
- No. There is no timelock that expires and no function that can move it.
- Who pays gas for sweeps and claims?
- We do. The keeper wallet funds its own transactions and skips anything worth less than the gas.