Pons launch strategy
Should we launch our own coins on Pons and earn the creator fees? Measured across every Pons launch from 3 Aug to 30 Oct 2026 (n=641,719), not just the winners, with pump.fun as the comparison. Research and paper only: nothing has been launched.
Live dashboard: every coin we have launched, its curve progress, buyers, fees and the stage-gate tracker, at freefloat.io/launches.
Follow our launches: times are posted in advance and contract addresses the moment they are live on Telegram (freefloat launches).
Built 1 Nov 2026 from pons.db, the decoded pump.fun tape and on-chain config reads. Prices: ETH $2,257, SOL $93.9. Research page, not advice and not legal advice.
The short answer
- An honest Pons launch pays, and the bots pay for it. First launches by honest deployers in the last 14 days (n=6,738) netted $68.8 mean in curve fees after the $1.17 launch cost (CI $62-76), $108 including fees after graduation. Median $8.6; 79.5% cover their cost. The money is the 0.7% fee share plus creator tax, paid by sniper bots, copy bots and the market-maker bot (16-24% of outside curve volume in October).
- Repeat launches from one wallet fade fast. A deployer’s 2nd to 5th launch earns $21 in fees ($9.9 with the dev bag), 41% cover their cost and none graduated (n=989). The industry fix is a fresh wallet per coin. We won’t do that, so after the first launch we budget $10-25 per launch, not $108.
- The biggest earners use tactics we won’t copy. 90% of the top 50 Pons deployers’ launches carry an abuse flag. Launches with bundle-like buying in their first second are 9% of launches but take 39% of all creator fees.
- Getting people to buy is the only real lever, and it’s worth far more on Pons. Each extra point of graduation rate adds about $82 per launch on Pons (from only 38 graduations, so rough) against $3.90 on pump.fun.
- pump.fun is a lottery ticket. An honest first launch nets $5.65 mean in fees with a median of -$0.77, and 25% cover their cost (n=172,915). That’s $3.33 after dev trading and -$0.05 for a repeat launch.
How a Pons launch earns
| Item | Value | Source |
| Cost to launch | 0.0005 ETH launch fee plus ~0.00002 ETH gas, about $1.17 | on chain |
| Curve fee | 1%: 30% to the protocol, 70% to the creator. Buyback, if enabled, takes half the creator share. | on chain |
| Creator tax | 0-1,000 bps on every trade, paid to the creator | on chain |
| Graduation | 4.2 ETH raised on ETH pairs | on chain |
| After graduation | Assumed to be 0.7% plus tax on pool volume, the same split as the curve | assumed, not decoded |
Across every October launch (n=67,434, graduation rate 0.88%), in USD per launch:
| Per launch, October | Mean | Median | p90 | p99 |
| Outside curve fees plus tax | 62.4 | 3.31 | 106 | 1,226 |
| Post-graduation fees (graduates only, n=593) | 7,774 | 3,380 | 18,312 | 67,905 |
| Net fees | 129.6 | 2.15 | 106 | 1,851 |
| Our own dev-bag trading | -26.4 | -2.35 | 7.7 | 828 |
| Fees plus dev trading | 103.1 | -1.17 | 159 | 2,269 |
57.6% of launches cover their cost from fees, and 59% of all fees come from the 0.9% that graduate. The honest cohort has held steady week to week since late September ($46-69 mean, 61-75% covering their cost), even as chain launches fell from 39.5k to 7.8k a week.
What a creator controls
Everything here is known at launch or computed from earlier launches only. Figures are mean net fees, October, n=67,434.
| Lever | Finding | Use it? |
| Creator tax | 0 bps $55; 100-199 $123; 200-299 $165; 300-499 $224; 500+ falls to $70 and graduation drops to 0.3% | 200 bps, disclosed |
| Dev buy | $0: $82, 36% cover cost. $25-100: $179, 67%. Honest cohort with $25+ dev buy: 97% cover (n=4,317) | $25-50, disclosed |
| Quote asset | ETH $137, 0.8% graduation. Stock pairs earn less and the bag loses (NVDA -$29, SPCX -$51). USDG -$127 after dev trading | ETH only |
| Socials | 2+ socials $176-212 vs none $90. Description of 150+ characters $245 vs $84. A correlation: effort marks better-run launches | Always set |
| Hour (UTC) | 13:00-20:00 best: graduation 0.9-1.35%; 04:00-12:00 is 0.25-0.8%. Follows US stock hours | 14:00-20:00, weekdays |
| Day of week | Flat, $103-166 | No |
| Buyback | Off $130, on $55 (n=529) | Off |
| Same wallet again | 1st $160 (63% cover); 2nd $89; 3rd-5th $48; 6th-20th $29 (40%) | Budget for the fade |
The playbook
- What: an original meme tied to a live cultural or market event. No impersonation of real people or brands, and no ticker already live on Pons in the prior 24 h.
- When: weekdays, 14:00-20:00 UTC.
- How: ETH pair, 200 bps tax, buyback off, all three socials set, a description of 150+ characters.
- Dev buy: 0.015-0.02 ETH (~$35-45), disclosed in the launch post.
- Dev bag: the dev never sells. One 0.015 ETH buy in the launch transaction, held in the creator wallet for good. There is no sell path in our launcher. Creator-sold launches graduated 0.04% of the time against 1.21% for never-sold (October, n=5,640 and 6,361).
- One wallet, publicly linked and permanent:
0xF871984B02d1F5d7C641E96EF980F8462C0d8F03(Blockscout). It deploys every coin, makes the one dev buy and receives the creator fees. No helper wallets at all. - Distribution: launch times posted in advance on Telegram at t.me/freefloatlaunches and on @freefloatio, every post labelled “we launched this, we earn creator fees”, but only after UK legal sign-off (below).
Expected value
| Horizon | Measure | Mean | Median | p05 | p95 | P(>0) | |
| First launch from a wallet (n=2,517) | Net fees | $134 (CI 102-169) | $11 | ||||
| Fees plus dev trading | $102 (CI 71-137) | ||||||
| Repeat launch (n=989) | Net fees | $21 (CI 16-27) | |||||
| Fees plus dev trading | $9.9 (CI 4.4-16.4) | ||||||
| 10-launch pilot (1 first + 9 repeats) | Curve fees only | $270 | $146 | $9 | $1,009 | 98% | |
| Fees plus dev trading | $193 | $36 | -$245 | $931 | 59% | ||
| 40 launches a month | Fees | $1,076 | $734 | $208 | $2,957 | ||
| Fees plus dev trading | $632 | $328 | -$372 | $2,527 | 75% |
Before staff time, this is a few hundred dollars a month. The upside is distribution: if @freefloatio adds 2 points of graduation rate per launch, the month rises by about $82 × 2 × 40 ≈ $6.6k. That rests on 38 graduations, and it’s the number the pilot is there to test.
The line we won’t cross
| Tactic | How we flagged it | Share on Pons |
| Bundled self-buys or fake snipers at launch | 3+ wallets buying 0.1+ ETH within ~1 s | 9% of launches, 39% of fees, 42% of profit |
| Dev dump (rug-shaped) | Creator took 0.05+ ETH out of a coin that never graduated | 4.3% of launches, mean take $681 |
| Wash or self-trading | Creator volume more than 3× everyone else’s | 14% of launches, graduation 0.3% |
| Launch spam | 20+ launches a day from one deployer | 11% of launches |
The top Pons earners come in two kinds. Bundle-and-dump operators: ~$1,128 dev buys, early co-buyers on 84-99% of launches, 25-137 launches a day, profit mostly from the dev bag. Fee farms: 100-400 bps tax, no dev buy, 25-100 launches a day, living off the post-graduation fees of a few runners. That isn’t abusive as such, but it is spam. Our launches must stand on a real concept, not just harvest bot tax. The flags are proxies, not proof.
Legal, before any live launch: a post from @freefloatio promoting our own coin is likely a UK cryptoasset financial promotion (FCA PS23/6), and an unapproved promotion is a criminal offence. Wash trading and bundled self-buying are market manipulation. Get UK advice first.
Pilot ask (not executed)
| Item | Detail |
| Scope | 10 Pons launches over 2-3 weeks |
| Wallet | One fresh, disclosed creator wallet, not the trading bot’s wallet |
| Capital | ~0.21 ETH (~$475): 10 × 0.0005 ETH launch fee + 10 × 0.02 ETH dev buy + gas |
| Worst realistic case | about -$250 (p05) |
| Staff time | ~2 h per launch for concept, art and post |
| Prerequisite | UK financial-promotions advice |
| Tracking | A paper twin logs each launch’s fees, buyers and graduation against this forecast |
Kill criteria, set in advance
- Stop after launch 5 if outside curve fees net of launch cost total under $17 (the paper p25; median $56). An unlucky but healthy run gets stopped about 25% of the time, and we accept that.
- Stop if fewer than 20 distinct outside buyers turn up across those 5 launches.
- Stop for good on any need to bundle, wash or use a helper wallet; any complaint or regulator contact; or a change to Pons’ creator-fee rules.
- Scale past 10 only if fees reach the $270 paper mean and at least one launch gets 50% up its curve on organic buying.
Why not pump.fun
- Cost 0.0065 SOL median (measured on 20 creates), creator fee 0.30% on the curve, 0.30-0.95% on PumpSwap by market cap.
- Honest first launch: $5.65 mean fees, median -$0.77, 25% cover cost; $3.33 after dev trading (n=172,915). Repeat launch: -$0.05 (n=87,650).
- 77% of all pump creator fees come from the 2.9% of launches that graduate. 95.5% of the top 50 serial creators’ launches carry an abuse flag, and 87.7% of their profit is dev-bag trading.
- pump.fun restricts UK users (unverified). Revisit only if the Pons pilot shows @freefloatio lifts graduation.
Unknowns and watch-outs
- Fees after graduation on Pons are assumed (0.7% plus tax), not decoded swap by swap, and they drive 40-60% of the mean. The curve-only figures don’t depend on them.
- The “honest” group may still include some sybils. A creator washing through other wallets counts as outside volume here and would inflate it.
- The bot flow can change. The market-maker bot’s share fell from 45% (late Aug) to 20% (Oct), and chain launches fell 5× after Arc launched. If Pons or the bots change policy, the median income of $5-15 disappears.
- The repeat-launch fade may be deliberate. If bots score deployers, even one honest wallet is capped at $10-25 per launch after the first.
- Not measured: image quality, how good the theme is, @freefloatio’s reach and how many viewers buy.