Graduation
A token graduates when its bonding curve sells out, meaning the last token allocated to the curve has been bought. Graduation moves it off the curve and into a Uniswap pool whose liquidity is locked forever.
There is no market-cap target. The only thing that matters is whether the curve still has tokens left.
The numbers
| Total supply | 1,000,000,000, fixed at launch, never minted |
| Sold on the curve | 793,100,000 (79.31%) |
| Reserved for the pool | 206,900,000 (20.69%) |
| Net buying needed to sell out | about 4.2 ETH |
| Price move, first buy to last | about 14.7 times |
On an Auto-Burn or Standard token the 1% trade fee is paid on top, so the total actually spent getting one to graduation is a little more than 4.2 ETH. A Tax-Free token has no fee, so 4.2 ETH is the whole cost of getting it there.
The token page shows this as a curve progress bar, 0% to 100%, with the tokens sold and remaining underneath it. Past 85% the market table badges the token Graduating.
Which pool it graduates into
The creator picks the venue at launch, alongside the token type, and like the type it is fixed for the life of the token.
| Uniswap V3 | Uniswap V4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Fee | One of Uniswap's fixed tiers | Set per pool |
| Where the pool lives | Its own contract, with its own address | Inside Uniswap's single pool manager, identified by a pool ID |
| Liquidity | Locked permanently in the Honkfun locker | Locked permanently in the Honkfun locker |
The difference that matters is the fee. V3 only allows a fixed set of tiers, so a token has to take whichever one fits best, and for a cheap token that is a real cost. It is why a Tax-Free token on V3 graduates at 0.05% rather than something lower: the cheaper tier collects too slowly to be worth sweeping. V4 lets a pool set its own fee instead of choosing from a list.
Everything else is the same either way. Liquidity is locked permanently, the graduation fee is charged on both sides, and the creator, burn and treasury shares work identically.
One practical difference to know about as a trader: a V4 pool has no address of its own. Every V4 pool lives inside one shared contract and is identified by an ID, so a V4 token's page will not link you to a separate pool contract the way a V3 token's does.
What actually happens
- A buy takes the curve to zero. If your buy is bigger than what is left, the contract fills exactly the remainder and refunds the difference. It does not reject you.
- Trading stops immediately, buys and sells both. See the warning below.
- Anyone can call the migration. It is permissionless: the caller pays gas and receives nothing. Honkfun also runs a keeper that checks for sold-out curves every 30 seconds and migrates them automatically.
- The graduation fee is taken, 0.01 ETH plus roughly 506,600 tokens, both to the treasury. It is charged on both sides on purpose, so the pool opens at exactly the price the curve closed at. Every type and every venue pays it.
- The pool is created and funded with the remaining 4.19 ETH and about 206,390,000 tokens, across the full price range.
- The liquidity position goes to the Honkfun locker and stays there permanently. There is no function anywhere that can remove liquidity or move the position out.
Nothing is burned at graduation. Unsold curve tokens do not exist, because the curve has to sell out for graduation to happen at all. Circulating supply does not jump at migration.
The pause between selling out and migrating
This is the part worth knowing in advance. From the moment the curve sells out until the migration goes through, both buys and sells revert. There is no exit during that window.
In practice it is under a minute, because the keeper sweeps every 30 seconds and anyone can trigger the migration themselves. But if the keeper is down and nobody calls it, the pause lasts until someone does.
Nobody can squat a token's pool
Creating a pool is permissionless on Uniswap, and creating one that already exists fails. Left alone that would be a way to sabotage a launch: open a token's pool first at a price of your choosing, and its graduation would fail permanently with the raise stuck inside.
That is closed on both venues. A token's pool can only be opened by the token itself, and only the Honkfun factory can deploy one of those. Anyone else attempting it is rejected before the pool exists.
After graduation
The token page switches over on its own:
- The header shows a Graduated badge instead of Live.
- The trade panel routes through the Uniswap pool instead of the curve. Default slippage becomes 1%, and the first sell needs an approval step.
- A Pool reserves card replaces the curve bar, showing the ETH and tokens sitting in the pool. The deeper the ETH side, the less your trades move the price.
- A Run Collect & Burn button appears. Anyone can press it. See Fees and burns.
What graduation does not mean
Graduation only confirms the curve sold out. It is not a quality signal, not a review, and not a guarantee of future liquidity, price, or your ability to sell. Plenty of graduated tokens go to zero afterwards.
Locked liquidity makes a rug pull through liquidity withdrawal impossible. It does nothing to stop holders selling into you.