# How bonding curves and graduation work Every Fire token on Kumbaya goes through two phases: **bonding** and **graduated**. The mechanics aren't complicated, but they affect how your token trades and how creators earn — so it's worth understanding. ## The bonding phase When a token launches, the protocol seeds its pool with a stack of overlapping liquidity positions. As people buy, they consume liquidity in the lower price ranges first, which makes the price go up. As people sell, the same in reverse — price goes down. This is what people mean by **bonding curve**: early buyers get a better price, and the price moves predictably as more tokens are bought. There's no "hidden" liquidity sitting somewhere else — what you see in the pool is what you get. Two things to know: * **You're trading on a normal Uniswap pool.** Buying a bonding-phase token is just a swap. You'll see it in the same swap UI as any other token. The "curve" is a property of how liquidity is laid out, not a separate AMM. * **There's a "tail" position sitting above the graduation tick.** Once the price hits the graduation tick, the token is eligible to graduate — but the actual graduation transaction has to be triggered, and there's a short grace period before just anyone can call it. If buyers push the price *past* the graduation tick during that window, the tail is what keeps the token tradeable: it provides liquidity above the curve so trades don't fail. The tail is intentionally thin (it's there as a safety net, not a deep market), so trades in that range move price sharply until graduation finalizes and the pool consolidates into one full-range position. ![A graduated token's detail page, showing the gold border and "Grad" pill](https://1036133404-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FrOI1bPl9o59ZMxH6wevx%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-713b2590acf35bca2ed1c5af52efb75178ca61b8%2Ftoken-detail.png?alt=media) ## Graduation Each token has a **graduation tick** — a specific price level. When the price reaches that level (i.e. enough buying pressure has lifted the token there), the token is eligible to graduate. Graduation is a one-time event that: 1. **Burns the bonding-curve positions.** The stacked liquidity is dismantled. 2. **Mints one big full-range Uniswap V3 position** with the recovered liquidity. 3. **Hands that position to a contract called `FireStream`**, which collects fees from then on and distributes them between protocol recipients and the creator. 4. **Starts the Tip Jar burn countdown** (1–90 days, set by Kumbaya governance) for any *user-side* tip credits that were never sent to a creator. Tips already received by creators are protected. After graduation, the token trades like any other Uniswap V3 token. The pool address doesn't change; the liquidity layout does. ## How long does graduation take? It depends entirely on how much demand the token gets. Some tokens graduate in hours, some never do. **Force graduation** is also a thing: if a token's been around long enough (governance-configurable, with a hard floor of 90 days), anyone can trigger graduation manually so the token can transition out of the bonding state regardless. ## Why graduation matters to traders * **Before graduation**, a swap moves price along the curve. Trades feel "thicker" near the launch tick (lots of liquidity, small impact) and "thinner" near the graduation tick (less liquidity, more impact per dollar). * **After graduation**, trades behave like any other V3 pool — price impact depends on whatever organic LPs have added at relevant ticks, plus the full-range graduated position. There's usually plenty of liquidity around the price the token graduated at. If you're trading a token that's *close to* graduation, expect a flurry of activity around the actual graduation event (the tx that calls `graduate`) — people watching the curve often pile in just before. ## Why graduation matters to creators This is where the economics shift hardest: * **Pre-graduation, creators don't earn trading fees.** Pre-grad fees flow to the protocol treasury and to Kumbaya as the integrator. Creators earn during this phase from **tips** that buyers send them. * **Post-graduation, creators earn a share of every trade** through `FireStream`. That income keeps flowing as long as people trade your token, in both ETH and your own token. Full breakdown: [**Creator fees**](https://docs.kumbaya.xyz/launchpad/creator-fees). ## What about the curve parameters — can a creator pick them? On Kumbaya's UI, **no** — the curve range, fee tier, position count, and vesting duration are set to chain-level defaults so every launch behaves consistently. Creators get to pick name, symbol, image, prompt, social links, and (optionally) an initial buy. Power users who want non-default parameters can launch by calling the Fire contracts directly (see the [developer docs](https://github.com/Kumbaya-xyz/documentation/blob/main/developer/launchpad/launching.md)). ## Where to next * [**Launching your own token →**](https://docs.kumbaya.xyz/launchpad/launch-a-token) * [**Creator fees →**](https://docs.kumbaya.xyz/launchpad/creator-fees) * [**If your token shows as Unclaimed →**](https://docs.kumbaya.xyz/launchpad/unclaimed-tokens) --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.kumbaya.xyz/launchpad/bonding-curves.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.