Liquidity and graduation
Where liquidity sits before and after a token graduates, and what changes for a trader. Mechanics only: no price prediction. Terms per configuration are in Bonding Curve.
Before graduation: the curve is the only market
Section titled “Before graduation: the curve is the only market”While a curve trades, every buy and sell is against the curve program (see Bonding-curve maths). Liquidity is whatever the formula gives: a larger trade moves the price further along the curve. A curve that never reaches its raise target never migrates, and the token stays tradeable only against the curve.
Graduation
Section titled “Graduation”When the real quote reserve reaches the curve’s threshold, curve trading closes and liquidity moves to a pool.
| Solana | Hood | |
|---|---|---|
| Pool | Meteora DAMM v2 | Uniswap v3 or v4, chosen at launch |
| Pool fee | 0.5% (plus an optional creator extra of 1% or 2%) | 0.3% static tier |
| Liquidity | LP is locked at migration | Not controlled by the developer |
| Crossing buy | Full fill, surplus retained | Capped, unused quote refunded |
Sources: Solana lifecycle and migration, Hood lifecycle and recovery and packages/shared/src/constants/curve.ts. Hood curves sell about 79.7% of the initial supply by graduation and the Solana matrix curves about 85%.
What changes for a trader
Section titled “What changes for a trader”- The market becomes a pool. After migration, trades route to the pool and, where available, through Jupiter. The quote and the price impact come from the pool’s depth, not the curve formula.
- The fee changes. The curve’s 1% base fee is replaced by the pool’s base fee (table above). Any optional 1% or 2% creator extra on a Solana experimental curve continues on top of the pool’s 0.5%, making the total pool fee 1.5% or 2.5% (see Fees).
- The Solana crossing buy fills in full. There is no refund, so size a buy near the threshold knowing it can finish the curve.
pump.fun for comparison
Section titled “pump.fun for comparison”A pump.fun token graduates to PumpSwap when its curve completes. In Candle’s read of 1,154 live pump.fun curves, graduation is the point where the real token reserve reaches zero (pump.fun program docs).
Is there support “about 20% below graduation”?
Section titled “Is there support “about 20% below graduation”?”Some traders believe a graduated token finds support around 20% below its graduation market cap. This is an unproven belief, not a fact. The roughly 20% of supply reserved for the pool is a supply split, not a price level. Candle ran one first-look check, not pre-registered: of 1,500 pump.fun graduations (2026-10-13 to 2026-10-22), 774 had a price tick within two minutes of graduation. Within 24 hours, 95% traded at or below 0.8 times the graduation market cap and 91% at or below 0.5 times, and the chance of a bounce back fell smoothly with depth with no bump at 0.8 times. The check found no support at that level. It has caveats (tick-based market cap, half the sample unpriced at graduation, a single 24-hour horizon, survivorship in the ticks), so it does not prove the belief false either. Do not treat that level as a floor.