Fees and burns
Every token's fees are recorded the moment it launches and stay the same for its whole life. This page shows what a trade costs and where each part of the fee goes.
Launching is free
Creating a token has no platform fee, whichever launch model you pick. You pay the network fee (gas) and nothing else. Bonding curve tokens pay a one-off fee later, when they graduate, covered below.
What a trade costs
The creator picks a token type at launch. The type sets the trade fee and how it is shared, and it can never change.
| Type | Trade fee | Creator | Burn | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 1% | 0.7% | none | 0.3% |
| Auto-Burn | 1% | 0.4% | 0.2% | 0.4% |
| Tax-Free | 0% | none | none | none |
The shares are parts of the 1% fee, shown as a percentage of your trade. They are the same on every network.
The holder tax
An Instant token can also carry a holder tax of 1% or 2%, on top of the trade fee. The creator chooses it at launch and it never changes.
| Option | Where the tax goes |
|---|---|
| Holder rewards | All of it to holder rewards: 90% to people who hold the token, 10% to its weekly lottery |
| Rewards and burn | Half to holder rewards, half to buyback and burn |
With today's 1% fee, a trade on an Instant token with a 2% tax costs 3% in total. Tax-Free and bonding curve tokens cannot carry a tax, and StartupOS takes no part of it. See Holder rewards and the weekly lottery.
Holder rewards, the weekly lottery and buyback and burn run on mainnet and testnet. On mainnet they run for tokens launched since October 18, 2026. Network and addresses covers earlier tokens.
Where the fee goes
Instant tokens
The pool's hook charges the fee on every buy and every sell, always in the pair currency: ETH, or the token the market is paired with. On a buy it takes its share from what you pay in. On a sell it takes it from what you receive. The Uniswap pool itself charges nothing.
Each share builds up in its own balance for that token:
| Balance | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| Creator | To the creator's wallet. See Creator rewards |
| Platform | To the StartupOS treasury |
| Burn | Buys the token back from its own pool, then burns it. Funded by the Auto-Burn share and the burn half of the Rewards and burn tax |
| Holder rewards | To the token's holders, from the holder tax |
Anyone can send a balance on to where it belongs, and nobody can send it anywhere else. For the creator's balance, that is the Deliver earnings to the creator button on the token page.
On mainnet, every balance is paid out for tokens launched since October 18, 2026. On earlier tokens, the creator and platform balances are paid out as normal, and the burn and holder rewards balances are held for each token.
Bonding curve tokens
- The 1% is added on top of each buy and taken from each sell's proceeds.
- The platform share goes to the treasury on every trade.
- The creator share builds up inside the token until the creator claims it.
- On Auto-Burn, the burn share is taken in tokens and burned on every trade.
When the curve sells out, the token graduates into a Uniswap V4 pool. Graduation costs a one-off fee, and which one depends on the pair: a flat 0.01 ETH on an ETH market, or 2% of what the curve raised on a market paired with another token. It is one or the other, never both. The matching share of the held-back tokens goes to the treasury with the fee, so the pool opens at the curve's closing price. Nothing is burned at graduation. See The pool and the liquidity lock.
After graduation, the token's fees work as they do for an Instant token, above, with no holder tax.
Curve tokens that graduated into Uniswap V3
A curve token launched on mainnet before October 18, 2026 graduates into a Uniswap V3 pool instead. Its trades then pay the Uniswap pool fee: 1% for Standard and Auto-Burn, 0.05% for Tax-Free. The fees build up on the locked pool position and are shared out when someone presses Run Collect & Burn, on the token page or the Keeper page.
- The burn share of the token side is burned, and the burn share of the pair-currency side buys the token back and burns it.
- The creator's and platform's token shares are swapped into the pair currency (WETH on ETH markets).
- The platform is paid at once. The creator's share waits for them to press Claim.
- A Tax-Free pool sends its whole fee to buyback and burn.
Whoever presses Run Collect & Burn pays the gas and receives nothing. The contract takes no address, so nobody can redirect the money. It only runs once enough fees have built up, currently 0.005 WETH. Below that it is refused, and nothing is lost.
How burns shrink the supply
Every burn destroys tokens for good, so the total supply really falls and every explorer can see it.
| Token | How it burns |
|---|---|
| Auto-Burn, on the curve | The burn share of the tokens in each trade is burned |
| Instant or graduated into Uniswap V4, with a burn share or the Rewards and burn tax | Small, capped buybacks from the token's own pool, then a burn |
| Graduated into Uniswap V3, Auto-Burn or Tax-Free | Burns during each collection |
Buybacks are small and capped. On mainnet they run for tokens launched since October 18, 2026. See Protocol revenue and buyback and burn.
Standard tokens have no burn share. A Standard Instant token with the Rewards and burn tax still funds buybacks from half of its tax.
Watch it happen
Two public pages, linked in the site footer, show all of this from on-chain data:
- Fees & burns: every fee event with a link to its transaction, plus totals for platform earnings and creators paid.
- Burns: tokens destroyed, with all-time totals, a per-token board and a live feed that labels each burn by its source.
Can the fees change?
Not for a token that already exists. Its fee, split, holder tax and anti-sniping window are recorded at launch and kept for life. StartupOS can change settings only for tokens launched later.
An Instant token's fee and holder tax together can never go above 10%, and an Instant Tax-Free token always charges 0%.
The treasury address is listed on Network and addresses, which also says which features are available on which network.