Trading and pricing · startupos

You trade a token straight from its page with a connected wallet. Buying and selling never asks you to sign in. (While StartupOS is in early access, you enter your access code and sign in to get into the site. See Getting started.) There is no order book: you swap against the token's curve or pool, and the price moves with every trade.

How the price works depends on how the token launched. The token page shows which kind it is: a bonding curve card on a curve token, or a note that it trades in its own Uniswap V4 pool on an Instant token.

What holds for every token

Supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000, and nothing can mint more.
The fee and its split were fixed when the token launched and cannot change.
Liquidity in a token's Uniswap pool is locked forever.
Every trade runs from your own wallet. StartupOS never holds your funds.
Anti-sniping never restricts selling or transfers.

Paying with ETH or the pair currency

Most tokens trade against ETH, and nothing extra applies to those.

A token can also trade against another coin, its pair currency, such as USDG. You can often still pay with ETH:

Instant tokens, and curve tokens that graduated into Uniswap V4: one transaction. Your ETH becomes the pair currency and buys the token in the same transaction. Selling works the same way in reverse, with Receive ETH.
Curve tokens: for buying only. Your ETH is swapped into the pair currency, then buys the token. The panel shows whether that takes one transaction or two steps. A sale pays out the pair currency.
Curve tokens that graduated into a Uniswap V3 pool trade in their pair currency only.

On an Instant token, the ETH option only appears when a working route exists, and the panel shows the extra Uniswap fee before you confirm. Where StartupOS offers it, you can also pay for an Instant token with another coin you hold. Paying for a trade covers each route, the approvals your wallet asks for, and what to check before you confirm.

Bonding curve tokens

A new curve token trades against its bonding curve. Each buy moves the price up the curve and each sell moves it down.

The curve sells 793.1 million tokens. The other 206.9 million are kept for the Uniswap pool.
Each curve is sized when the token launches: $5,000 of virtual reserve in its pair currency, at that moment's price, then fixed for that token. The dollar figures here are at that launch price.
It opens at a market cap of about $4,660 and sells out after about $14,170 of net buying. By then the price is 14.7 times its opening price, a market cap of about $68,500.
The fee is 1%, or nothing on Tax-Free. It comes out of what you pay on a buy and out of what you receive on a sell.

The rise is back-loaded. The first half of the curve sells for about $2,930 in total and ends at 2.5 times the opening price. The second half costs about $11,240. See Launching a token for the full table.

Graduation. When the curve sells out, trading on the curve stops until the token moves into its Uniswap pool. StartupOS's keeper usually makes that move automatically. If it has not, anyone can finish it with the Complete migration button on the token page, paying only the gas. The token then trades in a locked Uniswap V4 pool, where its fees work as they do on an Instant token. See The pool and the liquidity lock. A curve token launched on mainnet before October 18, 2026 graduates into a Uniswap V3 pool instead: the 1% fee tier for Standard and Auto-Burn, and the 0.05% tier for Tax-Free.

Curve token pages lead with Market cap, the price times the total supply.

Instant tokens

An Instant token opens its own Uniswap V4 pool in the launch transaction and trades there for life.

The pool starts with tokens only. The whole supply goes into the pool, with nothing on the other side.

Buying walks the price up. Each buy takes tokens out of the pool and leaves the pair currency behind, so the next buyer pays more. There is no practical price ceiling.

Selling pays out what earlier buyers put in. Early on there is little on the other side of the pool, so a large sell moves the price a long way down.

Market cap is the headline. It is the price times the total supply, the same as on a curve token. A new Instant token opens at a market cap of about 0.98 ETH on an ETH pair, or about 1 whole unit of any other pair currency (1 USDG, about $1). Total supply starts a hair under 1 billion and falls whenever tokens are burned.

Fees come out of the trade. Every buy and sell pays a 1% fee in the pair currency. It is taken from what you pay on a buy and from what you receive on a sell. A token with a holder tax adds 1% or 2% on top. Tax-Free Instant tokens charge nothing. See Fees and burns.

The words on the page

Price. What one token costs right now, in dollars and in the pair currency.
Market cap. Price times total supply. It is the headline value on every token page, and a new token shows its starting market cap from launch, before anyone trades.
FDV (fully diluted value). Also price times total supply, so the same figure as market cap.
Price impact. How far your own trade moves the price. Bigger trades move it further.
Slippage. The most price movement you accept between pressing the button and the trade landing. Beyond that, the trade fails instead of filling at a worse price. You can change it in the trade panel.
Min received. The least you will get at your slippage setting. The trade enforces it.

When a dollar price is missing

Most tokens show a dollar price everywhere. A token paired with something unusual may show a dash instead of a market cap, a dollar price or a dollar volume.

That happens when there is no reliable dollar value for the pair currency itself. Pair currencies on the launch list have one. A token somebody pasted in at launch may not, until the team lists it.

A dash does not mean the token is broken or untradeable. It trades exactly as any other token does, and its price in the pair currency is always shown. What is missing is only the conversion into dollars, so the token also sorts as unranked on any board ordered by market cap.

Buying

Open the token and choose Buy in the trade panel.
If the token trades against something other than ETH, check what you are paying with: ETH, the pair currency or another coin.
Enter how much you want to spend. While a token is on its curve, you can also ask for an exact number of tokens.
Check You receive and Min received.
Confirm in your wallet. Paying with ETH needs no approval. Paying with a token asks you to approve it first. On an Instant token, a wallet that can batch takes the approval and the buy in one confirmation.

Selling

Switch to Sell and enter an amount, or use the quick buttons for part or all of your balance.
Approve and confirm in your wallet. How often it asks depends on the token and the wallet:
- Instant token, wallet that can batch: one confirmation covers the approvals and the sale, for exactly this amount.
- Instant token, any other wallet (Rabby, for example): the first sale of a token asks you to approve it for Uniswap's Permit2 contract, then to sign a free message (no gas), then to confirm the sale. One Permit2 signature covers that token for 30 days, so later trades ask only for the trade.
- Curve token or V3-pool token: approve exactly the amount you sell, then confirm the sale. Every sale asks for both, whatever your wallet.
You receive the pair currency, or ETH if you chose Receive ETH on an Instant token.

A curve token that graduated into Uniswap V4 follows the Instant token steps.

Paying for a trade explains approvals in more detail.

When trading is limited

Trading is open almost all the time. Two things can limit it.

Just after launch. For the first 2 blocks after launch (about 24 seconds), every wallet except the creator can buy at most 5% of the supply and hold at most 5%, counted per wallet. Anyone may buy in the launch block itself, the creator has no cap at all, and selling is never restricted. See Launching a token.
A curve token that has just sold out. Trading on the curve stops until the token moves into its Uniswap pool. Instant tokens have no such pause.

When a trade fails

Rejected in your wallet. You dismissed the confirmation. Nothing happened.
Slippage check failed. The price moved past your tolerance while the trade was pending. Try again, or raise slippage a little.
Over the launch cap. In the first 2 blocks after launch, the buy would take your wallet past 5% of the supply bought or held. Buy less, or wait a few seconds for the window to close.
Graduating. The curve sold out and the token is moving into its pool. Trading resumes when that finishes.
Not enough funds. You need the trade amount plus ETH for gas. See Getting ETH onto Robinhood Chain.

Before you trade

Check the contract address on the token page. Names and tickers can be copied.
Check Dev holds on the safety card. The creator can buy any amount at launch.
Check the token type and any holder tax, so you know what each trade costs.
Check how much sits on the pair-currency side before a large buy, because early sells move the price a long way.
Start small on a new token, where each trade moves the price further.
Count the fee twice: buying and selling straight away pays it on both trades, whichever way the price moved.
Read Risk disclosures before you put in money you care about.

See Reading a token page for what each part of the page tells you.