Trading on the curve
Buys, sells, fees, slippage, and the frozen window. What the curve does that a pool does not.
You buy and sell a bonding coin from its page. There is no pool, no LP, and no route: you trade against the curve directly, in ETH, and the price is set by how much of the supply has been bought.
| Fee per trade | 1.2% total: 0.7% protocol, 0.5% to the creator |
| Fee side | Off the ETH leg, on buys and on sells |
| Slippage protection | A minimum you receive, set from the quote |
| Deadline | None. Curve trades have no deadline |
| Buy that would overshoot graduation | Partially filled, the rest refunded |
| Trading while frozen | Paused, and sells reopen after 15 minutes |
| Points and Rakeback | Same as a DEX swap |
Buying
You send ETH, you get coins. The fee comes off your ETH before it reaches the curve, so a 1 ETH buy puts 0.988 ETH of buying pressure behind it. Your slippage setting becomes a minimum number of coins you accept, and the transaction reverts rather than filling below it.
Curve trades have no deadline. The minimum you set protects your price however long the transaction waits.
If your buy would take the curve past the graduation point, it fills exactly up to that point and the rest of your ETH comes back in the same transaction. You never overpay for the last slice.
Selling
You send coins, you get ETH, and the fee comes off the ETH on the way out. The price you get is the curve price at that moment, which is lower than it was when you bought if nobody bought after you. That is the mechanism, not slippage.
Nothing stops you selling. There is no lockup, no cooldown, no sell tax, and no per-wallet cap.
The frozen window
When a buy takes the curve to the graduation point the coin freezes. Buying and selling both stop while it waits for someone to graduate it, which normally happens within about a minute. See graduation.
If graduation somehow does not happen, selling reopens on its own 15 minutes after the freeze, and a sell at that point walks the coin back to trading. Your coins are never locked in the curve.
What the fee pays for
The 0.7% protocol share goes to the same Collector every Motoswap swap fee goes to, and is split the same way, which is why curve trades accrue Rakeback exactly like DEX swaps. The 0.5% creator share goes to the coin's creator fee vault.
Both rates are read from the contract at trade time rather than baked in, so what the app shows you is what the contract charges.
Buying for the cat pool
A public PvE buy is an ordinary buy at the ordinary price where you keep nothing: the coins go straight to the Motocat staker pool. It is available on any bonding coin, whether or not the creator turned PvE on at launch.