Rules, risks and addresses

How a launch opens

A launch is one flow: the coin is created on its curve, registered with the UPPIN program, and its first Upside series is funded from the issuer's own first buy.

1. Create the coin on LaunchLab. The issuer creates the coin on a Raydium LaunchLab curve against SOL and makes the first buy; part of that buy funds the first lot.
2. Register the launch. The program binds the mint to its LaunchLab curve pool and checks the mint and the pool on chain. Spot and Upside are both open from this moment, right after the coin's first trade.
3. Open series and fund lots. A series fixes one strike and one expiry. Writers deposit whole tokens into the program vault and post a premium. Any holder of the coin can write, so the Upside book grows with the coin.

Spot

Spot is the coin itself, traded on its Raydium LaunchLab curve against SOL, then on Raydium CPMM after graduation. The UPPIN program is not in the path of a spot swap: your wallet signs the venue's own swap instruction, and the venue's fees apply.

A curve graduates when it has raised its SOL target: the coin and the raised SOL move to a Raydium CPMM pool, and spot trading continues there. While that move is in progress, spot trading pauses; Upside keeps trading.

The spot price on UPPIN is read from the curve or pool at a known chain slot, in SOL per token. The USD figure next to it uses the Pyth SOL/USD price and is for reading only. Upside settlement never uses either.

Upside

Upside is a covered call with physical delivery. Every right is backed by a whole token already sitting in the program vault, in a funded lot.

• Strike K: the USDC price per whole token you pay when you exercise.
• Premium p: the USDC per whole token you pay now for the right.
• Expiry: the moment the right ends, compared with the chain clock.

Buying

You choose a series and a lot, and a quantity up to what the lot has left to sell. You pay quantity x premium to the writer plus the service fee. That quantity of the lot's collateral is now locked for you; the writer cannot cancel it.

Exercising

At any time before expiry you can exercise all or part of your rights: you pay quantity x strike in USDC and receive that many tokens in the same transaction. Exercise is manual. If your wallet does not hold enough USDC, the transaction fails and your rights stay as they were; the app shows the shortfall before you sign.

Expiry

At the expiry timestamp exercise closes and the writer can reclaim every token that was not exercised. A right that was not exercised ends at expiry; its tokens go back to the writer. Buying stops a few minutes before expiry (the buy cutoff, read from the program).

Writing

A writer funds a lot with whole tokens, sets a premium, and can cancel the part nobody bought at any time. Premiums and exercise payments collect in the launch's quote vault and the writer claims them as USDC. After expiry the writer reclaims unexercised collateral.

Costs and maximum loss

Service fee

The service fee is a share of the premium, paid by the buyer on top of the premium at purchase. The rate is set in the program Config and capped at 10% by the program. Reading the live rate from the program.

Platform fee

A coin launched through UPPIN is created under UPPIN's LaunchLab platform, and each trade on its curve pays a platform fee in SOL alongside Raydium's own fee. Service revenue includes the option service fee and the platform fee UPPIN earns on spot trades of a coin launched through it.

Units

• Quantities are whole tokens. A right for 1 token always delivers exactly 1 token.
• Strike and premium are USDC per whole token, kept to 6 decimals (micro-USDC).
• Every transfer is an exact integer: quantity x strike, quantity x premium. The only rounding is the service fee, rounded down in the buyer's favour.

Earn

Staked $UPPIN earns USDC from UPPIN's service revenue: the program moves each allocation from the service fee vault into the staking reward vault, and stakers claim their share by stake size. A staker who arrives after an allocation does not share in it.

• Unstaking starts a 7-day cooldown; staked tokens stop earning when the cooldown starts and are withdrawn after it ends.
• While you stake, you can claim back up to 10% of the service fees you paid yourself.
• A share of service revenue and of the $UPPIN fee income buys $UPPIN and burns it. Receipts lists each buy and each burn separately; only a burn transaction counts as burned.

Where money sits

Four kinds of money are kept apart in different accounts and different ledger rows:

• Customer assets: writer collateral and the USDC waiting for writers, in each launch's vaults. No admin instruction can move them; they leave only by a buyer's exercise or a writer's own cancel, reclaim or claim.
• Service revenue: the service fee vault (USDC) and the LaunchLab platform fee vault (SOL). It pays staker rewards, the fee rebate, the service share of the buyback, and the team.
• $UPPIN fee income: fees from trading $UPPIN itself on its own venue. A share of it buys $UPPIN to burn.
• Team budget: off chain, never mixed into the other three.

Permissions

The program admin can

• set the service fee rate (the program rejects anything above 10%) and the buy cutoff;
• pause new entries: registering launches, creating series, funding, quoting, buying and staking;
• route the service fee vault: fund staker rewards and withdraw the team share;
• hand the admin role to a new key in two steps (the new key must accept).

The program admin cannot

• move writer collateral or the USDC owed to writers: no instruction touches those vaults for the admin;
• stop settlement: exercise, reclaim, cancel unsold, every claim and unstaking keep working while new entries are paused.

Upgrades

The program is upgradeable. Its upgrade authority is shown on the program's Solscan page (address below).

External venue

Spot runs on Raydium's LaunchLab and CPMM programs, which UPPIN does not control:

• Their upgrade authority, if any, is shown on each program's Solscan page (addresses below).
• Raydium sets the LaunchLab global configuration a curve is created under, including its protocol fee and curve limits.
• Graduation is carried out by Raydium's own migration transaction, which moves the coin from its curve to a Raydium CPMM pool.
• Upside does not depend on the venue's live state: purchases are open from registration, and exercise and settlement never read the curve or the pool.

Accepted mints

Collateral has to stay whole and movable while it sits in the vault, so the program refuses a mint that:

• has a freeze authority;
• is a Token-2022 mint with a transfer fee, a transfer hook, a permanent delegate, a frozen default account state, a close authority or an interest-bearing config.

SPL Token mints without a freeze authority, and Token-2022 mints that carry only metadata, are accepted. The quote is USDC.

Risks

• The premium can be lost in full if the price stays at or below the strike until expiry.
• New coins trade on thin pools: selling exercised tokens can move the price against you.
• If one writer supplies most collateral, the Upside book depends on that writer quoting.
• Smart contract risk: a bug in the UPPIN program or the Raydium LaunchLab / CPMM programs could affect funds.
• Lists come from an indexer and can lag the chain by a few seconds. Every signature is decided by the chain, and every row links to its transaction on Solscan.

Roadmap

Next on the list, in plain words:

• Upside on coins from other launchpads. Today Upside opens on coins launched on UPPIN. Next, holders of coins that launched elsewhere (pump.fun and other venues) will be able to put their tokens to work and buyers to open Upside on them, with the same rules: every right backed by tokens already in the vault.

Check a coin by its mint

Program and vaults

Credits

Background music: "Ossuary 6 - Air" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).