Why there is no single LaunchLab curve
Most launchpads ship one curve. One supply, one formula, one threshold, the same on every launch, which is exactly why a bot can be written once and trusted afterwards. LaunchLab is built the other way round. It is infrastructure, and the parameters that decide how your buy is priced are configuration carried by each launch.
Raydium's own documentation describes the threshold as chosen so the curve's implied price at graduation matches the price the pool will open at, and gives a formula rather than a number. There is no published default because there is not supposed to be one.
What is configurable, and what it costs you to ignore
- The graduation threshold, which decides how long the curve phase lasts and how close to the end you are arriving.
- The curve formula and its constant, which decides how steeply your own buy moves the price against you.
- The quote asset, so a curve may be denominated in SOL or in USDC and the same raised amount means two different things.
- The LP disposition at graduation, which decides whether liquidity ends up locked, burned or held by a platform wallet.
- The creator fee, which is optional and set at initialization rather than fixed by the venue.
How a quadratic curve prices your buy
The common LaunchLab implementation is quadratic: price rises with the square of the fraction of supply already sold. Written plainly, price is proportional to the ratio of tokens sold to maximum supply, squared. A constant product curve of the Pump.fun kind behaves differently, and the difference is not academic.
On a quadratic curve the early portion is unusually flat and the late portion is unusually steep. Being first costs you less than you might expect. Being late costs you more than you might expect.
| Where you are on the curve | What your buy does | What that means for sizing |
|---|---|---|
| Very early | Moves price little | You can take size without wrecking your own fill |
| Middle | Moves price noticeably | Slippage starts to matter more than speed |
| Near threshold | Moves price sharply | Small buys, or wait for the pool |
| After graduation | Ordinary pool behaviour | Curve settings are now wrong |
This shape is the argument for reading how far along a launch already is before deciding anything. On a venue with a flat early section, arriving at forty percent of the way to graduation is a genuinely worse trade than arriving at five percent, and the gap is much wider than the same comparison on a constant product curve.
Locked, burned or kept: what happens to LP at graduation
When a LaunchLab curve completes, the program snapshots the curve reserves, creates a CPMM pool seeded from them, revokes the mint authority and marks the launch graduated. What happens to the resulting LP position is configured rather than fixed.
Raydium's platform configuration carries three scales that sum to one million: a platform share, a creator share and a burn share. The first two are locked through an LP lock that issues a fee key, and the burn share is destroyed outright with no fee key attached. A September 2026 upgrade made CPMM the only graduation target and locks the creator LP at migration, applying to future migrations rather than retroactively.
| LP disposition | What it means | Risk that remains |
|---|---|---|
| Burned | Position destroyed, nobody can withdraw | Concentrated supply, not liquidity |
| Locked | Held under a lock with a fee key | Fees accrue to the key holder |
| Platform held | Sits in a platform wallet | Depends entirely on that platform |
The practical instruction is the same as the one about thresholds. Do not read an article that says LaunchLab burns LP and treat it as a property of the venue. Read what this launch configured, because that is what will actually happen.
The three way fee split during the curve
Curve phase fees on LaunchLab divide three ways. A share goes back into the curve itself, raising its constant and tightening prices for everyone who buys after you. A share goes to the protocol. A third, optional share goes to the creator as an ongoing revenue stream, configured when the launch is initialized.
The first of those is unusual enough to be worth pausing on. Fees that feed the curve mean that trading activity itself changes the curve's shape, so the price you are quoted late in a busy launch reflects not only the tokens sold but the volume that moved them.
After graduation the pool runs on standard CPMM fee configuration, commonly the quarter percent tier. That is a different cost structure from the curve phase, and another reason to treat the two halves of the trade as separate instruments.
LetsBonk and the other front ends
LaunchLab is not only used by Raydium. Other launchpads build on it, register their own platform configuration and present their own brand, which is why the same program emits launches belonging to several venues at once. LetsBonk is the largest example.
For a sniper this cuts both ways. One decoder gives you coverage of several venues at once, which is efficient. It also means a listener that does not filter is buying launches from front ends you never intended to trade, with flow profiles you have not studied.
| Question | Where the answer lives |
|---|---|
| Is this LaunchLab at all? | Program ID |
| Which front end created it? | Platform config account |
| How far to graduation? | Curve config plus current reserves |
| SOL or USDC denominated? | Quote mint |
| What happens to LP at the end? | Platform config scales |
What LaunchLab snipers get wrong
- 1Hardcoding a thresholdThere is no venue wide default. A fixed number means misreading how far along every launch that does not happen to match it is.
- 2Carrying Pump.fun authority assumptions overMint authority is revoked at graduation here, not at creation. The check you correctly ignore elsewhere is a real signal during the curve.
- 3Using constant product fill mathsA quadratic curve is flatter early and steeper late. Sizing built for the wrong shape misses in both directions.
- 4Assuming LP is always burnedBurn is one of three configured outcomes. Locked LP with a fee key is a different arrangement with different incentives.
- 5Skipping the platform filterSeveral front ends share this program. Without the filter you are trading venues you did not choose.
Questions people ask
These come up in the ticket queue often enough to answer once, properly. If yours is not here, send it over and it probably ends up on this page.
It is Raydium's bonding curve launch infrastructure, where tokens are sold against a configurable curve priced in SOL or USDC and migrate into a CPMM pool once the curve completes.
Key takeaways
- LaunchLab is infrastructure, so threshold, curve shape, quote asset and LP disposition are set per launch rather than per venue.
- The curve is commonly quadratic, which is flat early and steep near the threshold, so arriving late is more expensive than on a constant product curve.
- Mint authority is revoked at graduation, not at creation, which makes the authority check a genuine signal during the curve phase.
- LP at graduation splits across platform, creator and burn shares, so burned liquidity is one configured outcome rather than a guarantee.
- Several front ends including LetsBonk share this program, so a platform config filter is what separates one venue from another.