How a Solana memecoin launch works, from bonding curve to Raydium

Most Solana memecoins follow the same path in their first day, and most of what goes wrong happens at predictable points on it. Knowing the stages makes the holder data much easier to read.

Stage 1: Creation

Someone pays a small fee on a launchpad to create a token with a name, ticker, image and description. There is no code to write. The creator's wallet is recorded as the deployer, which is the thread you can pull later to see what else that wallet has launched.

Two things to check immediately: whether the mint authority is revoked (otherwise more tokens can be printed) and whether the ticker already belongs to a bigger coin.

Stage 2: The bonding curve

On launchpads such as pump.fun, the token first trades on a bonding curve: a formula that raises the price as more is bought, with the launchpad holding the SOL. There is no pool yet, so there is no liquidity to pull.

This is where bundles happen. The creator, or a buyer with tooling, can submit a bundle of wallets that buy in the very first block. Bundled wallets take a large share of the supply at the lowest prices, spread across addresses so the holder count looks organic. Snipers, bots that buy within seconds of any launch, pile in behind them.

What to check: how much of the supply was bought in block one, and whether those wallets share a funding source.

Stage 3: Migration

When the curve fills, the launchpad moves the SOL and remaining tokens into a DEX pool, historically on Raydium and more recently on launchpad-run pools, and burns or locks the pool tokens. From here the coin trades like any other, and liquidity becomes a number that matters: it is the depth that every later sale eats into.

Many coins never reach this stage. Those that do often see their first big distribution right here, as bundle wallets and snipers sell into the new pool.

Stage 4: Attention

The coin gets a DEX Screener profile, sometimes a paid one, sometimes a boost, sometimes a community takeover after the original team leaves. Paid attention is a signal in itself: Whodl's coin pages note when a coin paid for its listing and how many of the top wallets were in before that payment, which separates the people who found the coin from the people who found the ad.

X mentions rise, and with them the room gauge. This is usually when most people hear about the coin, and when the question changes from "what is this" to "am I late".

Stage 5: Distribution or consolidation

Over the following hours and days, supply either spreads out, with the top ten share falling as early buyers sell to new ones, or concentrates further. The top 10 share and the linked supply tell you which is happening, and the "if they sell" estimate tells you what it would cost.

Developers may begin claiming trading fees. Where that SOL goes, and whether the dev's own position is shrinking at the same time, is the clearest read on whether the team is still in.

What to check at each stage

Whodl runs every one of these on request, and automatically for coins that pay for attention on DEX Screener. The results, with the transactions behind them, are under coin reports, and the day's launches are summarised in the daily news post.