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Reading on-chain markets

Fix the token's identity by its mint address, read the terms the program enforces, size your trade against real depth, and trust settled transactions over dashboards.

Last reviewed · All explainers

First: fix the identity

A token's name, symbol and logo are free text: anyone can create a token called anything. The only identity is its mint address, the 32-byte account that defines the token. Two tokens with the same ticker are different tokens if their mints differ.

  • Copy the mint address from a source you trust, and compare all of it, not the first and last few characters.
  • Open it on an explorer and check the token program: SPL Token or Token-2022.
  • For a token launched on reel, check that its transfer hook points at the reel-hook program and that a MintGuard account exists for it under the reel program. The programs and addresses page lists the program ids.

A link, a social post or a search result is not an identity. An address is.

Second: read the terms the market enforces

Two layers set what you can and can't do: the token and the pool.

The token. Read the mint's authorities and Token-2022 extensions:

  • A mint authority can create more supply. reel launches remove it.
  • A freeze authority can freeze any holder's account, including a pool's vault. USDC has one.
  • A permanent delegate can move tokens out of any account.
  • Pausable tokens can stop every transfer; a paused quote stops a pool's swaps and withdrawals.
  • A transfer fee takes a cut of every transfer. reel's pools refuse tokens that carry one.

The pool. A reel pool's Hook Blocks and their settings are in its PoolParams, frozen when it opened. They say what a buy and a sell pay, whether early buys are capped, whether sells are locked, and where each fee goes. Because nobody can change them, what you read is what applies.

Third: depth versus your size

A constant-product pool's price moves with every trade. As a rough guide, a buy worth 1% of the pool's quote side moves the price about 2%; a buy worth 10% moves it about 21%. Quote the exact trade before sending it and set a limit, the least you accept on a buy or the most you pay on an exact-out.

On reel, a new token's pool may open with virtual quote: part of its quote side that sets the price but can never be withdrawn. Sells can only take out the real quote the pool holds, so look at reserve_quote, not the total the price implies, to see how much a sell can actually get.

A pool may also have a deposit cap, a per-pool setting the admin can set or clear, which limits how deep it can get.

Fourth: settled facts over displayed claims

A dashboard is someone's reading of the chain, at some moment, with some coverage. The chain itself is the record:

  • A wallet approval is not a receipt. A transaction counts once it is confirmed, and is final once it is finalized.
  • reel's program logs an event for every swap, liquidity change, fee collection and payout. A pool's history is those events, read from settled transactions.
  • A figure with no source or no time is a claim. reel shows "—" for anything it could not read, never a zero or a guess.
  • Before signing, simulate. The simulation runs the program on current state and shows what the transaction would do.

Read holders as a snapshot

A list of top holders is true for one moment. Read it with care:

  • On reel, the pool vaults and launch escrows are owned by one program address, VAULT_AUTH. Those balances are pool reserves and unsold supply, not a whale.
  • The creator's dev buy and any supply kept back are visible on the launch account.
  • Concentration changes with every trade. A snapshot tells you who held, not who will.

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