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What is a token launchpad?

What a launchpad standardizes, why the limits on the first minutes matter most, and how a reel launch makes every rule readable.

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What a launchpad standardizes

Creating a token on Solana takes a few instructions. Making it safe to trade takes more decisions: the supply and who holds it, the metadata and who can change it, the opening price, where liquidity comes from, the fees, and what is locked and for how long.

A launchpad answers those questions the same way for every token it launches. The value for a buyer is that one template can be read once and checked on every launch, instead of trusting each creator's word.

The first minutes decide a lot

The moment a market opens is when it is most exposed. Bots watch for new pools and buy in the first slot; a few wallets can take a large share of the supply before anyone else sees the token. Opening limits exist to make that expensive or impossible. On reel they are Hook Blocks the creator chooses:

  • Anti-Snipe opens a guard window. Buys pay a tax that decays to its floor, each slot has a buy budget, exact-out buys are refused, and the launch's liquidity can't be pulled until the guard ends.
  • Wallet Cap limits how much of the supply one wallet can buy while the guard lasts, counted across every pool of the launch. reel's transfer hook also caps any wallet's balance on every venue during the guard.
  • Buy/Sell Block can hold buys for up to an hour after open, and sells for up to a minute.

Buys on a new token always open 12 seconds after the launch goes live. A cap limits a wallet, not a person: someone with many wallets can still split a buy. These blocks raise the cost of sniping; they don't remove it.

Terms you can read

A rule you are told about is a promise; a rule the program enforces is a fact. On reel, every launch's terms are on chain:

  • The token's mint authority is removed at launch and it has no freeze authority, so the supply is fixed and no one can freeze a holder.
  • The metadata's update authority is removed, so the name and symbol can't be changed later.
  • Each pool's Hook Blocks and settings are frozen at PoolInit and readable by anyone.
  • The token's transfer hook points at reel-hook, which only allows or refuses transfers and holds no funds.

Read these before you buy. The scan and each pool's page show them.

The creator's own tokens

Launchpads differ most in what the team keeps. On reel the creator's choices are bounded and visible:

  • A dev buy: one buy per pool, inside the launch and before anyone else, paying every fee a normal buy pays.
  • Supply you keep: the share of supply the creator may hold back. With a dev buy it is capped at 5%.
  • A liquidity lock and a launch lock: how long the launch's liquidity must stay in its pools, up to forever, while fees remain collectable.

Launching on reel

A launch is a few linked transactions rather than one, because Solana limits how much a single transaction can do:

  1. Create the launch: a new token (or an existing one), its supply in escrow, how many pools.
  2. Open each pool with its quote and frozen Hook Blocks, up to 8 pools, each on a different quote.
  3. Seed each pool from the escrow, with any quote the creator adds.
  4. Optionally make the dev buy on each pool.
  5. Finalize: every pool goes live at once, the guards start, and any leftover supply can be returned to the creator.

A launch that stalls before it goes live can be aborted, and its seeded liquidity withdrawn.

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