Documentation

How Root works

Root is a layer on top of existing memecoin launchpads. It detects vamps, groups them into meme buckets, and lets devs lock supply permanently into reward programs called Roots.

Overview

1. Scan. Every new token on pump.fun, Raydium LaunchLab, Meteora DBC pads, and Bags is checked against existing coins and grouped into a meme bucket.
2. Lock. A token's creator locks supply into Root. The vault has no withdraw function.
3. Root it. The creator splits the locked supply across Roots. Each Root fires on an event (a vamp appears, a rival dies, a milestone is hit, an epoch ends) and pays out from the vault.

Roots work like hooks, one layer up. A token hook runs code on every transfer. A Root runs code on a market or bucket event, with no change to the token itself and no relaunch.

Meme buckets

Every similar coin goes into the same bucket. There is no “original”, and any coin in a bucket can lock and run Roots. Coins are matched by:

• X link: the same account, post, or community.
• Image: near-identical images (perceptual hashing) and the same character re-drawn (image embeddings).
• Ticker and name: after stripping look-alike characters and affixes like 2, INU, BABY, CTO, and SOL.
• Website or Telegram: the same domain or invite.

Only strong matches (X link or image) can merge two buckets, so a shared ticker alone can't chain unrelated memes together.

Qualified competitors

A coin in your bucket counts as a qualified competitor (in range) when all of these hold:

• It's in the same meme bucket.
• Its 15-minute average market cap is at least 25% of your coin's.
• Its 15-minute average market cap is at least $15,000.
• It has at least 100 holders, not counting pools.
• It has real (non-wash) trading volume over the last hour.
• It isn't flagged fake (below).

Fake coins

Some coins show a big market cap that nobody actually trades. Root flags a coin above $15K fake when any of these is true:

• Over the last 24 hours its fees are under 0.05% of its market cap (fees estimated at 1% of volume, so under 5% of its mcap traded).
• Its liquidity is under 2% of its market cap. On a bonding curve, that means the real SOL in the curve.
• Its 24-hour volume is more than 30× its market cap, which is bot volume.
• Its recent trades are bots, not people. For coins under 7 days old, Root reads its latest trades on-chain and what each trader paid on top of the swap: network and priority fees, tips, and trading-bot fees. People trading through a wallet or trading app pay for that; wash bots pay almost nothing. If 3 in 4 trades paid under 0.00004 SOL, the volume is bots and the coin is fake, however much it seems to trade.
• It has no verified market at all 30 minutes after launch.

Fake coins can't be swapped in, never trigger Frenzy, don't count toward a bucket's totals, and are ranked last. A bucket with no real coin above $15K isn't shown. The flag is rechecked with every market update, so it clears once real trading shows up.

There's no minimum age. In-range coins can be swapped into your coin (Swap), trigger Frenzy when they die, and be challenged to Duels.

Who's ahead

Market cap alone is easy to fake, so Root ranks coins by strength: the square root of market cap × 24-hour volume, with volume counted up to 3× market cap so wash trading can't buy a lead. Strength decides the bucket leader and ranking, whether your coin is ahead when a rival dies (Frenzy), and who wins a Duel. A $1M coin trading $500K a day scores about $707K; a $2M coin trading $50K a day scores $316K. Being in range still uses market cap.

Locking

Who can lock

Only the wallet that created the token. Root reads the creator on-chain (from the pump.fun bonding curve, or the mint's creation transaction) and rejects deposits from any other wallet.

Two ways to lock

• Sign with your wallet. Sign in with the creator wallet and approve one transaction that sends the tokens and the fee to your coin's vault.
• Send from the creator wallet. No sign-in. Set up your Roots, then send the tokens and the fee to Root's deposit address. Root identifies the sending wallet and activates the lock when both arrive.

Fee

A one-time 0.1 SOL per token.

Adding more later

Bought more supply? Lock more at any time from the coin's Root page. Allocations are add-only: you can top up a Root or assign new supply, but never shrink one.

How payouts work

• Shared payouts are split by share of holdings. If you hold 2% of what eligible holders hold, you get 2% of each payout. Long-term holders count up to 2×.
• Holder, Burn and Alliance pools run on a timer the dev picks, from 1 to 30 days, and pay out in equal slices every 6 hours until they're empty.
• Event Roots pay a set % of their pool each time something happens: a rival dies, a milestone hits, a lottery draws.
• Bonuses for an action (swapping a vamp in, buying a dip, a referral) are a % of the tokens involved, with a cap per wallet.
• The coin's creator wallet never earns from its own lock.

Example: 200M locked

A coin with a 1B supply. The dev locks 200M (20%) and splits it as shown. Holders who aren't the dev hold 800M between them. You hold 8M of that, which is a 1% share of every shared payout.

Holder runs on the timer the dev picks: 1, 2, 3, 7, 14 or 30 days. The same 70M over 1 day pays 17.5M every 6 hours; over 30 days it pays ≈580K. Creator fees can top every pool back up with SOL the coin earns. Every default can be changed when setting up Roots.

The Roots

Turn on any mix and split your locked supply between them. Every Root has its own settings.

Creator fees

Creator fees aren't a Root of their own. They feed the Roots you already have. Turn on Use creator fees too at the bottom of the Roots step when you lock, or any time later from the coin's Root page (the creator signs a message; no transaction).

Your coin's buyback address

Every rooted coin gets its own buyback address. Any SOL that lands on it is that coin's, no matter who sent it. Root buys the coin with it and deposits the tokens into the coin's vault, credited across your Roots in the same proportions as the supply you locked, exactly like locking more tokens. If you run a Burn Root, its share is burned on its timer like the rest of the Burn pool.

Two ways to fund it

• Send SOL to the address any time, from any wallet, or with the Send SOL button on the coin's Root page. Anyone can send.
• Add the address as a fee recipient on the launchpad you deployed with. On pump.fun, add it in your coin's creator fee sharing settings with the share you want. pump.fun only lets you set that split once, so check the address and percentages before you confirm. On bonk.fun and other Raydium LaunchLab coins, claim your creator fees as usual and send the SOL to the address. On other launchpads, add it as a fee recipient if you can, or claim and send.

Why one address per coin

A single shared address can't tell which coin a payment is for: one dev can run several coins, and launchpad fee payouts don't come from the dev's wallet. A separate address per coin makes every payment attributable, whether it's a direct send, a pump.fun fee-sharing payout or forwarded fees. Root derives each address from a key it holds server-side, and only ever uses it to buy that coin for its vault.

When buybacks run

Root checks every coin's address every few minutes and buys once at least 0.05 SOL is waiting, keeping a small amount back to pay network fees. Buybacks need on-chain liquidity, so they run on mainnet. While the vault is on devnet for testing, SOL sent to the address is recorded and shown on the coin's page. If the creator turns creator fees off, SOL that arrives stays on the coin's address until they turn it back on.

Claims & payouts

The Root engine computes payouts each epoch, publishes the full input data, and posts a merkle root on-chain. After a short dispute window, holders claim with a proof. Anyone can recompute the numbers.

Holder-style Roots use your lowest balance during the window, not a snapshot, so buying right before and selling right after earns nothing.

Security

• The vault program has no withdraw instruction. Tokens leave only through claims, swap bonuses, duels, and burns.
• Swaps are atomic and non-custodial: you sign one transaction, and Root never holds your funds.
• During beta the program upgrade key sits behind a multisig and a timelock. After audit it becomes immutable.