What graduation means, and why you cannot compare rates across venues
Launch platforms describe a token as graduated when it completes its bonding curve and moves to an open pool. Each platform sets that threshold itself, which makes graduation rates look comparable when they are not. Here is the spread in our own data, and how to read it.
What graduation actually is
Most launch venues start a token on a bonding curve: a formula that sets price purely from how much has been bought so far, with no external liquidity. When cumulative buying reaches the venue's threshold, the curve closes and the accumulated proceeds seed a conventional liquidity pool. That transition is graduation. From then on the token trades against real depth and the price responds to supply and demand rather than to a formula.
Graduation therefore tells you one specific thing: enough money went in to complete the curve. It is not an audit, not a liquidity lock, not a guarantee that a sell route persists, and not a statement about the team.
The rates in our recorder
Across the 4,376-launch cohort from 2026-09-03 to 2026-09-09, 5.3% graduated. By venue:
| Venue | Launches | Graduated |
|---|---|---|
| pools.trade | 825 | 16.4% |
| v4-hookless | 795 | 6.2% |
| doppler | 1,489 | 1.8% |
| cashcat | 233 | 0% |
Why the spread is not a quality ranking
A venue with a low threshold will graduate a large share of its tokens. A venue with a high threshold will graduate few. Two venues can host identical tokens with identical buying and report graduation rates an order of magnitude apart purely because they drew the line in different places.
Launch volume compounds the effect. The venues here differ in how much automated deployment they attract, and scripted launches almost never complete a curve. A venue that is cheap and permissionless to deploy on will show a low graduation rate largely because its denominator is full of tokens nobody was ever meant to buy.
Our recorder also has its own coverage limits per venue. Where a detector sees fewer of a venue's launches, or sees them later, the rate shifts for reasons that have nothing to do with the tokens.
Reading a graduation claim correctly
- Ask what the threshold was. "Graduated" without the bar it cleared carries almost no information.
- Compare within a venue, never across. Two tokens on the same venue that both graduated cleared the same bar. Two on different venues did not.
- Check depth after graduation, not the badge. What matters to you is whether the resulting pool can absorb your exit. That is a liquidity question you can check directly.
- A rate near zero is usually a denominator story. It generally reflects deployment volume rather than every token failing.
How we measured it
Cohort is every launch created at or before the latest observed launch minus 24 hours. Graduation is each venue's own completion flag as our adapters record it, which is precisely why the cross-venue comparison is unsafe. Venues with fewer than 100 launches in the cohort are omitted. Numbers come from the open snapshot on our data page rather than a live query.
Common questions
- What does it mean when a meme coin graduates?
- It completed its launch venue's bonding curve, so the accumulated proceeds moved into a conventional liquidity pool and the token now trades against real depth instead of a pricing formula.
- What percentage of meme coins graduate?
- In our 4,376-launch cohort, 5.3% graduated, but per-venue rates ran from 0% to 16.4%. Because each venue sets its own threshold, no single number generalises.
- Is a graduated token safer to buy?
- Not inherently. Graduation means a buying threshold was met. It does not lock liquidity, remove contract permissions, or guarantee you can sell. Check those separately.
Keep reading
Nothing here is financial advice. Meme coins are high risk and most lose value. Read the full risk disclosure before trading.