How Snowball works

Overview#

Snowball is a token launchpad on pump.fun where a token's creator fee never reaches a person. It accrues to a vault, the keeper sweeps the vault on a schedule, buys the token back with all of it, and burns what it bought. Buy pressure funded by the token's own volume, and a supply that only shrinks, for as long as the token trades.

That is possible because a pump.fun coin's creator and creator fee are set once, at creation. A snowball's creator is a vault key that only the keeper can sign for, so the fee has exactly one way out: back into the token.

Quick start#

1. 1Connect a walletPhantom, Solflare, Backpack or any Solana wallet, through the Connect button.
2. 2Pick a tierTen of them, from Glacier (a low fee, swept hourly) to Blizzard (the maximum fee, swept every second).
3. 3Name it and launchAdd an image, name and ticker, an optional initial buy, and sign once. The token page opens as soon as it lands.
4. 4Watch it rollEvery sweep shows up on the token page with its buy and burn receipts. The card on Explore tracks the burned share.

Open the launcher →

The loop#

1. Every trade pays a fee. Buys and sells pay the coin's creator fee, the rate its tier asked for. For a snowball the creator is its vault key, so the fee lands in that key's creator vault, a program account only the key can empty.
2. The keeper sweeps. On the tier's schedule the keeper checks the snowball. When its vault holds at least the tier's minimum, the keeper collects the fees onto the vault key.
3. It buys the token back. Every lamport buys the token on the bonding curve, or on PumpSwap once the coin has graduated. The vault key stays the coin's creator through graduation, so PumpSwap's creator fee lands in the same place.
4. It burns what it bought. The tokens the buy returned are burned from the mint. The sweep is recorded with both signatures and appears on the token page.

If a run stops between the buy and the burn (an RPC hiccup, say), the next run burns whatever the vault key is still holding before it does anything else. Tokens the vault key buys never stay in its hands.

The ten tiers#

A tier sets three things at launch: the fee every trade pays (pump.fun lets each coin choose its own creator fee, up to a ceiling of 3.00% right now), how often the keeper sweeps, and the least it sweeps at a time. Higher tiers take more of every trade and buy back more often, in smaller pieces.

The tier is fixed at launch and shown on the token page. It cannot be changed afterwards.

The vault key#

Each snowball gets its own vault key, derived from the keeper's secret and the mint address. The same mint always derives the same key, so nothing is stored that could be lost, and no two snowballs share a vault. Its address is on every token page.

• The vault key is the coin's creator on pump.fun. Its creator vault collects the coin's fees on the curve and on PumpSwap.
• The keeper is the only signer for it, and the keeper's code only ever collects, buys and burns.
• A small reserve (about 0.003 SOL) stays on the key for its token account's rent. Everything else rolls.

What you sign#

One transaction: pump.fun creates the coin with the vault key as its creator and the tier's creator fee, and, if you set one, makes your initial buy at the opening price.

• Your image and metadata are pinned to IPFS before you sign.
• A fresh mint address is generated for every launch and signs on the server; your wallet adds the fee payer's signature.
• The transaction is shown in your wallet before anything is sent. Snowball never holds your keys.

After launch#

• Your token gets a page with its price, market cap, the snowball's totals and every sweep's receipts, and shows up on Explore.
• The first sweep lands once the vault reaches the tier's minimum. Until then the token page shows what is waiting in the vault.
• The coin trades on the curve and graduates to PumpSwap like any pump coin. The keeper follows: after graduation it collects from the PumpSwap creator vault and buys on PumpSwap instead.
• The tier is fixed at launch. It can't be changed later, by you or by Snowball.

The fee#

• Network: every launch and trade pays the usual Solana fee, plus rent for new accounts.
• After graduation PumpSwap's creator fee applies instead of the curve's. It still rolls.

Safety & risks#

• Buybacks are not a floor. They add buy pressure in proportion to volume. A token with no volume rolls nothing.
• A high fee cuts both ways. The top tiers take up to 3.00% of every trade. That is a lot of buy pressure, and a lot of friction for traders.
• The keeper is infrastructure. If it is down, fees wait in the vault; nothing is lost and the next run catches up. Only the keeper can run it, so if Snowball disappeared the fees would stay in the vault, unspendable by anyone.
• Creators keep nothing. The fee is the snowball's, all of it, by construction.
• A snowball does not make a token safe. It changes where the fee goes, not what the token is worth. Anyone can launch here; do your own research.

FAQ#

Addresses#