How Reservoir works

Plain-language mechanics, including the parts that are not trustless. Read the risks section before you trade.

Overview

Reservoir is a launchpad on top of Meteora Dynamic Bonding Curve (DBC). Every coin trades on its own bonding curve; when the curve collects its target, liquidity migrates to a Meteora DAMM v2 pool and the LP is permanently locked. Reservoir does not deploy its own on-chain programs — it only uses Meteora’s deployed programs, Jupiter for swaps and the SPL Token program for burns.

Each coin has one fixed trade fee and one engine that decides where 90% of the platform’s part of that fee goes. Reserve engines buy assets (tokenized stocks, ZEC or BTC) into a per-coin reserve that holders can redeem by burning coins.

Launching a coin

• The creator picks a pair (SOL, USDC or MET if enabled), a raise (graduation target), a fee tier and an engine. All of these are fixed forever — they are part of the Meteora config and are written into the coin’s public metadata JSON on IPFS.
• Supply is 1,000,000,000 with 6 decimals. Mint authority is immutable. The mint address ends with “res”.
• The launch is one transaction signed by the creator: pool creation plus an optional first buy, so nobody can buy before the creator.
• Launch cost: a small platform launch fee, account rent and the optional first buy. The exact amount is simulated and shown before you sign.

Fees — where every trade fee goes

• Every trade pays the coin’s fee tier (1–4%, fixed per coin) — on the curve and, after graduation, on the DAMM v2 pool. Fees are collected in the pair token (SOL / USDC / MET).
• Meteora takes its protocol share first. We do not hardcode it: the coin page shows the real share read from the pool’s on-chain fee metrics.
• Keep ◆: of the remainder, 90% accrues to the creator on-chain (DBC creator fee) and 10% to the platform. The platform never touches the creator’s part.
• Managed engines (Burn ▲, Stocks ⬡, ZEC ◎, BTC ₿): the remainder goes to the platform fee wallet. The keeper claims it per pool, sends 10% to the treasury (house) and books 90% to that coin’s engine ledger.
• After graduation the same split applies to the fees of the locked LP position (Keep: 90% creator / 10% platform position; managed: 100% platform position, then 90/10 by the keeper).

Engines

• Keep — 90% of the fee accrues to the creator on-chain (DBC creator fee). The platform never touches it — the creator claims it.
• Burn — The keeper buys the coin on its own pool and burns it. Supply only goes down.
• Stocks — The keeper buys up to 5 tokenized stocks (xStocks) by the weights fixed at launch into the coin’s reserve.
• ZEC — The keeper buys wrapped ZEC on Solana into the coin’s reserve.
• BTC — The keeper buys cbBTC / WBTC into the coin’s reserve.

The keeper runs every few minutes. A round only executes once the engine ledger is above a minimum size, so that network fees do not eat the round. Swaps go through Jupiter with a slippage limit; if a swap fails, the funds stay in the ledger and are retried in a later cycle. Every round is listed on the coin page with its transaction signatures.

Backing & burn-to-redeem

• Backing per coin = USD value of the reserve ÷ circulating supply. Backing ratio = reserve value ÷ market cap. Circulating supply excludes tokens still sitting in the curve and pool vaults.
• Burn-to-redeem (reserve engines only): you burn N coins and receive N ÷ circulating of each reserve asset, minus a redeem fee (1% by default) that stays in the reserve for the remaining holders.
• The payout is calculated from the reserve balances at the moment the keeper processes your redemption, not at the moment you saw the preview. Prices of the reserve assets move.
• There is a minimum redeem size so the payout is not smaller than network costs. The burn is permanent even if a payout is delayed.
• If the coin trades below backing per coin, buying and redeeming may be profitable — this tends to act as a soft floor. It is not a guarantee of any price.

How a redeem is processed

• You request a quote (valid for about 2 minutes). The quote contains a transaction that burns your coins and carries a memo with the redemption id; it may also create token accounts for the payout assets — their rent (≈0.002 SOL each) is paid by you and stays in your own accounts.
• Register the burn before the quote expires. The site does this automatically right after you sign: it remembers the signature before sending and registers it with the keeper. A burn that lands after the quote window (expiry + about a minute) is not paid automatically — it goes to manual review.
• If the tab is closed after the burn, the keeper still finds the burn by its memo a few minutes after the quote expires and continues. A submitted signature that never appears on-chain within an hour is marked “transaction not found”: nothing was burned and nothing is paid.
• Manual review (“processing”). A confirmed burn can be put on review when the payout cannot be sent right away: your token account for an asset was closed, an asset is paused by its issuer, or automatic retries are exhausted. The keeper retries periodically and an operator is alerted; your burn is recorded and remains attributable to you.
• Late registration also goes to manual review. If the burn is registered only after the quote has already been marked expired, the redemption is reviewed manually — even if the burn itself landed in time. That is why the site registers the burn immediately after you sign.
• The minimum redeem size is checked at quote time only. The actual payout is your share of the balances at processing time and can be lower than the preview.
• Who pays the keeper’s gas. Network fees and rent spent by the keeper (engine rounds, payouts, claims) are paid from the platform’s 10% house share — not from the reserves and not from the 90% engine share.

Custody: who holds the reserves

Keep ◆ is the exception: creator fees accrue on-chain in the Meteora pool and only the creator can claim them.

How to verify

• Coin page → copy the contract address (CA) and the reserve wallet; open them on Solscan.
• Engine rounds table → every round links to its transactions.
• The coin’s metadata JSON on IPFS contains the engine, assets, weights, fee tier and raise chosen at launch.
• Live activity (launches, trades, rounds, redemptions, migrations) streams on the home page.

Risks

• Memecoin risk. Coins launched here can go to zero. Nothing on this site is investment advice or a promise of returns.
• Backing is not a price guarantee. Backing can fall (asset prices drop) and the coin can trade far below it.
• Custody & keeper risk. See above — reserves sit in platform wallets and depend on an off-chain keeper.
• xStocks. Tokenized stocks are issued by a third party with their own terms, jurisdiction restrictions, liquidity and pricing behaviour. They are not the underlying shares.
• Wrapped assets. ZEC and BTC on Solana are bridged / wrapped tokens with issuer and bridge risk.
• Smart-contract & dependency risk. Meteora DBC, DAMM v2 and Jupiter are third-party programs and services.
• Execution risk. Swaps have slippage; redeem payouts follow balances at processing time.

Reserves are held in platform wallets and executed by the platform keeper (an off-chain server). Every transaction is on-chain. Backing is not a price guarantee.