Fees and burns

Every trade pays the 1% Uniswap V3 fee. That fee is the only value extractable from a launch: the WETH buyers pay for tokens stays locked in the position forever. This page covers how the fee splits, and how the protocol’s share funds an automated buyback-and-burn.

The fee split

Collected fees split first between the creator and the protocol, then the protocol’s share splits again on-chain:

• Creator keeps 1 − protocolFeeBps of collected fees.
• Protocol takes protocolFeeBps. Of that, BUYBACK_SHARE_BPS = 3000 (30%) goes to the buyback treasury and the remaining 70% funds operations.

At the current mainnet configuration protocolFeeBps = 5000 (50% creator / 50% protocol), the 1% trade fee breaks down as:

Destination	Share of trade volume
Creator	0.50%
Buyback treasury	0.15%
Operations (infra, dev, audit, legal, marketing)	0.35%

Fees from all launched tokens flow into a single pooled treasury: the pool is a platform-wide flywheel, not escrowed per token.

On the pooled model

Because all tokens’ fees fund one pool but only qualifying tokens get bought back, holders of tokens that never qualify are, in effect, contributing to platform-wide burns. This is intentional and stated plainly: qualification is open to every token on identical public rules, and the credibility generated by transparent burns benefits the whole ecosystem.

Claiming fees

The locker holds the position NFT and exposes claimFees, which collects the V3 fees accrued by a launch’s position and splits them per the rule above. The collect is capped to owed fees: position principal is never moved (invariant L2). Claiming fees can never touch locked liquidity.

Buyback and burn

The protocol has no native token, takes no team or insider allocation in any launched token, and holds no bought tokens. Everything the treasury buys is burned. There is no treasury bag anyone can sell.

Selection: merit-only, top 20 by fees contributed

Each round, the treasury buys and burns the top 20 launched tokens ranked by fees they contributed to the pool, among tokens that pass a qualification gate.

Fees-contributed is the ranking metric because it is the hardest to fake cheaply and the most defensible: a token’s activity funded the pool, so its activity earns its slot. (Ranking by market cap would bias toward already-large tokens; ranking by raw volume invites wash trading.)

Merit-only, by design

An earlier design added a verifiable-randomness lottery tier. That was dropped: selection is now purely the top 20 by fee contribution. This removes any oracle dependency, so the fairness claim is fully deterministic and on-chain-verifiable. A lottery could be reintroduced later if a verifiable randomness source on Robinhood Chain is confirmed.

The qualification gate

A token must pass all of the following to be eligible:

• Locked liquidity: true by construction for every Merry Men launch (single- sided, permanently-locked V3 liquidity from block one). Proves the token can actually be traded and is not a honeypot.
• Minimum age: the token must have existed for a set duration, filtering out instant rugs. (Configurable immutable.)
• Fee-contribution floor: a sustained activity floor over a rolling window, proving real trading rather than a one-time spike. (Configurable immutable.)

Burn on execution

Every token bought is burned on execution. Nothing enters a wallet or treasury the team controls. Each buyback is pure, permanent supply reduction: the honest answer to “can the team profit from the tokens it buys?” is no.

Front-running protection

Public, predictable buyback transactions are a front-running target. Two on-chain defences are in place:

1. Per-buy slippage bound. executeRound(uint256[] minOut) takes a minimum-out per buy; the keeper simulates the round and submits tight bounds, so a sandwiched or bad fill reverts rather than executing.
2. Keeper-gated execution. When a keeper address is configured, only it may call executeRound, so the round is submitted through a private/relayed mempool and never sits in the public pool. The keeper controls timing only: selection is deterministic, so it can never choose which tokens are bought. Setting keeper = 0 leaves execution permissionless and relies on the slippage bound alone.

Open parameters

The core mechanic is locked; a few operational parameters remain configurable:

• Round cadence: how often a round fires (time-based, or triggered at a treasury threshold). Batched rounds are preferred: cheaper on gas, and each round becomes a visible on-chain burn event.
• Budget split across the 20: even split (simplest to explain) versus weighting by fee contribution.
• Threshold values: the concrete numbers for minimum age and the fee floor.

Status

The buyback treasury (BuybackTreasury.sol) is deployed and unaudited. It is immutable and holds protocol revenue, so a third-party audit and bug bounty are strongly recommended before it holds significant value: this is a recommendation, not a hard launch gate.

Not financial or legal advice

This describes a mechanic, not a promise of return. Fee-funded buybacks of tokens the platform helps launch can attract regulatory attention depending on jurisdiction and framing, particularly if presented as a return, yield, or guarantee. Public framing is kept neutral and descriptive. See Risk disclosures.

Related

• Protocol revenue: the community-rewards leg of the flywheel.
• Community takeovers: transferring and selling the creator fee stream.