Launch a market
A new market needs two tokens, an opening price and its settings. The creator's first deposit seeds both its senior and junior capital.
Updated Nov 9, 2026
Anyone can create a market for a pair of SPL or Token-2022 tokens with nine decimals or fewer; unsupported mint extensions, such as transfer hooks, are refused. The creator chooses the parameters, seeds the first liquidity, pays a 0.2 SOL fee, and becomes the initial market operator.
LP ownership determines economic claims; the operator and optional manager can announce changes subject to Dusk's fixed limits and full notice. See Market operators.
The six steps
The Launch form walks through them in order, with a live preview of the curve, the fee schedule and the rate model on the right.
Select tokens
Pick the base and the quote. The order matters: prices are quoted as quote per base, and the vaults, hLP mints and leverage sides are all named from it. A market for the same pair with the same label cannot be created twice.
Price and liquidity
Choose the price source: Native curve, or Oracle-guided, with a feed, an oracle weight and an adjustment cap (see Pricing and oracles). Then enter the opening price and how much of each asset you deposit; a guided market takes its opening price from the feed instead. That deposit is the market's first liquidity and mints your srLP. A permanently locked minimum liquidity comes out of it, and a thousandth of the remaining shares becomes the market's permanent junior seed, so the market has first-loss capital from its first block.
Curve
Constant product, or concentrated. Concentration adds a core band of extra depth around a sticky centre and a shoulder band beyond it, while keeping a full-range tail so the market always trades. The centre follows the market through a moving average whose half-life you set.
Fees and launch
The base fee, which asset fees are collected in, the share of LP fees that compounds into reserves, an optional launch premium, and the trading start time.
Borrowing
Price smoothing for risk and the interest-rate model. Presets cover most markets; advanced mode exposes the numbers.
Review and deploy
A summary of every parameter, the 0.2 SOL creation fee, and the deployment itself: it takes a few transactions and can resume if one fails.
Choosing a curve
| Control | What it does | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Peak amplification | Depth in the core, as a multiple of the tail | 1x (exact constant product) to 2,000x |
| Core half-width | How far from the centre the full depth extends | Set in basis points either side |
| Fade width | The shoulder beyond the core, at half the extra depth | Set in basis points; 0 disables it |
| Centre half-life | How fast the centre follows the price | Longer resists manipulation, shorter tracks trends |
More concentration means tighter spreads and lower impact near the centre, less depth once the price leaves the bands, and a curve that has to recenter when the market moves. Recentering is funded from retained surcharges and gated by thresholds, so an aggressive shape on a volatile pair spends more of its fees on moving.
Fees and the launch schedule
- Base fee. 30 bps by default; the divergence and volatility surcharges are on top and only bite in stress.
- Fee asset. Input asset, base only or quote only. Interest is always paid in the borrowed asset.
- Compounding share. How much of the LP fee is compounded into reserve principal; the rest is claimable yield.
- Launch schedule. Fixed keeps the base fee from the first trade. Time starts above the base fee, at most 50%, and decays linearly or in sixteen halvings over up to thirty days. Price milestones step the premium down as the launch asset's price crosses up to sixty-four levels; a falling price can restore it.
- Trading start. Now, or a time in the future; until then the market rejects trades.
Borrowing parameters
Two things are set here. Price smoothing is the half-life of the symmetric moving average the market uses for risk: presets from a seven-minute Fast to a two-hour Steady, with a one-hour Balanced default. Longer is harder to manipulate and slower to reflect a real move.
The rate model starts on the program defaults below; advanced mode can configure it before launch, and the operator or manager can announce eligible changes later. The rate rises while junior capital covers too little of the debt or utilization runs above its band, and falls only while coverage is ample and utilization sits below its band; Borrowing and rates has the details.
- Rising
- Holding
- Falling
| Parameter | Default | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Lower coverage signal | 5% | Above zero, below the upper signal |
| Upper coverage signal | 6.25% | Above the lower signal |
| Lower utilization target | 75% | Below the upper target |
| Upper utilization target | 80% | Above the lower target, below 100% |
| Response half-life | 14 days | Twelve hours to thirty days |
| Starting APR | 4% | At least 1% |
| Base APR floor | 1% | Fixed by the protocol |
| Maximum APR | None | No configurable economic cap |
The daily borrow limit and centre controller use protocol defaults at launch and can be tuned later by the operator or its manager after the full notice. The junior income share defaults to 50%.
Junior exit requests cost a fixed 50 bps; the solvent liquidation charge is a fixed 300 bps. The creator is the initial operator and may select an operator share of 0–50% of base interest, with no swap revenue.
Deployment
Deployment runs in stages, resumable from the same form if a transaction fails: create the three Token-2022 LP mints (srLP, base hLP, quote hLP); initialize the market, its vaults and the LP token metadata; register the mints' transfer hooks; open the junior tranche, which creates the jrLP mint; and seed the liquidity, which also funds the junior seed. The 0.2 SOL fee is paid with the market initialization.
Related
- The curve and fees: what each shape and fee control means in the program.
- Borrowing and rates: the rate model in full.
- Governance: how a market's parameters change after launch.