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Stage Cadence & Issuance Curve

This page is about shaping the ceiling: the price users pay to mint new tokens over time.

Inside each stage you configure:

  1. Stage duration - how long this stage's rules last.
  2. Initial issuance price - starting price at the beginning of the stage.
  3. Issuance cut % - how much issuance per dollar falls each step (equivalently, how much price rises).
  4. Issuance cut frequency - how often you apply that cut (daily, weekly, monthly…).

The contract treats the issuance price as a step function: it stays flat within each interval and jumps up by a fixed factor on a fixed schedule. The result is a time-rising ceiling that doesn't care what the market does.

What the curve controls

Your issuance curve sets:

  1. Urgency - how much it feels like "get in now or pay way more later."
  2. Accessibility - how expensive it will be for people who discover you late.
  3. Treasury growth pattern - front-loaded in a sharp curve vs spread out in a gentle one.
  4. Runaway risk - whether the ceiling can outrun the market price so much that primary issuance basically shuts off.

Steep curve (high cut%, short interval)

Why you'd choose it:
  • You want a high-energy token launch with strong FOMO.
  • You expect most of the capital to arrive in a short window.
What it does:
  • Weekly or daily jumps (+20-30%/week) mean early buyers pay dramatically less than late ones.
  • Treasury grows extremely fast while issuance is active.
Tradeoffs:
  • Latecomers can feel "too late" after just a few jumps.
  • If the secondary market price can't keep up with your ceiling, you hit a runaway regime: buyers stop minting from the contract and just trade on the AMM instead, so treasury growth stalls.

Gentle curve (low cut%, longer interval)

Why you'd choose it:
  • You want calm, recurring participation (subscriptions, SaaS, commerce).
  • You want late users to still feel early-ish.
What it does:
  • Small, infrequent jumps (≈3% per quarter) keep ceiling and floor very close together.
  • The token behaves more like a revenue-backed currency than a speculative asset.
Tradeoffs:
  • Less event-driven hype.
  • If growth is too flat, rational users will just cash out instead of borrowing against tokens, because there's no expected appreciation to justify loans. Commerce-style cobuilds need roughly ≥3% per quarter issuance growth to keep loans attractive.

Stepwise curve (big jumps between stages)

Why you'd choose it:
  • You want regular fundraising "rounds", seasons, or milestones.
  • You want marketing windows where people know "next month the price jumps 50%".
What it does:
  • Within a stage, price is flat; at the boundary, it jumps +40-50%.
  • Each stage becomes a mini-launch with its own story and metrics.
Tradeoffs:
  • Floor tends to follow a "sawtooth": each new round pushes the ceiling up, and activity in the round pulls the floor up toward it.
  • Requires you to actually deliver something each round to justify the step.

Use this for Periodic Fundraising cobuilds.

Closing issuance

You can configure a cobuild to fully stop minting new tokens after a certain date by adding a final stage with issuance disabled. Once this stage begins, no new tokens can be minted from the contract-ever.

Why you'd do it:
  • Create a fixed supply cap after an initial distribution period.
  • Signal commitment: "this is all there will ever be."
  • Shift focus from primary issuance to secondary trading and cash-outs.
How it works:

Set up your active issuance stage(s), then add a final stage with duration set to "forever" and issuance set to 0. When that stage activates, the ceiling effectively disappears-there's no price at which new tokens can be minted.

Common pattern: Many launchpad-style cobuilds use a short issuance window (30-90 days) followed by a closed stage. This creates urgency during the launch, then locks in the supply permanently.

How to pick your curve

Ask yourself:

  1. Revenue shape - Are your inflows spiky (drops/campaigns) or smooth (subscriptions, fees)?
  2. Onboarding horizon - Do you care more about the next month, or about steady onboarding over years?
  3. Hype vs trust - Is your audience excited by sharp events, or comforted by stability?

Then:

  • If you want hype, fast treasury bootstrapping, and secondary trading → short stage, steep curve.
  • If you want loyalty and stable pricing → long stage, gentle curve.
  • If you want recurring narrative beats and staged capital → multiple stages with big step increases.