How Argus works

Chain

Arc mainnet, chain id 5042

Quote token

Set per launch from an approved list. The site launches in USDC: on Arc the gas token itself is USDC.

Venue

Uniswap v4. Fee tier 1% (10000), tick spacing 200.

Pool opens

In the launch transaction. Any router can trade it from block one.

Bonding curve

None. No curve contract, no virtual reserves. The whole supply sits in one v4 position above the opening price, and buys walk the price up through it.

Supply

1,000,000,000 per launch, 18 decimals

Opening market cap

$2,500 (FDV)

Dev buy

Optional, inside the launch transaction, up to 4x the opening price. Pulled from an approval.

Bond (graduation)

$45,000 market cap, about $10,100 of net buying

Migration

None. Same pool before and after bonding.

Launch fee

None. Gas only.

Creator tax

Buy and sell set separately, each 0 to 10%. Permanent.

Snipe protection

Opening tax on buys and sells: 99% at second 0, 0% from second 3

Transfers

Untaxed

LP

Locked forever. No owner, no withdraw, no rescue. Its fees are harvested permissionlessly and split like the tax.

Admin

Token: none. Portal: 2-of-3 Safe, future launches only. Contract changes wait 4 hours; quote approvals are instant.

Token page

https://arguspad.io/token/<address>

ABIs and addresses

/argus-v4.json

1. 01

   Create

   Name, ticker, image, taxes and split. Gas only. A dev buy adds an approval, one confirmation where the wallet can batch.

2. 02

   Trade on Uniswap v4

   The pool opens in that same transaction. Any router can trade it.

3. 03

   Bond

   At $45,000 market cap the hook flags the token bonded, inside that swap.

4. 04

   Keep trading

   Same pool, same rates. Nothing migrates. The LP stays locked.

Supply

1B

Opening cap

$2,500

Dev buy limit

4x price

Cap at limit

$10,000

Dev buy

• Optional first buy inside the launch transaction. No block exists with the pool and without it, so it cannot be front-run.
• Bounded by price, not supply: at most 4x the opening price, so a $10,000 market cap. There is no supply cap.
• Paid in the launch's quote token. The Portal pulls it from an approval, so approve first; the launch itself carries no value.
• One confirmation where the wallet supports batched calls (EIP-5792), two where it does not. The launch is one transaction either way.
• An oversized amount fills to the limit and the rest is refunded. The launch does not revert.
• Exempt from the opening tax.

Rate in bps: 9900 >> ((elapsed * 14) / 3), where elapsed = block.timestamp - launchedAt. Hook constants, not readable on chain. Arc makes about 2 blocks a second.

• Applies to buys and sells.
• Exempt: the Portal (so the creator's in-launch buy) and the launch's split contract.
• Paid to the Argus treasury, not the creator or holders.
• Creator tax plus opening tax is capped at 99% of the leg.

Opening cap

$2,500

Bond at

$45,000

Net buying

~$10,100

Migration

None

• $45,000 market cap on every launch. Recorded on chain per launch as tickBond, so read it rather than assume it.
• The hook writes bonded inside the swap that crosses the milestone. No crank, no bot, nobody can miss it.
• Written once, never cleared, whatever the price does after.
• Nothing migrates: no second pool, no LP move, no migration fee, no rate change.

• Buy and sell tax are independent. The contract refuses only both at zero; the site offers 1 to 10%.
• Permanent: the hook has no owner and no function to change a rate, up or down.
• The hook takes the tax inside the swap. v4 settles balances as internal claims, so a transfer tax cannot work on v4.
• The Argus 10% is fixed in the Portal and immutable.

Pool fee

1%

Buy, sell tax

0 to 10%

Argus share

10%

To the shares

90%

Tax and LP fees land in the same split contract. After Argus’s 10%, four shares set at launch divide the rest and must total exactly 100%.

Source

The tax and the LP fees, landing in the launch's split contract inside every trade

Collected by

distribute(), permissionless

Schedule

The Argus keeper calls it automatically when the pending amount is worth the gas: a threshold, not a clock. A creator never needs to call it, and should not.

Holders

USDC pushed pro rata to balance when a distribution lands. No staking, no opt-in, no claim.

Creator funds

Credited in the split contract, then claimed by the creator from the token page. The keeper does not claim it for them. claim(creator) is permissionless and always pays the creator, so anyone may call it.

Retroactive

No. Only distributions that land while you hold.

Failed push

Parked. Only its owner can withdraw it.

Excluded

The pool, the split contract, the burn address, balances under the launch's dust minimum

Dividend setup

A dividend share needs a rewards registry configured first. The site sends that transaction.

Creators: let the keeper do it. distribute() is permissionless so that the pad cannot hold anyone's fees hostage, not because a creator is meant to run it. The keeper already does, on every launch. A creator who calls it themselves is recorded as the sender of the swap it performs, and trading bots label that a dev sell even though the tokens come out of the split contract and never touch the creator's balance.

Known limitation. distribute() sells at the price in the block it lands in, so a large sell just before it makes it yield less. The swap is capped as a fraction of pool depth per block, which keeps the effect small, but nothing caps what a price held down across several payouts adds up to.

Admin

2-of-3 Safe, on the Portal. The token has none.

Timelock

Contract changes are queued as PointerQueued, executable no sooner than 4 hours later as PointerChanged

Delay

Can be raised to 30 days. Never lowered.

Quote tokens

Approved or revoked instantly, no timelock, as QuoteApproved and QuoteRevoked. USDC can never be revoked.

Launched tokens

Out of reach. The pointers and the quote token are read once, inside the launch transaction.

Portal (factory)

0xA5628A11c412596E1f63b75a2C0284F843C549d6Current, from block 20,240,260

v4 PoolManager

0x8366a39CC670B4001A1121B8F6A443A643e40951

v4 PositionManager

0x6049c9a0e26405C0985f9E3685C87d0aE917f82B

Universal Router

0x4fcA4a51Ab4F23A7447b3284fBd7D73289A89Fb1

StateView

0xF3334192D15450CdD385c8B70e03f9A6bD9E673b

USDC

0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000

Argus treasury

0x934DEA9Ab179De155db10519aA89a8C418C50705

LaunchConfig

0x8Bf56C35faEA89D81E8eEe45c2FfB3994148A840

Admin (2-of-3 Safe)

0xf5A088fd51f93f798AD3f11e13B737DeD990eeEB

Per launch, deployed in the launch transaction: the token, its hook, its split contract and its locker. Read them from the launch record, never from the Portal’s current pointers.

Older Portals, still live

• /argus-v4.json: ABIs and every address, generated and verified against deployed bytecode.
• /argus-v4-example.mjs: a runnable, read-only example.
• Call LAUNCH_STRUCT_WORDS() before decoding a launch record. The current Portal answers 11, the two hooked Portals before it answer 10, older Portals revert. Legacy records are also ten words, of different types, so either decode succeeds and returns garbage.
• The eleventh word is the launch’s quote token. Build the pool key, prices and decimals from it, not from a constant.
• Uniswap v4 Swap amounts are signed from the swapper’s side, opposite of v3: on v4 a buy has the token leg > 0.
• Pool legs are in the quote token's decimals. USDC is 6 as an ERC-20 and 18 natively, one balance.
• Creator funds: Accrued when credited, Claimed when claim(creator) delivers them, both on the launch’s split contract.
• PointerQueued, PointerChanged, QuoteApproved and QuoteRevoked only matter for predicting future launches. Launched tokens never follow them.