Every commas market moves through the same lifecycle. This page walks it end to end; each stage links to a concept page with the exact math and parameters.

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What you are actually trading

Every commas token is priced against a collectible, not against SOL or a dollar peg. One million tokens represent one unit of that collectible: one PSA 10 card, or one floor NFT of a collection. A worked example:
  • A market is listed for PSA 10 Umbreon VMAX Alt Art. The card trades around $2,100 in the real world, so one full unit of tokens is worth about $2,100 of exposure, and each individual token about $0.0021.
  • The card’s real price doubles over the next year. The token’s index doubles with it, and funding plus hedger arbitrage drag the token’s market price along. Your exposure doubled without you ever buying, grading, storing, or insuring a card.
  • The card slumps 30 percent instead. Your token exposure slumps with it. This is price exposure in both directions, not a bet that only pays up.
SOL is the currency you trade with and the collateral hedgers post. It is never the thing the token tracks. Keep that frame through the lifecycle below: every stage exists to keep the token honest about one collectible’s price.

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1. Listing

A market is created for one collectible underlying: a specific card+grade (for example, PSA 10 of a given card), a basket of cards, or an NFT collection’s floor. Every launch gets its own market and its own token: the market’s identifier is unique per launch, so the same collectible can be launched against any number of times, each launch with its own curve, supply, and creator. The program-level create_market is admin-gated in v1 and submitted by the launchpad service on the creator’s behalf, with listing criteria (sale frequency, depth, population) enforced at listing time. Creation initializes the market account, the synth mint (full supply preminted across the curve allocation, hedge reserve, and item reserve, mint authority revoked in the same transaction), a program-controlled SOL vault, and an AMM pool token account. See Listing a market.

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2. The index goes live

The market’s price feed goes live: a signed relayer service that reads the collectible’s real prices from marketplaces (eBay and TCGplayer aggregates, Collector Crypt, Magic Eden), filters manipulation, and writes the result on chain as index observations, the price of one unit of the collectible in lamports. On chain, pushes are rate-limited, smoothed into a time-weighted EMA (the index TWAP), and checked against a circuit breaker that freezes the market if an observation deviates too far from the TWAP. How the price is estimated off chain is covered in Oracle & Relayer.
Both halves are implemented in v1: the on-chain push, TWAP, breaker, and staleness guard, and the off-chain price feed (the relayer) that estimates and pushes prices (production card-price API sources are still pending).

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3. Launch phase: the bonding curve

Two doors in, two doors out: buy or sell with SOL around the curve and AMM lifecycle, or swap a real copy in and out feelessly.Two doors in, two doors out: buy or sell with SOL around the curve and AMM lifecycle, or swap a real copy in and out feelessly.

Two doors in, two doors out: the SOL legs pay the fee, the real item legs pay nothing.

The synth launches on a constant-product bonding curve with virtual reserves, the same shape popularized by memecoin launchpads, and every launch is priced identically: 1B token supply, a 25 SOL market cap at open, and migration once the curve has raised 100 SOL, so the AMM pool starts with 100 SOL of real liquidity inside it (about a 625 SOL market cap at the close). The collectible’s price never touches the curve; the oracle index is launch-scaled so premium and funding stay meaningful. Buys draw tokens from the preminted curve allocation, sells return them for SOL, and a curve fee accrues to the protocol. At this stage the token is a launch asset backed by the SOL in the curve, not yet a tethered synthetic. See Launch curve.
External-venue markets skip stages 3 and 4 entirely: a token that launched on Meteora DBC attaches via create_external_market, starts directly in the live phase, and runs its CDP off a treasury reserve with an oracle-pushed mark. See Venues.

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4. Graduation

When the curve has raised its SOL target, the market auto-migrates: graduate is permissionless and the indexer keeper cranks it within seconds of the target being crossed, so no one has to press a button:
1

Insurance fund seeded

A configured share of the raised SOL can seed the market’s insurance fund; the launch convention sets it to zero so the full 100 SOL raise lands in the pool.
2

AMM seeded

The rest becomes the real SOL reserve of an internal constant-product AMM, paired against unsold curve-allocation synth at the curve’s closing price; the remaining unsold excess burns, so supply only shrinks after launch.
3

Market goes live

Status flips to Live. The mark price EMA initializes from the AMM spot, and the funding clock starts.

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5. Live phase

Five things run continuously once a market is live. AMM trading. Longs buy and sell the synth against the internal pool. Every swap updates the mark price EMA, which is the smoothed price the funding mechanism compares against the index. Single-transaction price spikes do not move funding or liquidation checks because all tether math reads the EMA, never spot. CDP shorts. Anyone can post SOL collateral and draw synth from the treasury reserve at the index value, at a minimum 150% collateral ratio (default). Drawing and selling is the short side of the market. Shorts close by buying synth back and returning it to the reserve. See Shorts. Funding. A permissionless crank compares the mark EMA to the index TWAP and accrues a clamped funding rate to all short debt through a global funding index. See Funding. Liquidations. If a short’s collateral ratio falls below maintenance (120% default), any liquidator can repay the position’s debt from their own wallet (the tokens return to the reserve) and claim the collateral plus a bonus, with the insurance fund covering shortfalls. See Liquidations. Item swaps. Holders of registered on-chain copies of the underlying (vaulted-card NFTs, collection NFTs) can deposit a copy into the market’s escrow and receive tokens of equal value, priced at the index over the mark EMA; any token holder can do the reverse and take a copy out while escrow holds one. The collectible’s own supply becomes market liquidity. See Item swaps.

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The two-sided tether

The synth has no fixed-rate redemption pot: item swaps are value-neutral exchanges, not a peg mechanism, and they depend on escrow inventory. So what keeps the price near the index? Above the index: drawing is profitable. A shorter can post collateral, draw synth from the reserve at index value, and sell it at the higher mark. That new circulating supply pushes the mark down. The premium also makes funding positive for shorts, paying anyone willing to hold the tether side. Together these cap sustained upside deviation. Below the index: buying back is profitable. Existing shorts can repurchase synth below the value they drew it at and repay for a profit, which is direct buy pressure. Funding simultaneously charges shorts while the mark sits under the index, pushing them toward exactly that buy-and-repay, and paying would-be new shorts to wait. Together these support sustained downside deviation. The result is a soft peg: price oscillates around the index within a basis band set by fees, collateral cost, and the funding clamp, rather than being nailed to it by redemption. That softness is the price of having no vault.

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Why holders are the natural shorts

A synthetic market needs someone willing to be short the underlying. For collectibles, that someone already exists: the holder. A collector sitting on an appreciated card or NFT can hedge by drawing and selling synth, locking in the current price in SOL terms without selling the physical item, losing community status, or triggering a sale. Their downside on the short is offset by the asset they hold. This gives every market an organic, structurally motivated short side rather than relying on speculators alone.