How it works

A coin launches on the pump.fun bonding curve like any other. The only difference is where its creator fee goes. Instead of landing in the launcher’s wallet, it lands in a vault that belongs to the coin, and that vault has exactly one job: buy the graded card the coin is paired with.

So a holder owns two things at the same time. A position in a coin, and a proportional claim on whatever that coin’s vault has managed to buy. Hold 1% of the supply and you have a claim on 1% of the vault.

Launchpads that back coins with tokenised equities buy an instrument somebody else already prices, custodies and can dilute. You end up one layer removed from an asset that exists as a row in a broker’s database.

A graded card is different in the way that matters. It is a single physical object with a certification number, sealed in a slab, sitting in a named vault. Collector Crypt represents each one as an NFT on Solana, and burning that NFT is what makes the vault ship the card. Nobody can print more of a PSA 10 Charizard.

You pick a card, name the coin, and sign once. That single transaction creates the mint, points the coin’s fee stream at its own vault rather than at you, takes your dev buy on the curve, and funds the vault with enough SOL to cover its own costs later.

Before the transaction is built, the image and metadata are pinned to IPFS and then fetched back to confirm they resolve. That check matters more than it sounds. The link is written on chain once and never revisited, so if it points at nothing the coin still mints, but it shows up everywhere with no name and no image. It is the usual reason a brand new coin looks broken on explorers.

Every pump.fun coin pays its creator 30 bps of trade volume, which is 0.3%, charged on buys and sells alike. On a normal launch that is the launcher’s income. Here it is the coin’s budget.

Each coin gets its own vault, and that vault is named as the coin’s creator at the moment it is minted. The fees have nowhere else to go. The launcher cannot redirect them later, and neither can anyone else, because the destination is part of a transaction that has already happened.

Fees arrive continuously, in tiny amounts. They are gathered into the vault automatically and held there in SOL while the vault works toward the price of its card. Each coin’s page shows the progress: what the vault holds, what the card costs today, and how far along that is.

A card cannot be bought in slices. There is no such thing as owning 23% of one, so the vault saves rather than nibbles. Once the balance covers the full asking price the card is bought, and the counter starts again against the next one. Until then the backing is SOL, which is no less real for being liquid.

One number describes a holder’s position: everything the vault holds, divided by the supply still in circulation. Since a coin has a billion tokens and a card costs a fraction of a SOL, it is quoted per million tokens.

Coverage above 100% means the coin trades for less than the things behind it are worth. That is not a guarantee. The mark can fall, and a card that rarely trades has a softer mark than one that trades weekly. It is still the honest measure of how much of a price is asset rather than expectation.

Owning a card outright is not the finish line, it is the point where the fee starts doing two jobs. Part of it keeps buying the next card. Part of it buys the coin back on the open market and burns it. The default sends 40% to buyback and burn.

Buying cards raises what the vault holds. Burning shrinks the supply that claim is divided between. Both push the value behind each token up at the same moment, for every holder at once. There is nothing to claim, no snapshot to be awake for, and no edge in watching closely, which is on purpose. Mechanisms that reward attention reward bots.

A vault full of cards needs a way back into money, or the backing is a number that only ever sits on a page. The obvious idea, letting a holder redeem the card and take it home, is the wrong one. Pulling a card out of a shared vault hands one wallet the entire asset and leaves everyone else holding a coin backed by nothing.

So the card is never handed to an individual. Instead anyone can offer to buy it, and the people who would be giving it up decide whether to accept. That decision is what the vote is.

When an offer carries, the card ships to the buyer and their SOL is distributed across the float in proportion to what everyone holds. Not to whoever voted, not to whoever asked first, not to the launcher. To holders, by balance.

Proportional is the entire point. Hold 2% of the circulating supply when a card sells for 40 SOL and you receive 0.8 SOL. Somebody holding 0.1% receives 0.04 SOL out of the same sale. Nobody needs to be watching, nobody gets a bigger slice for being early to the announcement, and there is no queue where the fast wallets eat first.

Because the split follows the balance, selling your coin sells your claim along with it. Whoever buys inherits exactly the position you had, which is what keeps the coin worth trading rather than worth sitting on until a payout date.

Not every card makes good collateral. A one of one that trades twice a year marks high and is nearly impossible to value or sell. A common card with a hundred open listings marks low and can always be moved. Q scores that difference from 0 to 1000.

Q = 1000 · L^0.40 · D^0.20 · G^0.20 · V^0.20

The four are multiplied, not averaged. A card with no comparable sales cannot make up for it on grade alone, and a zero anywhere collapses the score. That is the behaviour you want from a measure of whether something can actually be sold.

The physical cards never move through this protocol. They sit in Collector Crypt’s vaults, graded by PSA, PWCC or ALT, and what a coin’s vault holds is the NFT that represents one. Burning that NFT is irreversible and is what triggers shipping.

Only a settled sale burns one. There is no path by which a single holder takes delivery, and any product offering you the card out of a shared vault is quietly promising the same object to everybody in it.

This is experimental software and the honest list is not short.

• The coin can go to zero.

  Backing is a floor under the vault's contents, not under the coin's price. A coin that never trades never accumulates anything.

• The mark can be wrong.

  A card with two sales a quarter has a price closer to an estimate. Q exists to surface that, not to remove it.

• Cards can fall.

  Collectibles are volatile and illiquid. Backing measured in SOL can drop in both terms at once.

• Custody is a third party.

  Collector Crypt holds the cards and runs redemption. That is a dependency this protocol does not control.

• Operations are centralised.

  Collecting fees and buying cards runs on infrastructure that can reach the vault keys. Compromise it and every vault is exposed.

• Backing is not a redemption right.

  Holding a coin is not title to a card. The only route from backing to cash is a sale that holders approve.

Do I have to do anything to get paid?

No. When a card sells, the proceeds are split across holders by balance. There is nothing to claim and no snapshot to be present for.

What does voting cost me?

Nothing. Your weight is your token balance, read from the chain. Tokens are not staked, locked or moved, and you can keep trading while a vote is open.

Can I vote with tokens I just bought?

Yes. The balance is read at the moment you vote, so a position you hold then counts.

Can I take the physical card?

No. It is shared backing for every holder, and handing it to one wallet would strip the rest. Cards leave only through a sale that holders approve.

Can I change the card after launching?

No. It is written into the mint transaction and nothing afterwards changes it.

What happens to my dev buy?

It buys tokens on the curve in the same transaction as the mint, exactly as it would on pump.fun.

What if nobody trades my coin?

Nothing accumulates. The 30 bps fee is the only thing that buys cards, so backing is a function of volume.

Where can I see the money?

On the coin's page. The vault is an ordinary Solana address, linked to Solscan, and every collection and purchase is logged.

How many cards are available?

500 at the moment, indexed from Collector Crypt's live listings and refreshed as the market moves.

Is this affiliated with Pokémon or Collector Crypt?

No. Cards are bought on the open market like any other buyer.