> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.loadout.xyz/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.loadout.xyz/whitepaper.md). # Whitepaper ### Abstract Loadout is a platform for indie and AA game developers to launch, fund, and distribute their games using open, market-driven mechanics. Developers showcase playable demos, design documentation, trailers, and team information while launching a token that allows the market to fund development in real time. Investors participate on the same terms from launch. No discounted private rounds. Where team allocations exist, vesting is enforced on-chain and fully visible. Public buyers use the same published curve and launch rules; disclosed reserved allocations follow their own schedules. Projects raise capital through fees on eligible token trades. Game launches use a standard 5% bonding-curve fee, with 4 percentage points allocated to the studio and 1 to Loadout. Its official graduated pool starts at 2%. LOAD has already graduated and its official pool now charges 1.5%. Built on Solana, Loadout focuses on the indie and AA segment where tens of thousands of games release each year but access to early-stage capital remains limited. The platform gives developers a way to secure funding without publishers or equity dilution, while giving investors early access to real games with liquidity from day one. ### The Problem We're Actually Solving Crypto gaming had one thing that worked absurdly well: capital formation. For five years, crypto markets have shown they can mobilise liquidity faster than any normal path in games. The issue is where that money went. It mostly went into a small pool of crypto-first studios, in an industry where shipping a successful game is already hard enough, even when everyone wants you to win. So you got a predictable mess. Many inexperienced teams raised significant amounts of money, but there weren’t enough real games shipping to build a proper sample size. Mainstream developers stayed away because the stigma was already set. The industry hated crypto, so players did too. Once that happens, you’re playing the game on nightmare difficulty. The part we had wrong for years is this: even if a crypto-first studio builds an incredible game, they're still fighting an entire industry that wants them to fail. That's insane. You're trying to do one of the hardest things in entertainment while carrying a label that makes people instantly suspicious. It's almost destiny that most of these projects don't break through. Loadout flips it. Instead of trying to convince the gaming industry to accept crypto-native studios, we bring mainstream developers to the liquidity. This also fixes the investor side. Crypto gaming investors have spent years gambling on teams that had never shipped a game, simply because there weren’t enough real ones in the pool. Loadout gives them curated projects with demos, docs, and actual teams they can judge, with access from the earliest possible stage. Imagine investing in Palworld pre-demo. Ridiculous. We give teams a way to tap into crypto capital early without forcing them into a specific design philosophy. If a team wants to go deep on Web3, great. If they want to keep the game completely normal and just use the market as a funding rail, also great. The point is: the game comes first, and the funding layer adapts around it. If we attract mainstream developers at scale, the stigma collapses through sheer volume of shipped titles. Thousands of new games reach Steam each year. If a meaningful number of those teams can fund through Loadout, crypto stops being "crypto games" and starts being what it should have been the whole time: a capital rail for game development. That's why this works. It takes the best of Steam and Kickstarter and plugs them into an existing, working liquidity engine. Developers get funding without publishers and without giving up equity. Investors get early access on the same terms as everyone else, with no hidden VC discounts. Players get better games because teams actually have runway to finish what they started. This should be the obvious choice for any game studio that wants early funding and attention while retaining full control over how their game is designed. ### How Loadout Works A developer creates a project on Loadout by publishing the core materials investors and players need to judge a game early: trailer and screenshots, demo access, design documentation, team background, roadmap, token model, and use of funds. The page is built to answer the basic questions quickly and transparently. Once the project page is live, the developer launches a token directly through Loadout. There are no presales or discounted private rounds. Reserved team, treasury and staking allocations are disclosed separately. Trading follows the launch activation and protection settings. Price responds to demand as the active curve processes buys and sells. On a game token's bonding curve, the standard fee is 5%. Four percentage points go to the studio and one to Loadout before referrals and rebates. Temporary launch protection settings, where enabled, are shown in the live quote. Funding depends on trades executed through the curve. New curated launches target 150 SOL in real bonding-curve reserves, while instant launches target 85 SOL. Existing projects can retain earlier settings. The reserves seed an official Meteora DAMM v2 pool, and the graduation liquidity position is permanently locked. Studio fees are accounted for separately from that reserve. From there, the model compounds. Developers keep building and shipping updates. Investors and players track progress through public milestones. Trading can continue after graduation, subject to available liquidity and execution conditions, while eligible market activity generates development fees. Loadout is designed so that the best games rise because they hold attention long enough to build communities and capital. The platform provides the rails. The market does the sorting. ### Launch Routes and Token Allocations There are two choices to make: how the project launches, and how its token supply is allocated. #### Curated and Instant Launches | Route | How it works | Graduation target for new launches | | ------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | | Curated | We review the team and project and coordinate the launch | 150 SOL | | Instant | The developer uses the self-service publishing route | 85 SOL | Curated review includes looking at the team, product and available game builds. An Instant Launch can later become verified after review. Verification does not guarantee delivery, trading activity or returns. The project preview and published settings determine the terms of a particular launch. Older projects can use earlier targets. Access to each publishing route follows the options enabled in the app. #### Fair Launch A Fair Launch has no reserved team or treasury tokens. Its supply is allocated to the public bonding curve and graduation liquidity. The launch-funded staking reserve described below is a Studio Launch feature. Tokens held by the curve or pool have not all entered traders' wallets. The studio earns development funding through its share of eligible trading fees. #### Studio Launch A Studio Launch can reserve tokens for the team, treasury and, under the updated staking flow, staker rewards. | Allocation | Updated launch configuration | | ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | Team | Up to 20% | | Treasury | Up to the configured cap; new-release default 10% | | Staking rewards | Optional yes/no choice; new-release default 10% when enabled | | Combined team, treasury and staking | At most 40% | | Public curve and graduation liquidity | Remaining supply, at least 60% | The staking allocation and treasury cap are release-dependent settings. Review the values shown before signing. Existing projects keep their original allocations. Team and treasury reservations follow the published on-chain allocation and vesting rules. The staking reserve stays separate and, after graduation, goes to the game's staking reward system. It is not a studio treasury withdrawal. #### Fees and final review The standard game trading schedule is 5% on the curve and 2% in the official graduated pool. Review temporary launch protection, the buyback percentage, allocations, vesting and graduation target before publishing. [Launch Guide](https://loadout.gitbook.io/product-docs/for-developers/launch-guide) covers the process. [Fee Structure](https://loadout.gitbook.io/product-docs/overview/fees) explains how fees reach the studio. ### Bonding Curve and Price Discovery Each project token starts trading through a constant product bonding curve. Price moves as demand moves. Trades depend on the active project state, fees, available liquidity and minimum-output limits. There's no private round sitting in the wings. Where team allocations exist on Studio Launches, they're enforced through on-chain vesting and visible to every trader before they buy. #### How the Curve Works The bonding curve uses a constant product formula, the same core model behind Uniswap and other battle-tested DEXs. The invariant (k) is established at project creation and must be maintained or increased after every trade. Checked arithmetic, explicit rounding rules and reserve bounds protect the accounting. These controls still need testing and independent review; they do not eliminate every possible exploit. Each project starts with virtual reserves that set its starting price and price depth. Real SOL reserves start separately and change as people buy and sell. The curve configuration and token allocation determine the valuation at a given reserve level. A SOL graduation target is separate from a dollar market-cap target or a studio funding target. #### Slippage Protection Every trade requires a minimum output amount. If execution would return less, the transaction fails. This limits the price movement a trader accepts; it does not prevent every form of front-running or guarantee a profitable trade. ### Fees and Funding Flows The fee schedule has to balance studio funding with competitive trade execution. The rate depends on the token, its trading stage and the pool used. The standard game curve fee is 5%: 4 percentage points to the studio and 1 to Loadout before referrals and rebates. The standard official game pool starts at 2% after graduation. Compounding and fee allocations depend on the pool and position. The following example assumes zero compounding. Meteora takes 20% of the fee. The remaining claimable fees are split 80% to the studio and 20% to Loadout. With full claimable LP-fee ownership and no separate studio buyback allocation, the studio receives 1.28% of eligible pool volume and Loadout receives 0.32% before referrals and rebates. LOAD has completed graduation. Its official LOAD/SOL pool now charges 1.5%, with its own buyback, treasury, compounding and protocol allocations. Studio launch settings do not change LOAD's fee schedule. Tokens are transferable and anyone can create a competing pool. Routers compare execution after fees and price impact, so a large pool does not automatically capture every trade. Other LP positions and independent pools earn their own fees. We measure studio funding using actual fees received by the positions routed through our splitter. Referrals and rebates come from the eligible protocol allocation. They do not increase the standard fee or come out of the studio's allocation. We publish the terms for each launch and monitor trading, liquidity, execution, eligible fee capture and studio revenue. Existing projects retain their own configuration. Staking vault positions have their own fee policies and should not be treated as identical to the graduation position. The standard fee drops from 5% on the game curve to 2% in its official graduated pool. Wallet-to-wallet transfers carry no Loadout transfer tax. A separate pool can charge a different swap fee. The platform does not dictate how a studio spends treasury funds. It makes treasury balances and flows visible on-chain and gives teams the tools to communicate their plans for capital deployment over time. #### Standard game fee example | Allocation | Standard bonding-curve stage | Official graduated pool | | ------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ----------------------- | | Total trading fee | 5.00% | 2.00% | | Studio | 4.00% | 1.28% | | Gross Loadout, before referrals and rebates | 1.00% | 0.32% | | Meteora | Not applicable to the custom curve | 0.40% | These are percentages of eligible traded value. The pool example assumes full claimable LP-fee ownership, zero compounding and no studio buyback diversion. LOAD's separate official-pool fee is 1.5%. #### Studio buybacks An enabled fee-funded buyback allocation uses part of the studio's fee share to buy and burn its own game token. Under the updated release, accumulated pre-graduation studio fees, including eligible anti-sniper receipts, contribute at the configured share. Funds move into buyback escrow at graduation, with purchases and burns afterward. The current implementation allows increases before graduation and can allow decreases afterward. A separate studio commitment from game revenue must state its own revenue basis, percentage, timing and any cap or tiers. The studio remains responsible for executing and evidencing that commitment. ### Staking The new staking release supports LOAD token vaults and supported liquidity vaults. Studio Launches can reserve a configured supply share for staker rewards, separate from team and treasury allocations. That reserve is released to the staking system after graduation. Vault terms determine deposits, locks, fee sharing and rewards. LOAD rewards become locked restaked positions, SOL rewards pay directly and other supported reward tokens can enter locks with early-withdrawal forfeitures. Reward estimates vary with campaign funding, emissions, prices and total stake. Availability follows the vaults enabled in the app. See the Staking guides for the release details and pool terms. ### Referral System Loadout has an on-chain referral system built to incentivise organic growth. Anyone can register their wallet as a referrer, which generates a unique shareable link. When someone trades using that link, rewards accrue from the eligible protocol allocation. No additional cost to the trader or the project. #### How It Works When a referral is active, the eligible protocol reward allocation splits three ways: * Referrer Reward: 40% of the protocol fee goes to the referrer * Trader Rebate: 20% of the protocol fee is returned to the trader as a rebate * Protocol: The remaining 40% goes to Loadout Without an eligible referral, the unallocated referral portion stays with the protocol. The amount available depends on the token, trading stage and fees actually collected. Self-referral is blocked. A qualifying referral must be registered before the eligible trade. Curve rewards accrue on-chain; post-graduation rewards follow indexed eligible activity and published distributions. The Rewards page shows what is claimable. ### Graduation and Liquidity Graduation moves a token from the initial bonding curve into an official Meteora DAMM v2 pool. The token mint stays the same. New curated launches target 150 SOL in real curve reserves, while instant launches target 85 SOL. Check the individual project's settings. LOAD has already graduated under its earlier launch settings and currently trades through its official pool at 1.5%. #### What Happens at Graduation When the curve reaches its configured reserve target, the on-chain graduation steps can begin. Curve trading closes during the transition while the pool is created and its position is locked. SOL and token reserves seed the official Meteora DAMM v2 pool. The real SOL reserve becomes liquidity; the studio's fee balance remains separate. The graduation liquidity position is permanently locked, and the project moves to Graduated. For a standard game launch, the official pool starts with a 2% fee. The locked principal cannot be withdrawn from the permanently locked position. Earned fees remain claimable. Locking does not guarantee price stability, trading volume, studio revenue or the terms of liquidity added by other providers. Studios can keep earning after graduation from eligible pool fees. Actual receipts depend on trading activity, routing and the fee rights of their controlled positions. ### Project Lifecycle The on-chain project lifecycle has four main stages. A saved website draft can exist before an on-chain project or token is created: | **State** | **What's Happening** | **Trading** | | ---------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------- | | Draft | Project created, token minted, mint authority revoked. Awaiting launch. | Disabled | | Live | Bonding curve active. Buys and sells enabled. Treasury accumulating. | Enabled | | Graduating | Bonding curve hit the configured reserve target. Meteora pool being created, LP being locked. | Paused | | Graduated | LP permanently locked. Trading continues on Meteora DAMM v2. | Enabled | Mint authority is revoked immediately when the token is created. This means the project admin, or anyone else, can never inflate the token supply after launch. The total supply is fixed permanently from the moment the project is created. #### Scheduled Launches Projects don't have to go live immediately. Loadout supports scheduled launches through an on-chain executor role. A project can sit in Draft with a future launch time, and the platform's automation system will move it to Live at the specified moment. This lets teams coordinate launch timing with marketing, community events, or announcements. ### Vesting For Studio Launch projects with reserved team or treasury allocations, the applicable on-chain allocation and vesting schedules govern when tokens can be claimed. Read the project's published terms, including any cliff, duration and revocation provisions. Vesting is linear with a configurable cliff. After the cliff passes, tokens unlock proportionally over the vesting duration. Beneficiaries can claim their vested tokens at any time after the cliff. Project admins can revoke unvested tokens from a beneficiary, but the beneficiary always keeps whatever has already vested. This gives teams flexibility to handle departures while protecting people who've earned their allocation. All vesting schedules, cliff dates, claimed amounts, and unlock timelines are visible on-chain and displayed on the project page. Traders can see exactly how much of a team's allocation is still locked at any point in time. ### What Developers Actually Get Loadout is built to solve one thing for developers: runway. A studio can launch a project page, ship a demo, and start accumulating capital immediately through open trading. There's no pitch process, no equity dilution, and no waiting for a publisher to decide the game fits their slate. The treasury is SOL. It can be used to keep the team alive, pay contractors, increase content output, and fund marketing. Because capital is raised in-market, the amount a team can raise scales with demand instead of being capped by a single funding round. After graduation, fees earned by the controlled Meteora position can continue contributing to the studio treasury. This provides an ongoing funding route, with revenue determined by actual eligible trading activity. Loadout also functions as a distribution channel. Each project page is designed to convert attention into something useful: wishlists, community, and eventually purchases when the game is live. Over time, projects build an audience before release rather than trying to find one after launch. Developers don't need to be crypto-native to use the platform. They need to ship game content, communicate clearly, and keep hitting milestones. The market does the rest. ### What Investors Get Loadout is designed around early access and clean market structure. When a token launches, trading follows its activation and temporary protection settings. There are no private rounds and no discounted private-sale tokens sitting off-platform. Where Studio Launches include team allocations, vesting schedules are enforced on-chain and visible from day one. Public buyers use the same published curve and launch rules; disclosed reserved allocations follow their own schedules. Traders can evaluate the available demos, documentation, team background, roadmap and funding plans alongside market data and treasury progress. That makes it possible to price execution early, before distribution and revenue are fully visible. The referral system means active community members earn ongoing rewards for bringing others to projects they believe in. Trader rebates return a portion of fees to active participants. Their claim timing depends on the trading stage and available distributions. Tokens can trade on the curve before graduation and in the pool after the transition completes. Trade size, available liquidity, fees and slippage affect execution at both stages. Loadout lets the market express conviction early, reprice as new information arrives and fund teams that continue to deliver. ### Curation, Quality, and Failure Loadout supports Curated and Instant launch routes. Curated projects go through team and product review. Instant projects can later become verified after review. The route available to publish follows the options enabled in the app. That also means some projects will be weak. Some teams will overestimate what they can ship. Some launches will be driven mostly by hype. This is part of the environment. Trying to filter it out completely would push Loadout toward manual gatekeeping and slow approvals, which defeats the point of the platform. Loadout focuses on clear launch rules and information people can verify. Projects publish information that lets traders evaluate the game, team, allocations and use of funds. Treasury activity is visible on-chain. Graduation requires the configured real SOL reserve, but that milestone alone does not prove a project's quality or ability to deliver. The result is a natural sorting mechanism. Projects that keep attention raise capital and graduate. Projects that don't, fail. Over time, reputation compounds for teams that ship and for projects that maintain real communities. Loadout doesn't need every launch to be good. It needs the best launches to be obvious and the rules to be consistent. ### Built on Solana Loadout runs on Solana for one reason: it makes the core loops viable at scale. Low fees and fast settlement matter when you're asking investors to trade frequently and developers to rely on on-chain funding flows. #### On-Chain Programs The updated on-chain system includes Loadout Core, Graduation, Vesting, Swap Router and Staking, alongside a shared math library. Review coverage applies to the specific programs and versions identified in each published audit report. Loadout Core is the primary program. It handles protocol configuration, project creation, token minting, bonding curve trading (buy and sell), fee routing, referral registration and rewards, trader rebates, and the first phase of graduation. All protocol-level parameters like fee rates, referral splits, executor authority, and pause state are stored in a singleton FeeConfig account. The Graduation program handles Meteora DAMM v2 pool creation, the initial liquidity deposit, permanent locking of the graduation position and fee claims for ongoing project funding. The Vesting program enforces linear vesting with cliff support for Studio Launch allocations. It supports claiming vested tokens and admin revocation of unvested portions. The Swap Router handles supported trading routes. Staking manages the supported vaults, deposits, reward campaigns and claims. Loadout Math implements the curve calculations with checked arithmetic and explicit rounding rules. #### Security The platform is designed around a few core security principles. All arithmetic uses checked operations. Overflow-checks are enabled in the Solana release profile. The math library uses u128 throughout with ceiling division that always favours the protocol. Access control is enforced through Anchor discriminators, PDA constraints, and a two-step admin transfer process. State machine guards prevent invalid transitions. You can't buy when a project isn't Live. Pause controls apply to particular operations. Review the deployed program and published audit scope rather than assuming a single switch covers every action. The contracts enforce the configured graduation reserve, minimum trade outputs and fee limits. Checked arithmetic and invariant checks protect the accounting. These controls do not guarantee market demand or a funding outcome. Mint authority is revoked at token creation. Permanent and irreversible. Nobody can inflate the supply after launch. The platform is built so investors can verify mechanics by looking at on-chain activity, and developers can rely on automated flows rather than manual payouts. ### Discovery and Distribution Loadout is both a funding platform and a discovery surface. Projects are surfaced through multiple feeds: trending, newly graduated, graduating soon, top wishlisted, and new launches. Traders and players can filter by stage, launch type, and genre. Each project page shows live market data, treasury progress, holder count, volume, and the team's updates. Wishlisting creates an early signal of interest that works for both sides. Investors can track projects before committing capital. Developers build a community before they even launch. Project updates let teams post progress directly on-platform, keeping their community informed without relying on external channels. Over time, Loadout will add direct game purchasing and access pass integration, turning the platform into a full distribution channel where funding, community building, and game delivery all happen in one place. ### Team Loadout is being built by people who have already shipped in Web3 at scale and know what it takes to build product, liquidity, and community. I founded Illuvium and have spent years building games, product and communities through different market cycles. What matters for Loadout is simple: this platform needs distribution, trust, and execution. My edge is that I can bring the market to the platform early, and I've already lived the reality of building a large Web3 gaming project. I know what has worked, and what has failed, and how to solve those pitfalls. ### Roadmap #### Phase 1: Launch * Project creation with full metadata, demos, trailers, and documentation * Bonding curve token launches (Fair and Studio) * Treasury capture and automatic graduation to Meteora DAMM v2 * Referral system with trader rebates * Scheduled launches via on-chain executor * Watchlists and project discovery feeds * Vesting enforcement for Studio Launch allocations #### Phase 2: Growth * Post-graduation liquidity tooling and analytics * Market analytics and enhanced project dashboards * Enhanced project dashboards for developers * KOL and creator programs * LOAD and game staking, optional staking reserves and updated reward claims * Instant publishing and expanded curated launches * Pre-graduation fee funding for buybacks and first-minute trading improvements #### Phase 3: Distribution * Direct game purchasing on-platform * Access passes integrated with game delivery * Creator tooling and ecosystem programs ### Risks Loadout is a market-based platform. It carries the same risks as any open trading environment, plus the added reality that game development is unpredictable. Projects can fail. Teams can miss timelines. Demos can look promising and still not translate into a finished product. Tokens can be volatile. Liquidity can disappear quickly when attention moves elsewhere. Investors should assume that many projects will fail and size positions accordingly. There are also risks tied to manipulation. Some launches will be driven by hype. Some teams will attempt to inflate signals. The platform is designed to make key milestones difficult to fake, but it cannot remove adversarial behaviour entirely. Regulatory risk exists across global crypto markets. Loadout is built to avoid presale mechanics and private allocations, and the platform does not promise returns. That said, the regulatory environment is still evolving and can change quickly. Finally, Loadout is software. Smart contracts can have bugs. Frontends can have issues. Operational mistakes can occur. The approach is to reduce complexity, audit core contracts, and keep critical flows transparent and verifiable on-chain. ### Closing Loadout is built for a specific gap in the market: real games that need capital early, and capital that wants access before outcomes are already priced in. Developers publish a project the way it should be judged: demo, documentation, team, roadmap, and a clear plan for funds. Investors get a live market from the first trade, without private rounds or discounted entries. Where allocations exist, vesting is transparent and on-chain. Capital routes into game development automatically through treasury capture and post-graduation fee sharing. The platform doesn't decide which games deserve to succeed. It provides consistent mechanics, transparent flows, and a discovery surface that makes good projects easier to find. Teams that keep shipping attract deeper liquidity. Projects that don't will fail. Loadout is a funding layer, a launch layer, and eventually a distribution layer. The core thesis is simple: if a game can hold attention, it should be able to turn that attention into runway.