DOCS · V1
How PonSnow works.
Overview
PonSnow is a token on Robinhood Chain launched through Pons V2. The token itself is deliberately boring: a fixed-supply ERC-20 deployed by Pons, burnable by anyone, with no owner, no tax logic and no mint function. Nobody, including the team, can ever create new tokens.
Everything interesting lives in one contract next to it, the PonSnow Vault. Pons pays the launch's creator fees in ETH to whatever address the creator picks. That address is the vault. The vault turns those fees into three things: ETH for stakers, ETH for burners, and buybacks that burn tokens.
The result is a supply that can only go down, and a snowman on the home page whose size is the share of supply that people have committed, either by staking it or by burning it.
Where the ETH comes from
Every trade of PONSNOW pays two fees, both denominated in ETH, never in the token:
- The Pons base fee. A percentage of every trade, split by Pons between the protocol, a buyback vault and the creator.
- The creator tax. An extra percentage chosen at launch (capped at 10 % by Pons), paid entirely to the creator.
Before graduation, trades happen on the Pons bonding curve. After the curve reaches its ETH threshold, liquidity moves into a permanently locked Uniswap V4 position and a Pons hook keeps charging the same fees on every swap.
Both streams accrue in the Pons fee escrow under the vault's address. Anyone can call harvest() on the vault: it claims the balance from the escrow and distributes it immediately. There is no admin step and no way to skim it.
The split
Each harvest is divided three ways. The defaults are:
| Bucket | Share | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Stakers | 50 % | pro-rata to staked PONSNOW |
| Burners | 30 % | pro-rata to burn score |
| Buyback | 20 % | reserved to buy PONSNOW and burn it |
If a bucket has nobody in it yet (no stakers, or no burners), its slice rolls into the buyback so no ETH is ever stranded.
Staking
Staking uses the standard reward-per-token accumulator (the Synthetix model) with ETH as the reward. When a harvest lands, the stakers' slice is divided by the total staked and added to a global accumulator. Your pending rewards are your stake multiplied by the accumulator's growth since your last checkpoint.
Two consequences:
- Your share of every harvest is exactly your share of the total stake at that moment. Staking more earns more.
- You only earn from harvests that happen after you stake. There is no way to farm rewards that were already distributed.
Every stake sets a lock (30 days by default) on your whole position. You can withdraw before the lock ends, but a penalty (50 % by default) is burned. After the lock, withdrawals are free. Rewards already earned are never affected by withdrawing.
Burn score
Burning through the vault destroys your tokens forever and credits your address with a burn score equal to the amount burned. The score is a plain number in the contract: not a token, not an NFT, not transferable, never decreasing.
The burners' slice of every future harvest is distributed pro-rata to burn score, with the same accumulator mechanism as staking. Burning once pays you for as long as the protocol generates fees.
Burning is irreversible by design. The app asks for a confirmation before sending the transaction.
Buyback and burn
The buyback slice accumulates in the vault as ETH. An operator (the vault owner, or an address they designate) converts it into PONSNOW through a dedicated swap adapter on the graduated Uniswap V4 pool, and the vault burns everything it receives in the same transaction.
The adapter reads the pool key straight from the Pons factory, so it can only ever trade on the real PONSNOW pool. Buybacks are operator-gated only because a minimum-output check is the sole slippage protection; the ETH itself can never be withdrawn, only swapped and burned.
The snowman
The snowman's size is one on-chain number:
size = (total staked + total burned) / launch supply
It maps to six stages:
| Stage | Threshold | Looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | < 1 % | a snowball |
| 1 | ≥ 1 % | a snowball with eyes |
| 2 | ≥ 5 % | two balls, a carrot |
| 3 | ≥ 15 % | three balls, arms, a scarf |
| 4 | ≥ 30 % | a top hat and buttons |
| 5 | ≥ 50 % | the full snowman, crowned |
Burned tokens count forever. Staked tokens count while they are staked. The snowman can only shrink if people unstake, and the more the supply is burned, the harder it becomes to shrink.
Parameters
The vault owner can tune a few parameters, each inside hard-coded bounds:
| Parameter | Default | Bound |
|---|---|---|
| Split stakers / burners / buyback | 50 / 30 / 20 | must sum to 100 % |
| Lock duration | 30 days | ≤ 180 days |
| Early-exit penalty | 50 % | ≤ 50 % |
| Buyback operator | the owner | any address |
What the owner cannot do: mint tokens, withdraw ETH from the vault, touch staked tokens, change the token address once set, or pause claims.
Contracts
| Contract | Address |
|---|---|
| PonSnow Vault | view on explorer |
| PONSNOW token | view on explorer |
| Pons V2 factory | 0x7eD598BcEf8bd9Edd8C97A195C6d13f40801EC7e |
| Pons fee escrow | 0xd3AFEB2a57f70eF218Aa82451c51B2fb0416Ac9e |
| Uniswap V4 PoolManager | 0x8366a39CC670B4001A1121B8F6A443A643e40951 |
Chain: Robinhood Chain, chain id 4663, RPC https://rpc.mainnet.chain.robinhood.com. The vault source is verified and covered by unit and fuzz tests, including the invariant that total supply never increases and that every wei of ETH in the vault is accounted for.
FAQ
Do I need to do anything to receive fees?
No. Stake or burn once, then claim whenever you like. Rewards accrue on-chain between claims.
Who calls harvest?
Anyone. There is a button in the app and a script in the repository. Fees sit safely in the Pons escrow until someone does.
Can I stake and burn at the same time?
Yes. The two buckets are independent, and you can claim each separately.
What if I unstake early?
The penalty is burned, which shrinks the supply for everyone else. Your ETH rewards are untouched.
Is there a token tax on transfers?
No. The token is a plain ERC-20, so it works everywhere. All fees are charged in ETH on trades by Pons and Uniswap, never on transfers.
Risks
- Smart contract risk. The vault is tested but not formally audited. Do not commit more than you can afford to lose.
- Dependency on Pons. Fee conversion into the escrow is triggered by the Pons operator or by the launch wallet. If neither acts, fees wait in Pons contracts; they are not lost.
- Volume risk. Rewards are a share of trading fees. No volume, no rewards.
- Owner keys. Parameters are bounded, but an owner could still set an unfavorable split. Moving ownership to a multisig is planned.
- Regulation. Tokens with staking rewards may be regulated in your jurisdiction. This site is not financial advice.