# Presale A price fixed before anyone arrives, and a hard cap on how much the sale takes. Deciding whether this is the right launch mode for your token is [Create a token](https://poo.meme/docs/creators/create#launch-mode-choice). This page is the mechanics: what a contributor gets and when, what happens if the sale doesn't succeed, and every charge along the way. ## Price and allocation The price is fixed once, before the sale opens: the tokens set aside for sale, divided by the hard cap. What you put in buys exactly that many tokens, up to whatever room the hard cap has left — a contribution too large for the room remaining is refused outright rather than partly filled, so contribute what fits. The pool opens at that same price once the sale seeds it. Nothing about the price moves between the last contribution and the first trade. ## From open to close Upcoming → Live → Ended → Launched or Failed Cancelled can follow Upcoming, Live or Ended. The creator sets the window — 30 minutes to 7 days — and, optionally, a whitelist that gates contributions until a moment of its own, after which the sale opens to everyone inside the same window. The whitelist stays the creator's to move for as long as the sale runs: it can be switched on partway through a sale that opened without one, moved later or earlier, or switched off on the spot, and wallets go on or off the list for as long as it is still gating. None of that reaches a contribution already made — a switch only ever decides who may contribute next, and once a sale has had a list it goes on saying so afterwards, however the list itself is edited. A per-wallet minimum and maximum are both optional; a maximum limits what one wallet may put in, not what one person can. The sale ends the moment either the hard cap fills or the scheduled end arrives, whichever comes first. You can take your contribution back early too, at any point while the sale is live: it costs 10% of it, kept by POO.MEME, and the door closes for the last 15 minutes so the final stretch settles with money already there. ## If it clears the soft cap The soft cap is at least a quarter of the hard cap — POO.MEME's own floor, not something a creator can set lower. Once the sale has ended, if what was raised meets it, the creator has 72 hours to finalize. > **Meeting the soft cap opens the 72-hour finalize window; it doesn't launch on its own.** If nobody finalizes inside it, the sale is treated exactly like one that never reached its target: every contribution comes back. Finalizing does four things in one transaction: - Pairs the liquidity share of what the sale pays out — at least 51%, up to all of it, a creator setting — with the matching tokens at the sale's own price, and [schedules trading to open](https://poo.meme/docs/buyers/trading#opening). - Burns the LP, or locks it for at least 30 days: the creator's choice, made at creation. - Sends whatever wasn't sold — the hard cap can go unfilled, and tokens sent to the sale by anyone join the unsold pile too — wherever the creator chose: burned by default, or to the creator, or to a named address. - Pays the rest of the raise to the creator. If that payment can't land, it waits for the creator to claim instead of holding anything else up. Once trading opens, claim your tokens from the sale's panel. If the creator set vesting — a share released the moment it settles, then a cliff and a straight release, the two together capped at a year — what you can claim grows on that schedule instead of arriving all at once. ## If it doesn't Missing the soft cap by the scheduled end, or letting the 72-hour finalize window lapse unused, both read Failed. The creator can also cancel the sale outright at any point before it settles, which reads Cancelled and hands whatever supply the sale still held back to the creator, regardless of what unsold setting was chosen — nothing is burned. Those tokens cannot fund a second sale, though: a token gets one launch for its whole life, so a token whose sale was cancelled or failed can never open trading, and starting over means creating a new token. A Failed sale hands the same tokens back too, but only once somebody asks for them: anyone can send that transaction, and the tokens reach the creator whoever does — the creator's own panel offers it. The tokens and the money are separate errands; returning the tokens changes nothing about a refund. Either way, every contributor takes their contribution back in full from the sale's panel, whenever they like — there is no deadline on a refund. Asking for yours is what moves the badge: the first contributor to call it flips the sale to Failed for everyone else too. ## What it costs A contribution itself is never touched. POO.MEME takes 5% of the raise at finalize, out of what would otherwise reach the creator, and 10% of anything taken back early, which stays with POO.MEME. Once trading opens, the ordinary rules take over for every trade on the pool: the token's own [tax table](https://poo.meme/docs/buyers/trading#tax) and [POO.MEME's share](https://poo.meme/docs/protocol/fees#share), same as any launched token. What happens to your money in the meantime is also on [Claim and refund](https://poo.meme/docs/buyers/claims).