Parasite → VIRUS differences

§What is being compared

Parasite is a Solana project built around Meteora: "Launch a coin that trades in another coin, and every trade burns the host." VIRUS adapts that idea to Robinhood Chain, an EVM chain, on top of the Pons V2 launchpad.

Everything said here about Parasite is limited to what the VIRUS reference audit could confirm. The Parasite site could not be fetched directly from the audit environment, so Parasite behaviors marked VERIFIED_PARASITE rest on search-engine excerpts quoting the site's own text. Other Parasite details that appear in the VIRUS product brief are marked UNVERIFIED. Nothing is claimed about Parasite's program addresses, audit status, volumes, or its docs, stats and log pages.

§What VIRUS keeps

§What changes, and why

§Chain and venue

Parasite runs on Solana with Meteora. VIRUS runs on Robinhood Chain (chain ID 4663, UNVERIFIED but consistent across sources) with Pons V2. VIRUS does not deploy its own curve or AMM. Pons provides the token, the bonding curve, the graduated Uniswap V4 pool, the locked liquidity and the fee escrow; VIRUS provides host selection, the fee recipient, the split and the burn.

§Pons must approve every host

On Pons, a launch can only use a pair token the Pons owner has approved and configured (setPairTokenApproved, setPairTokenEconomics). VIRUS cannot approve anything. A host therefore needs a Pons decision before it can carry a virus, and a Pons launch token without approval shows as PONS PAIR APPROVAL REQUIRED (BLOCKED_BY_PONS B1). If Pons approves no launch tokens as pair tokens, there are no viable hosts. Hosts must also be Pons V2 launch tokens, because only those are known to burn in a way that reduces supply; other Pons-approved assets are never hosts.

§No warm-up

The VIRUS product brief describes a price-observation warm-up before a Parasite host is usable (P15, UNVERIFIED). VIRUS does not reproduce it. Pons markets price from their own reserves, so there is nothing to observe, and VIRUS does not fake an oracle. Pons pair approval plus the VIRUS host checks take its place.

§Why the total can be 1.10%, not 1.00%

Parasite's 1% fee gives 0.20% to Meteora and controls 0.80%. On Pons, the venue's cut is the Pons protocol share of the Pons base fee, and VIRUS cannot change either.

VIRUS holds the controlled share at 80bps instead, by adding a creator tax computed on chain at launch:

creatorTaxBps = max(0, ceil(80 − baseFeeBps × (1 − protocolShare)))

As an example with the Pons published-source default fee policy (100bps base, 30% protocol share): Pons keeps 30bps, the creator's share of the base fee is 70bps, VIRUS adds a 10bps tax, and the trader pays 110bps. The burn per trade is 0.40% of volume, the same as Parasite's. The extra 0.10% is Pons's larger cut, not a VIRUS fee. The site labels such a virus PONS-NATIVE with delta +0.10%, and labels it EXACT only when both trading phases reproduce 1.00% total, 0.20% Pons and 0.80% controlled. Live values may differ from the example; see Fees and burns.

§Economics can differ between viruses and between phases

• Pons snapshots its terms per launch. Two viruses launched under different Pons fee policies can have different totals.
• Pons sets the curve's base fee (curveFeeBps) and the pool's hook fee (hookFeeBps) separately. The tax is solved against the curve, so the pool phase can have a different total. VIRUS shows both rows and never merges them.
• If the Pons base fee alone already gives the creator more than 80bps, the tax is zero and the controlled share is above target.
• If the needed tax exceeds the Pons creator-tax cap or the Pons combined-fee ceilings, VIRUS cannot launch at all.

§Pons snipe tax

Pons applies a launch-window snipe tax (published-source defaults: starting at 9,900bps over 15 seconds; the deployed curve's logic is UNVERIFIED). The VIRUS reference audit records no Parasite equivalent. The VIRUS coordinator is exempt as the launch's original deployer and uses that only for the atomic first buy.

§First buy

The product brief describes a 2.5% first-buy fee in the host, and no percentage fee without a first buy (P11, P12, UNVERIFIED for Parasite). VIRUS implements exactly that: ceil(2.5%) of the host actually spent, paid to the treasury in the launch transaction. Pons adds its own flat ETH launch fee, which VIRUS forwards unchanged and shows separately.

§Supply

The brief gives Parasite a 1,000,000,000 supply (P13, UNVERIFIED). VIRUS cannot choose supply: it comes from the Pons launch config and is displayed from chain.

§Graduation

Parasite moves a graduating parasite to Meteora DAMM v2 with LP locked forever (P9, VERIFIED_PARASITE). The brief puts Parasite's threshold at 40 SOL (P14, UNVERIFIED). VIRUS uses the Pons lifecycle: the curve sells out, graduate sweeps it, createGraduatedPool seeds a Uniswap V4 virus/host pool with the Pons hook, and the position is locked permanently by Pons. The threshold is the one Pons sets for the host, in host units. Both Pons steps are permissionless, and the site offers them as COMPLETE MIGRATION.

§Post-graduation fees

On Pons, pool fees are taken in the swap's unspecified currency, so buys of a graduated virus pay fees in the virus token. Only the Pons fee sweep operator can convert them to host. Until it does, a virus shows AWAITING_PONS_SWEEP (BLOCKED_BY_PONS B4). VIRUS never forces the conversion.

§EVM approvals

On an EVM chain, a contract can spend your ERC-20 tokens only after you approve it in a separate transaction. A curve hop needs an ERC-20 approval of the input token to the curve. A graduated-pool hop needs the input token approved to Permit2 and a Permit2 allowance for the Uniswap Universal Router. Routes are signed one hop at a time, so reaching a deep virus from ETH takes several transactions.

§Attribution

Pons records the contract that called it as the launch's deployer, so token.deployer() on every virus reads as the VIRUS coordinator. The real developer is recorded in VirusRegistry and in the feeder, and only that address can receive the developer share.

§One feeder per virus

The Pons escrow keys balances by recipient and asset. VIRUS gives each virus its own immutable VirusFeeder so fees from two viruses on the same host never mix. The feeder is the Pons creator fee recipient and has no function to hand that role to anyone else.

§Trust

Parasite's audit status is not claimed here. Pons's audit status, as displayed by VIRUS, is UNCONFIRMED. The Pons owner holds standing powers over existing viruses: redirecting future creator fees after a 3-day timelock, rescuing fees and stuck reserves. These are documented in Admin powers and Risks.

§Comparison table