FAQ

§The basics

§What is a virus?

A Pons V2 launch on Robinhood Chain whose pair token is another Pons V2 launch token, its host. It trades only against the host, pays its fees in the host, and its own VirusFeeder burns 50% of the fees it receives from the host's supply, books 30% to the developer and pays 20% to the VIRUS treasury. See Overview.

§Can I buy a virus directly with ETH?

No. A virus has no ETH market. You buy its host first, then the virus with the host, one transaction per hop. For a deeper virus there are more hops. The app resolves the route and walks you through it. See Infection routes.

§Why does it take several transactions?

Each hop is a separate market, and on an EVM chain a contract can only spend your ERC-20 tokens after you approve it. A hop may need an approval and a trade; a graduated-pool hop may need an approval to Permit2, a Permit2 allowance for the Universal Router, and the swap. VIRUS signs one hop at a time so every quote is fresh when it executes.

§Hosts

§Which tokens can be hosts?

Only Pons V2 launch tokens with verified provenance, approved by Pons as pair tokens, with usable Pons pair economics and 18 decimals, not disabled by VIRUS, and shallow enough that the virus would be at depth 3 or less. See Hosts.

§Why can't stablecoins, stocks or other approved assets be hosts?

VIRUS burns its host. Pons launch tokens are ERC20Burnable, and their burn reduces totalSupply. VIRUS has no such guarantee for other assets, so it refuses them even when Pons has approved them as pair tokens.

§My token says "PONS PAIR APPROVAL REQUIRED". Can VIRUS approve it?

No. Pair approval is an owner-only Pons function. VIRUS cannot approve a token and never requests approval on anyone's behalf. Until Pons approves it, INOCULATE stays disabled for that host.

§Is there a warm-up period before a host can be used?

No. Pons curves and pools price from their own reserves; there is no oracle to warm up. A host is usable as soon as Pons approves it and it passes the VIRUS checks.

§Can a virus host another virus?

Yes, if Pons approves the virus as a pair token. Depth is capped at 3: ETH → host → virus → virus → virus.

§Fees and burns

§How much does a trade cost?

The Pons base fee plus the creator tax VIRUS sets at launch. VIRUS solves the tax so that at least 80bps of volume reaches the feeder. The total depends on live Pons terms. With the Pons published-source default fee policy as an example, it is 1.10%. The site shows the live figure for each virus.

§Why 1.10% and not 1.00% like Parasite?

Because Pons, not VIRUS, sets its own cut. In the example with a 100bps base fee and a 30% Pons share, Pons keeps 30bps and pays the creator 70bps. VIRUS adds a 10bps creator tax to reach its 80bps target, for 110bps in total. The burn per trade is the same as Parasite's (0.40% of volume); the extra 0.10% is Pons's larger cut. The site labels this PONS-NATIVE and shows the delta. See Fees and burns.

§Is the burn real?

Yes. The feeder calls the host's own burn, which destroys tokens and reduces totalSupply, and it reverts unless supply fell by exactly the burned amount. Nothing is sent to a dead address. You can check any feed on chain; see Verify on chain.

§Who calls feed()? Do I have to?

Anyone can, at any time. It pays the caller nothing and costs gas. Fees wait on Pons or in the escrow until someone calls it. Developers and host holders have the most reason to.

§What is the 2.5% inoculation fee?

A one-time fee of 2.5% of the host actually spent on the first buy, rounded up, paid in host to the VIRUS treasury in the launch transaction. No first buy, no fee. If the first buy is partially filled because it sells out the curve, the fee is charged only on what was spent.

§What is the Pons launch fee?

A flat ETH fee Pons charges for every launch, launchFee(). VIRUS forwards it to Pons unchanged and shows it separately from the inoculation fee.

§Developers

§How does the developer get paid?

The feeder books 30% of each feed to the developer. claimDev() pays the whole booked balance, in host, to the developer address fixed when the virus was launched. Anyone can trigger it; the money only ever goes to that address.

§Can the developer change the payout address or redirect the fees?

No. The developer address is an immutable argument of the feeder, and the feeder has no function that could transfer the Pons creator fee recipient role. The Pons owner, however, can redirect a virus's future fees after a 3-day timelock.

§Why does a virus token's deployer() return the coordinator?

Because the VIRUS coordinator is the contract that called Pons, and the Pons launch token's deployer metadata records it. The real developer is recorded in VirusRegistry (getVirus(virus).developer), in the feeder (developer()), and in the launch events.

§What happens to a developer's first-buy tokens?

The coordinator buys to itself, which is exempt from the Pons snipe tax because the coordinator is the launch's original deployer, and forwards all of the virus tokens to the developer in the same transaction. The coordinator has no other trade path.

§States and statuses

§What does AWAITING_PONS_SWEEP mean?

After graduation, buys of a virus pay their fee in the virus token. Pons lets only its fee sweep operator convert those to host. Until it does, the feeder cannot sweep, and it reports AwaitingPonsSweep. The fees are not lost; when the operator sweeps, Pons credits the feeder in host, and the next feed() distributes it.

§What does "severed" mean?

The Pons owner changed the virus's creator fee recipient away from its feeder. Future fees go elsewhere. The feeder still distributes anything already credited to it. If Pons ever routes fees back, the next feed() clears the status.

§What are stray virus tokens?

If the Pons owner rescues a graduated pool's fees, Pons can pay the feeder in the virus token itself. The feeder cannot sell them, and no one may withdraw them, so anyone can call burnStrayVirus() to burn them.

§Why can't I sell?

The curve is sold out (readyToGraduate), which closes sells, and the pool does not exist yet. Anyone can complete the migration with COMPLETE MIGRATION: graduate, then createGraduatedPool. Both are permissionless Pons calls. After that, trading resumes in the pool.

§What is LAB MODE?

The site's state when it cannot launch viruses: the VIRUS contracts are not deployed or found, VIRUS launches are paused, Pons launch access is closed to the coordinator, no Pons launch config is enabled, the fee target does not fit the Pons creator-tax cap, or launching is switched off in this build. INOCULATE is disabled, and every figure shown is still read live.

§Graduation

§When does a virus graduate?

When its curve has sold every token not reserved for the pool (readyToGraduate). The site tracks this as the host raised against the graduation threshold Pons set for that host, in host units. There is no SOL or ETH threshold.

§What happens to liquidity after graduation?

Pons seeds a Uniswap V4 virus/host pool with the Pons hook and locks the position permanently in its launch locker. No one, including VIRUS and the developer, can withdraw it.

§Control and trust

§Can the VIRUS admin take my fees or stop feeding?

No. The admin can pause new launches, disable hosts for new launches, and change the treasury or coordinator for future launches after a 2-day delay. It cannot stop feed() or claimDev(), change an existing virus's split, host, developer or treasury, or touch booked developer fees. See Admin powers.

§Is Pons audited? Is VIRUS audited?

The Pons audit status displayed by VIRUS is UNCONFIRMED: no Pons V2 audit report was reviewed, and secondary press coverage from July 2026 reported the contracts as under audit with two partners. These docs make no claim that VIRUS has been audited. See Risks.

§Does $VIRUS pay dividends or have staking?

No. $VIRUS is a plain Pons launch with no staking, dividends, revenue share or auto-buyback. It gives no claim on the treasury or on fees.

§Are the numbers on the site real?

Every figure is read from Robinhood Chain when shown. Demo fixtures exist only in development builds and are stamped DEMO SPECIMEN; they cannot appear in production. Worked examples in these docs are labelled as examples.

§Game features

§How are achievements and high scores decided?

Your browser computes them from on-chain state on every visit. No server stores or awards anything, so anyone can check a badge against the contracts. For example, LETHAL I means the strain's totalBurned in the registry is at least 0.01% of its host's supply before VIRUS burns. Different hosts are different tokens, so strains and hosts are ranked by the share of supply they burned, never by raw amounts.

§What is the terminal?

Press the backtick key (`) or the >_ button. It is a read-only command line over the same registry reads the pages use: scan $SYM, open $SYM, top, tail, help. It cannot sign or send a transaction.

§Where do the live alerts come from?

While the site is open, it watches new blocks for VirusInoculated and VirusFed events in the VIRUS registry. It shows only events that happen after the page loaded; it never replays history or invents activity.

§Where does the price chart come from?

Your browser reads it from the chain. Every curve trade and, after graduation, every pool swap becomes one point: the trade's average price in the host, with fees excluded. The table under the chart links each point to its transaction. Nothing is sampled or smoothed.

§Does SHARE ON X post for me?

No. It opens X's own post composer with a draft; you decide whether to post. The preview image for a strain link is drawn at request time from that strain's on-chain name, host and burn share.