How it works

The launch

1. You fill in the coin: name, ticker, image, optional description and links.
2. The server uploads the image and a metadata JSON to IPFS (Pinata). The JSON records the flight split under the key lofted: the flight wallet and the 50% share. The coin's description on pump.fun mentions the flights and links to its page here.
3. Your browser asks PumpPortal for the creation transaction (create + dev buy), checks it only calls the expected programs and that you pay, then your wallet signs it. A simulation caps what it may take from your wallet before anything is sent.
4. Your wallet signs a second transaction, built in your browser with pump.fun's official SDK: create_fee_sharing_config and update_fee_shares on pump.fun's fees program (pfeeUxB6jkeY1Hxd7CsFCAjcbHA9rWtchMGdZ6VojVZ): 50% to the flight wallet, 50% to you. If fees are already waiting, a sweep_creator_fee goes first, to you.
5. The server reads the launch back from the chain and lists the coin. Its split, payouts and seats are read live, never stored.

Why the split can't be changed

pump.fun lets a coin's fee split be configured once. After the first configuration it is locked (pump.fun SDK 4.3.1, “One-Time Creator Reward Distribution Policy”). The coin page reads the split account and shows “Split locked” only if it matches the coin's metadata and is locked. One exception: pump.fun's community-takeover admin can rewrite any split. If that happens, the badge falls and the coin stops earning seats.

How a seat is counted

1. Creator fees accumulate in pump.fun's vault for the coin. Anyone can send them out with pump.fun's permissionless payout (the button on each coin page).
2. Tropofly reads the history of the coin's split account and keeps the successful pump.fun payouts that added SOL to the flight wallet.
3. Each time a coin's running total passes a multiple of 1.5 SOL, it earns a seat, dated by the payout that crossed the line.
4. All seats, across coins, are numbered by slot (ties broken by mint, then by the coin's own order), 12 to a flight. The code is in packages/rules: anyone can recompute the manifest from the chain.

Fees waiting in pump.fun's vault show as a dashed extension on the altimeter. They don't count until they reach the flight wallet.

How a flight happens

This part happens in the real world, so it is the Tropofly team's commitment, not an on-chain one.

• When a flight has its 12 seats, the team prints each seat's coin image and ticker on a card and mounts the cards on the payload box, facing the camera.
• The launch is declared to the aviation authorities and insured. The team commits to launching within 42 days of the twelfth seat, weather and airspace permitting.
• A latex weather balloon filled with helium carries the payload to about 30 km, bursts, and a parachute brings the box down. A GPS tracker sends its position on 434 MHz to the public SondeHub Amateur tracker, run by the amateur ballooning community, not by Tropofly.
• The flight log on /flights gets the date, the payload callsign, the tracker link, the highest altitude in the telemetry, whether the payload was recovered, and the video once it's published.
• A lost payload or a scrubbed launch is logged as such. Seats on a lost flight ride the next one.

The flight wallet

6LGWwsajuEm87zFZRu43N34U1FYxETfNSkUgcLMML5Wq. It receives half of every Tropofly coin's creator fees. It pays for balloons, helium, trackers, cameras, parachutes, insurance and trips. Every outgoing transaction is listed on /flights, read from the chain. What each spend bought is the team's word.

Programs

Fees

• Tropofly: 0.03 SOL per launch. It goes to Tropofly's management wallet, in the same transaction as the launch. The flight wallet only receives its half of creator fees.
• pump.fun: its usual trading fees. Creation costs about 0.02 SOL of network rent.
• PumpPortal: 0.5% of the dev buy.
• The pledge: rent for pump.fun's split account, under 0.01 SOL.

Who enforces what

• Your coin is a standard pump.fun coin: same bonding curve, same trading fees, same graduation. Enforced on-chain by the pump.fun program.
• Half of the coin's creator fees go to the public flight wallet, half to you, and the split can't be edited. Enforced on-chain by pump.fun's fees program (pfeeUx…): your pledge transaction sets the split once and pump.fun locks it. One exception we can't remove: pump.fun's community-takeover admin can rewrite any split. The coin page reads it live and says so if it changes.
• Anyone can push the fees waiting in the split to the flight wallet and to you. Enforced on-chain: pump.fun's payout instruction is permissionless. The button on each coin page sends it.
• The altimeter counts only SOL this coin actually sent to the flight wallet. Tracked by Tropofly, read on-chain: every payout is listed with its transaction so you can add them up.
• Every 1.5 SOL sent is one seat. Seats are numbered in the order the chain shows them paid, 12 to a flight. Tracked by Tropofly: the manifest is computed from payouts anyone can read, by the published rule in the open code.
• A full flight launches within 42 days of its twelfth seat, with each seat's meme printed on the payload. The Tropofly team's word. Weather, airspace and the authorities decide the actual day. Afterwards you can check it yourself: the SondeHub tracker and the flight video are linked on /flights.
• Every SOL that leaves the flight wallet is listed. Tracked by Tropofly, read on-chain from the wallet's history. What each spend paid for (helium, balloon, insurance) is the team's word.

Limits

• Payouts are read from the last 300 transactions of each coin's split account. A coin with more shows a note on its page.
• The flight wallet's spending list covers its last 300 transactions.
• Tropofly can't move fees on its own. If nobody sends a coin's waiting fees, they stay in pump.fun's vault and earn no seat.