how BALLAST works
Ballast is the weight low in a ship that keeps it steady. BALLAST is a memecoin launchpad on Meteora's Dynamic Bonding Curve built around that idea: fees sink into one public tank, and holders who stay on board earn more of it.
Fees
Every coin on BALLAST trades on a Meteora bonding curve. Each trade pays a trading fee; part goes to Meteora (protocol fee), the rest is the platform fee. Launching a coin also pays a small launch fee. All platform fees go into the Ballast Tank. Nothing is skimmed on the side.
Ballast Tank
The tank is one public wallet: the fee claimer of the BALLAST config and the pool creator of every coin. Its balance, what was collected, what went out and to whom is read from the chain and shown on the Tank page. It splits into two streams: 75% the Pump and 25% holders.
The Pump
75% of the tank is the Pump. It is manual: the team sends it, for example as buybacks into coins on BALLAST. Every outgoing Pump transaction is listed with its Solscan link, amount, time and purpose. If something is not listed there, it was not a Pump transaction.
Crew Rank
Your rank on a coin comes from your own trades on its curve: the clock starts at your first buy. Any sell resets you to Deckhand and the clock starts again from that sell. Ranks are shown on each coin page and on yours after you connect a wallet. The holder share of the tank (25%) is split among $BALLAST holders by balance × rank multiplier. Each distribution uses a public holder snapshot; the split is computed automatically, the team starts each round.
Wallets whose buys happened outside the curve (received by transfer, or older than the history we read) count as Deckhand.
Leak-Scan
A bundle is one person spreading a big buy over many wallets. Leak-Scan looks at a coin's top holders and groups wallets that (a) received their first SOL from the same address, or one from another, or (b) bought in the very same slot. Each group is flagged as one "leak" and shown in a bubble map. Exchange withdrawals don't count as a shared funder, because thousands of unrelated people withdraw from the same exchange wallets. It is a rough read of public data, not proof.
Set Sail
A coin starts around a $20k market cap. When its curve fills, around $80k, it sets sail: it graduates to a Meteora pool and its liquidity is locked forever. Dollar figures follow the SOL price; the curve is set in SOL.
Risks
Memecoins are risky and most go to zero. Bonding curves move fast in both directions. Nothing on BALLAST is financial advice and there are no promised returns: the holder share depends on fees that may or may not come in. Smart contracts can have bugs; Meteora's programs are audited but not risk-free. Only use money you can afford to lose.