Updraft pools a round's commits into Ascend's launch buy, so every wallet, the dev's too, pays one average price. Nobody gets the bottom of the curve to themselves.
IIThe early bird
The dev's own buy, bundled wallets, snipers in the same block. Everyone after them buys higher, often from them. We counted it on Ascend's testnet.
Fig. 1. One bird per launch, 251 in all, in launch order. The dark ones started with the creator buying first.
Fig. 2. Same 251 launches. Dark: the creator side held over a fifth of supply from the cheapest part of the curve.
Fig. 3. One wire, one launch. Everyone else shared what was left.
Fig. 4. Perch heights drawn to scale.
Source: Ascend testnet, 251 launches up to block 11,040,000. Read the full analysis
IIIBehaviour
A round gathers before launch, buys once at T0, and lands tokens in every wallet together. The dev is in the flock, not ahead of it.
Before launch, anyone puts USDC into the round. Change your mind? Withdraw any time until the lock.
At T0, one transaction, which anyone can send, turns the whole pot into Ascend's fee-free launch buy.
Tokens are pushed to every wallet in the round. Any oversubscription goes back pro-rata.
IVField marks
A field guide tells species apart by marks you can check. These are the ones every Updraft round carries, and none of them depends on trusting the dev.
The dev commits like everyone else. Their tokens unlock on a schedule set before the round opens: nothing until the cliff, then a straight line. Anyone can see how much has unlocked.
Example schedule: a 30-day cliff, then 90 days linear.
Ascend's creator role is held by a vault, not a wallet. A published policy splits creator fees between Ascend's own buy-support bid, holders who stake the token in the vault, the team and the platform. The split can only move inside bounds fixed at launch, and only after a timelock.
Example policy. Bounds fixed at launch: bid 20 to 50%, stakers 20 to 50%, team 10 to 40%, platform 10%. While nobody is staked, the stakers' share goes to the bid.
If the round can't fire cleanly, it doesn't fire. Everyone gets back their share of what the round holds.
While Ascend is paused, the round waits to fire.
Every launch writes an on-chain record: who took part, how concentrated the batch is, the dev's vesting, the policy hash (fees, exit and listing) and any shortfall. The plate here is the record our first rehearsal round wrote.
Updraft launch certificate
Plate No. 0001
Fired Oct 18, 2026 in one transaction, a rehearsal on Elysium testnet
VHabitat
Creators get a launch with a crowd instead of a race. Ascend gets launches that start wide, and keeps every fee it would have earned.
For creators
Set up the round in Creator Studio: token details, commit window, raise bounds, Open or Verified mode, your vesting, your fee policy and its bounds. After launch, the console shows harvests, queued policy changes, vault flows and staker stats.
For Ascend
Updraft uses Ascend's own launch: its curve, its creator role, its bid. The fee-free launch buy is paid back, and the distribution it leaves is the kind Ascend's lifecycle is built for.
1% of each batch funds Ascend's own bid, so Ascend loses nothing to the fee-free buy.
Every launch starts with a crowd of holders who all paid one price, ready for Ascend's road from launch to HyperCore.
VIThe roost
$DRAFT is Updraft's own token. The platform's cut of every launch goes into one basket, and $DRAFT stakers share it, epoch by epoch.
At T0, half a percent of the tokens each batch buys goes into the basket.
Each launch's vault sends the platform's share of its creator fees to the basket, as they are harvested.
The staking contract holds only your principal. It keeps no reward accounting, so there is nothing that could freeze it.
A Merkle root is published over time-weighted stake. Anyone can recompute it from public events.
Each staker claims their part of the epoch's basket with a Merkle proof.
VIIOn the wire
Join before the lock. Until then you can withdraw; after T0 you hold tokens at the same price as everyone in the round.
Live from the indexer, Elysium testnet. Rehearsal rounds are ours and marked as such. All rounds