How EVOLVE works.

01What EVOLVE is

EVOLVE is a memecoin on Solana whose behaviour changes on a schedule. The token, its mint address and your balance stay exactly as they are. What changes is the small program Solana runs every time EVOLVE moves. We call that program the hook, and each version of it a cycle.

Cycle 0 is live from launch. Cycle 1 lands one hour later, and after that a new cycle ships every 24 hours. Each one adds a hook on top of the ones already running: a new rule, a new reward, a new piece of a game. The coin you already hold just starts doing something new.

It keeps evolving until it reaches a $50M market cap. That's its final form, covered in Where it trades.

02The hook, in plain words

EVOLVE is a Token-2022 token, Solana's newer token standard. Token-2022 lets a mint name one program that has to run on every transfer of the token: every buy, every sell and every wallet-to-wallet send. That program is a transfer hook.

Inside a transfer, the hook can:

• read the trade: who is sending, who is receiving, how much, and what each side already holds
• keep its own records on chain, like a trade counter or a per-wallet score
• refuse the trade, which cancels the whole transaction so nothing moves at all

Several hooks, one program

Token-2022 lets a token name exactly one hook program. EVOLVE's program carries every hook it has evolved so far and runs them all on each transfer, in order. A new cycle adds a hook to the stack. It doesn't swap out the last one, so by Cycle 10 a single trade passes through ten of them.

EVOLVE's hook program has one address for life. An upgrade replaces the code at that address, so the mint keeps pointing at the same place and every holder gets the new behaviour on their next transfer.

03Evolution cycles

A cycle is the stretch of time one version of the hook is live.

Why the countdown never jumps

The countdown is worked out from one fixed moment, the launch time, and never from when you opened the page. Reloading, switching devices or a site update can't move it. The site also reads Solana's own clock, so a phone that's a few minutes out still shows the same countdown as everyone else, and the same time the hook itself sees.

When the clock hits zero, that cycle's card on the timeline says Evolving while the upgrade lands, which takes seconds.

Cycles keep coming until EVOLVE graduates at a $50M market cap. After that there are no new ones.

04How a cycle ships

1. PitchIdeas come in on X and from the Mutation lab on the site.
2. BuildThe chosen gene is written as a new version of the hook program.
3. TestIt runs on Solana devnet against real swaps first. Trades it should allow go through, trades it should refuse don't, and holders can always sell where the rules say they can.
4. ShipWhen the clock hits zero, the dev wallet uploads the new program and upgrades the hook in one go. Nothing is announced beforehand. Each cycle is a surprise until it lands, and its code is public on chain from that moment.
5. LogThe evolution log on the site gets an entry with the cycle number, its name, what changed and a link to the upgrade transaction.

05The genome

The genome is the set of genes live in the hook right now. Two are active from launch. The rest are candidates that holders can pitch for a future cycle.

Hook genes and keeper genes

06Pitching a mutation

Open the Mutation lab on the site, switch on the genes you'd like to see and watch the organism change. Then press Pitch a mutation. It opens a post on X with your combination filled in, ready for you to add why.

Pitches are public on @ievolveonsol, so holders can back the ones they like. A pitch makes it into a cycle when it has real support and can be built and tested inside a day. Bigger ideas get split across several cycles.

A good pitch fits in one post and says what changes on a trade. "Sells over 1% of supply get refused for the first hour of each cycle" can be built. "Make it go up" can't.

07Fees

Every buy and sell pays a 2% fee, in SOL. Meteora keeps a fifth of it as its protocol fee, so 1.6% of each trade goes to the EVOLVE dev wallet. It's used for the hooks: building, testing and shipping each cycle, and genes that need SOL, like buybacks.

• The 2% is written into the pool's on-chain config when the pool is created. Nothing can change it after that.
• After graduation at $50M, the regular Meteora pool EVOLVE moves to charges the same 2%, and its fees go to the dev wallet too.
• The pool holds the fees until the dev wallet claims them. Any explorer shows what it has collected, and every claim is a public transaction.

08Where it trades

EVOLVE launches on a Meteora bonding curve. There's no liquidity to add: the curve holds the supply and prices every trade, and buyers' SOL stays in the pool to pay sellers. The curve calls the hook on every buy and sell, so each cycle's genes apply to every trade.

Routers and trading terminals that support Token-2022 transfer hooks can trade it. The Buy button on the site always points to a route that works.

Final form at $50M

The curve runs until EVOLVE reaches a $50M market cap. The trade that gets it there graduates it. In that same trade Meteora removes the hook from the token for good, and the curve's SOL then moves into a regular Meteora pool. From that point EVOLVE trades like any other Solana token and gets no new cycles. That's its final form.

09Sending EVOLVE

A transfer of EVOLVE has to include one extra account, the hook's record. Some wallets' Send buttons don't add it yet, and the send fails with an error about a missing account. Nothing is lost when that happens. Send it again from a wallet or app that supports Token-2022 transfer hooks.

10Live data on the site

11Check it yourself

None of this needs the site. Everything it shows can be checked on Solana.

• The mint. Open the mint address on an explorer. It shows Token-2022, the transfer hook extension with the hook program's address and the token metadata. The hook setting itself is controlled by Meteora's program, which only ever clears it at graduation.
• The hook program. Its page shows the upgrade authority, which is the dev wallet, and every upgrade it has ever had. One upgrade is one cycle.
• The shipped code. As soon as a cycle lands, anyone can download the hook program from the chain and compare its hash with the published build.
• The organism. The hook keeps one record per mint with the live cycle number, the transfer count, the total volume and the last slot it saw a trade. Its address is derived from these seeds:

12What you're trusting

A coin that rewrites itself asks you to trust the people who do the rewriting. Here is exactly what that covers.

What nobody can do

13Glossary

Mint

The token's on-chain identity. EVOLVE's mint address never changes.

Token-2022

Solana's newer token program, with optional extensions like transfer hooks.

Transfer hook

A program Solana runs on every transfer of a token. It can read, record and refuse.

Cycle

The time one version of the hook is live. Cycle 0 lasts an hour, every cycle after that lasts 24 hours.

Gene

One behaviour inside a cycle, like Burn or Membrane.

Genome

All the genes live right now.

Keeper

The script that claims the trading fees and spends them the way the live genes say.

Buffer account

Where a new cycle's code is uploaded during the upgrade, seconds before it goes live.

Upgrade authority

The key allowed to replace the hook program's code. For EVOLVE it's the dev wallet.

Bonding curve

A pool that prices the token on a fixed curve. The more that's bought, the higher the price.

Graduation

The trade that takes EVOLVE to a $50M market cap. It removes the hook and moves EVOLVE to a regular pool.

Final form

EVOLVE after it reaches a $50M market cap: the cycles stop and it trades like any other Solana token.