Poncho → Questions
Questions worth asking before you use any Telegram trading bot
These are the questions we would ask about someone else's bot. Here are our answers, including the ones where the answer is that we do not know yet — a bot that quietly skips those is telling you something.
What does Poncho charge?
0.001 ETH per successful launch. Nothing on trades, today.
A 1% trading fee is built and will be switched on before Poncho opens to everyone; until it is, trades cost you the network's gas and nothing of ours. We would rather tell you a fee is coming than surprise you with it, and we will date it here when it lands.
The launch fee is not the whole cost of a launch, and we would rather say so than let the figure flatter us. Pons charges its own 0.0005 ETH to create a token and the network charges gas on top, so a real launch came to 0.001824 ETH all-in. The bot shows you that total before it sends anything, and our 0.001 ETH is a separate transfer taken only if the launch actually succeeds. The full arithmetic is here.
Is 1-Tap Mode on by default?
Yes, and you should know what that means. With 1-Tap on, the buy and sell buttons execute immediately with no confirmation step. It is fast and it is convenient, and a mis-tap trades instantly and irreversibly.
The check before a buy still runs — 1-Tap takes the same path as a confirmed buy, so nothing is skipped. What you give up is the screen. There is no confirmation to read, which means there is no figure you were shown and no number you agreed to; your slippage setting is the only limit on what comes back, and it is enforced on chain rather than by anything you saw.
It is in Trade settings, alongside the buy presets, the sell presets and the slippage default. Turn it off if you trade with your thumb on a moving train. We are telling you it is on rather than waiting for you to discover it, because the discovery is expensive.
What does the check before a buy actually do?
Before a buy is sent, Poncho runs the sell path — it simulates getting back out before it commits you to getting in — and reports what it found: whether the sell path is clear, whether there is a transfer tax, the route it would take and the price impact. Where the exit can be simulated and comes back bad, the buy is refused.
Where the exit cannot be quoted at all, the buy goes ahead. That is deliberate and it is the part worth knowing: the absence of an answer is not treated as a bad answer, because on a brand-new pool there is often nothing to quote against yet. A silent check is not a passed check.
What it does not do is make a token safe. A clean check means the specific things it tested came back clean at that moment. Liquidity can be pulled a block later. A contract can contain behaviour no simulation reaches. The full, honest list of what the check misses is part of the documentation we have not published yet, and it will be published as a list of gaps rather than a list of features.
Which venues does Poncho cover?
Every major venue type on Robinhood Chain: the bonding curve, v2, v3, v4, flap and extcurve.
What we will not tell you is a percentage. Coverage is measured against a sample of tokens, the sample moves, and a number that is true on Tuesday is quietly false by Friday — so a figure on this page would be a claim about tokens we have not tested. If Poncho cannot find a market for a token, it says so and sends nothing. That is the behaviour worth trusting, not a score.
Does Poncho hold my keys?
Yes, and here is the mechanism. Poncho stores encrypted key material on its server. Your PIN is not stored — it is what the encryption key is derived from, together with a random value stored beside the ciphertext and a secret held outside the database. To sign, the material is decrypted in memory, used, and discarded.
The consequences are the important part, and they are on the risk page in full: forget the PIN and the wallet is gone permanently, a server compromise is the largest single risk in the product, and your Telegram account is the front door. Read that before you deposit anything.
We are not going to write "non-custodial" on this page. We hold encrypted key material, and a word that implies otherwise would be the marketing line this page exists to avoid.
What happens if a launch fails?
You lose the gas the network already spent, and nothing else. Poncho's fee is a separate transfer taken only on success, and the confirmation screen quotes a maximum rather than a fixed price — the launch we measured was quoted 0.003647 ETH and cost 0.001824 ETH.
Can I use my own wallet, or import one?
The bot both generates wallets and imports them, holds several at once, and groups them. Deposit, withdraw, send a token, rename, remove and export are all in the wallet panel.
What is live, and what is not?
Live: launching through Pons, the four creator levers, buying and selling across every major venue type on Robinhood Chain, every buy simulated first, and limit and stop orders.
Not built: copy trading, migration sniping, DCA and trailing stops. The ones we intend to build are on the roadmap, in order, without dates, because a date on a roadmap is a promise.
Is there a Poncho token?
No. No token, no presale, no airdrop, no points, and no plan for any of them. If you see one, it is not us — the official channels are listed on the homepage.
Is Poncho open?
Not yet. The security checklist comes before the launch, and the documentation comes before both. The announcements channel is where the opening gets posted, and it is open to everyone.
Poncho is not open yet. The announcements channel is where the opening gets posted, and it is open to everyone.
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