How an IMO works

An Initial Memestock Offering goes through five states. Nothing irreversible happens before the fourth.

1. Locked

Every memestock has a year: the year its company listed for real. Until the clock reaches that year the IMO is locked. Nobody, including the team, can open it early. The site shows a countdown and the estimated Ethereum block for each one.

2. Unlocked

When the clock reaches the year, the IMO opens for prospectuses. That is all the trigger does: it enables a launch, it does not perform it. This separation is deliberate. A launch that fires automatically at a block has no one behind it and no way to recover if something is wrong; a launch that brokers have to design and backers have to fund has both.

3. Open

• Brokers file prospectuses. Only the leader of a brokerage, with ₸USD staked, can file. A prospectus sets the share of the supply on sale, a minimum and a maximum market cap, the opening premium, the fee, the strategic holdings and the broker's own purchase. In the final hours no new prospectus can be filed. Brokers↗︎
• Backers deposit into the prospectus they prefer, with ETH, USDC or the IMO's quote token. The deposit is both the vote and the purchase, and it is final: it cannot be moved or withdrawn. Each wallet can buy up to its ticket, a share of the supply set by how long its tokens take to unlock. Speed buys nothing. Tickets↗︎
• The broker buys at the same price as everyone: 5% of the supply with the minimum unlock (a 30-day cliff, then at least 12 months), up to 10% with a 24-month unlock. Its allocation is guaranteed and never scaled down.

4. Closed: one price, or refunded

The prospectus with more than half of all deposits wins; otherwise the top two go to a 2-day runoff. Backers of the other prospectuses get everything back. Then the price is set by demand, once, for everyone: the money raised divided by the tokens on sale, kept between the minimum and the maximum market cap.

• Below the soft cap (all on sale at the minimum price): nothing launches and everyone is refunded. Nothing has been burned or paid, so there is nothing to unwind.
• Between the soft and the hard cap: everything on sale is sold at the price demand set.
• Above the hard cap (all on sale at the maximum price): the price is the maximum and backers are cut back pro rata, the broker never. The part that could not be used is refunded, or bought in the opening purchase if the backer ticked that option.

Refunds only ever go to the wallet that paid.

5. Trading

The winning prospectus is launched exactly as filed. Right after, before public trading opens, the opening purchase runs in one batch: the broker's amount for the burn vault, backers' cut-back leftover if they opted in, and an extra of up to one more ticket per backer. Everyone in it pays the price the batch ends at, which is also the first public price, and those tokens are not locked. The market opens at the IMO price plus the premium the prospectus set. Every trade then pays the prospectus's fee. Fees and staking↗︎

Why it cannot fail silently

The trigger only ever enables, so a bug or a quiet day cannot launch a token nobody is behind. The refund path is the default path, so the worst outcome of an IMO is that it did not happen yet. And no owner key can skip a state, pause trading or move liquidity: once a market is live it is as permanent as the chain it lives on.