The filter

How filter.fun turns token death into the engine

What the filter is

Twelve tokens enter every week. At hour 96 the bottom six are filtered — removed from the leaderboard, with their protocol-controlled liquidity unwound and added to the prize pool. Three days later, one of the six finalists is crowned the winner.

Most get filtered. One gets funded. ▼

How the filter actually works

This is the most important detail in the whole system, and it is almost always misunderstood:

LP removal does not move price directly. It removes the cushion, and slippage does the crashing.

When a token is filtered:

1. Protocol-controlled LP is removed from the pool. Removal is proportional — reserves come out at the current price ratio, so price does not move at the moment of removal.
2. Liquidity depth collapses. The pool now has far less reserve on each side.
3. Future trades have much higher slippage. A sell that was a 5% impact before filter is now 20%, then 50%+ as the pool keeps thinning.
4. Holders try to exit. Each exit deepens the slippage for the next.
5. Price collapses organically — the market does the work, not the protocol.

This is the difference between filter.fun and a “rug.” A rug seizes value or disables trading. filter.fun does neither. It removes the cushion and lets the market reprice.

Filtered tokens stay tradable

The protocol does not disable trading on filtered tokens. The Uniswap V4 hook only gates LP add/remove — never swaps. Filtered tokens experience high slippage, lose liquidity, and may still trade. Some linger as historical artifacts. A few revive organically and become their own story.

This is a credibility constraint, not an oversight. The protocol does not seize trading rights from the people who held a filtered token.

The losers fund the winner

When a token is filtered, its protocol-controlled liquidity is converted to WETH and split. This is the heart of the system — the pool grows from the losers, and the winner is built out of the pool.

After the 2.5% champion bounty paid to the winning creator, the losers pot splits as:

• 45% Rollover — buys winner tokens, distributed pro-rata to filtered holders via Merkle. If your token got filtered, you get exposure to the winner.
• 25% Hold bonus — reserved for a 14-day hold bonus. Hold at least 80% of your rollover for 14 days, claim the bonus.
• 10% Mechanics — flash events, mission rewards, final-hour boosts.
• 10% Protocol-owned liquidity — deployed into the winner’s LP after the winner is known. POL is what turns a winner into a durable asset.
• 10% Treasury — protocol revenue.

80% of filtered liquidity is user-aligned. Losing doesn’t end your game — it rolls you forward.

The five steps of the week

1. Launch (Mon 00:00 → Wed 00:00)

   Twelve slots, first-come-first-served. Dynamic launch cost rises with each slot. One launch per wallet per week.

2. Trade (Wed 00:00 → Fri 00:00)

   Full field of twelve. Pure trading, no eliminations. HP rankings live and updating. Last-slot launchers get equal-footing time before the cut.

3. Hard cut (Fri 00:00, hour 96)

   Twelve become six. Bottom six are filtered. Their LP is unwound and the prize pool grows.

4. Finals (Fri 00:00 → Mon 00:00)

   The six survivors compete. Leaderboard tightens. The cut line creates ambient tension all weekend.

5. Settlement (Mon 00:00, hour 168)

   Winner crowned. Rollover, hold bonus, POL, treasury, mechanics allocations finalized. Filtered holders get rollover entitlements. The next season’s launch window opens immediately.