Glossary
Annual Accrual Rate
The fixed rate at which Participation Points or Voter Points build over time while a position remains staked. A 100% annual accrual rate means points build at a 1:1 yearly rate relative to the amount staked. It describes point growth only.
Anti-Sniper Window
A short higher-fee window right after liquidity is seeded. The fee starts at 40% and decays to the token’s base fee over the first 90 minutes after launch.
Auction
The launch window where contributors deposit the raise token. If the launch reaches its graduation threshold, the token moves forward into liquidity seeding. If it does not, contributors can claim a full refund.
Auction Claim Cliff
The waiting period after liquidity is seeded before auction contributors can claim their token allocation. On current launch settings, that cliff is 7 days.
Boardwalk
The protocol itself. Boardwalk is where launches begin, contributors join auctions, liquidity participation continues after launch, and stakers vote to direct designated fees.
Burn
A one-way action that sends BWLK to the burn address, permanently removing it from supply. Some Boardwalk actions burn BWLK, including community signaling (Upvote and Downvote) and certain launch-creation costs.
Burn Address
The onchain address used for permanent burns: 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD. Tokens sent there cannot be recovered.
BWLK Buy & Burn
A vote option. The fee budget is used to buy BWLK from the market and send it to the burn address.
Café Boardwalk
The community web forum tied to launches on Boardwalk. Every launch is automatically added, giving contributors, issuers, and third-party supporters a built-in place for Q&A, updates, and discussion. Participation in Café Boardwalk is separate from onchain rules and does not change launch mechanics, fee routing, vesting, or Fee-Direction Weight.
Claim
The action of receiving tokens that have become available through the launch, vesting, or staking flow. Claiming happens only when the relevant rules and timing conditions have been met.
Consecutive-Win Cap
A rule for designated fee direction. An option that wins three epochs in a row is ineligible the next epoch. After sitting out one epoch, it returns to the ballot.
Contributor
A user who deposits the raise token during an auction. If the launch succeeds, the contributor can later claim tokens. If the launch does not succeed, the contributor can claim a full refund.
Designated Fees
90% of the protocol fees Boardwalk collects. The other 10% goes to the Operations Reserve. This 90/10 split applies to Boardwalk’s own fee allocation, not to the 1.25% total a trader pays.
Downvote
A community signal that moves a token or auction lower in the default discovery ranking. Using Downvote burns BWLK as a one-way cost. Each address can use one Downvote per token or auction every 30 days.
Epoch
A seven-day cycle used for voting, quorum, and fee direction.
Express
The shorter launch path. It uses a 24-hour auction, a 50/50 split between auction and liquidity, one issuer fee recipient, no referrer, and no vesting.
Fee-Direction Weight
Fee-Direction Weight is a protocol-calculated metric used only within Boardwalk’s designated fee-direction system. It determines how a staker’s vote is weighted and, if the “Route to BWLK Stakers” option wins, may affect that eligible staker’s pro rata share of the BWLK stream for that epoch. Fee-Direction Weight does not provide governance over Boardwalk, ownership, equity, debt, revenue share, guaranteed yield, redemption rights, or any claim on Boardwalk, the Operations Reserve, or protocol fees.
Fee Routing
The way a launched token’s built-in fee is split and sent to the destinations chosen in that launch. That includes issuer recipients, Boardwalk, LP participants, the security and research recipients, and, on Advanced launches, a referrer.
Raise Goal
An optional target shown during a launch. It helps communicate what the launch is aiming for, but it does not cap the raise and it does not change the graduation threshold.
Graduation Threshold
The minimum amount the auction must raise for the token to launch and seed liquidity. This is the number that decides whether the launch moves forward. Currently 5 ETH or the chain-specific raise token approximate equivalent.
Growth Team
Anyone or party who helps nurture growing economies. This can include but not limited to content creators, key opinion leaders (KOLs), liquidity partners, public relations, community leads and moderation, security partners, business development, ambassadors, developer relations, events or education.
Holder
Someone who has BWLK in a wallet but has not staked it. Staking enables eligibility to vote to direct designated fees.
Integrator
A party that integrates Boardwalk and holds a designated address on a launch. An integrator address can be changed by the integrator that holds it, through a 14-day timelock. Integrator claims are paced separately from issuer claims.
Issuer
The person or team launching a token through Boardwalk. The issuer chooses the launch setup up front, including launch path, fee routing, and vesting where supported.
Issuer Claim Rate Limit
The pacing rule on issuer fee claims. Each issuer fee recipient can claim up to 10% of their unclaimed balance once every 24 hours, with the claim converting into the raise token. A small-balance escape allows the full unclaimed amount to be claimed in one call when 10% would round to zero. The limit applies per recipient — recipients on the same launch each have their own 24-hour clock.
Launch Paths
The two main launch formats on Boardwalk: Express and Advanced. Express is shorter and simpler. Advanced is longer and more flexible.
Liquidity Seed
The step where the raised asset is paired with token supply after a successful auction to open the economy.
Locked Liquidity
Liquidity that is locked by the launch design after a successful auction. The seeded position cannot be withdrawn. It does not mean stable prices or guaranteed exits.
LP Incentive Cliff
The waiting period before LP incentives begin after liquidity is seeded. On current launch settings, that cliff is 24 hours.
LP Participant
A user who stakes into a launched token’s liquidity pool after the token is live. LP participants can take part in fee-based and, where applicable, vesting-based flows tied to that pool.
Operations Reserve
A team-controlled multisig used for Boardwalk operations and other protocol-related purposes. Only the portion of Boardwalk’s fee designated for the Operations Reserve routes there automatically; the designated portion sits in the GovernanceVoter contract until an epoch’s vote resolves.
Participation Allocation (Route to BWLK Stakers)
A vote option. The fee budget is used to buy BWLK, then streamed over 7 days to stakers who voted in the prior epoch.
Participation Points
Points that build over time while an LP participant stays staked. They affect that participant’s allocation of fee distributions and, where applicable, vesting distributions. They are non-transferable and have no monetary value.
Perma-Lock BWLK/ETH
A vote option. The fee budget is split in half and used to mint a BWLK/ETH liquidity position that is permanently locked. Trading fees from that position flow to the Operations Reserve over time.
Permissionless
Open to use without team approval or curation. Launches through Boardwalk are permissionless, which means a token appearing on the platform is not a team endorsement.
Quorum
The minimum level of voting participation needed for a vote direction result to count. Boardwalk uses a 51% quorum. If quorum is not reached, the designated reserves revert to the Operations Reserve for that epoch instead of being designated.
Raise Token
The asset contributors deposit into the auction. If the launch succeeds, it later pairs with token supply for liquidity. The raise token depends on the chain.
Refund
What contributors can claim if a launch does not reach its graduation threshold by the deadline. The refund returns the raise token deposited during the auction.
Referrer
A launch-specific destination that can be included in fee routing and, in some launch types, vesting as well. In practice, a referrer is often someone who helped the issuer discover Boardwalk or get the auction set up.
Route to Operations Reserve
A vote option. The fee budget transfers to the protocol Operations Reserve in the raise token.
Signaling Window
The 30-day window used for Upvotes and Downvotes. Each address can use one Upvote and one Downvote per token or auction during that window. When a new window begins, those actions reset.
Sophisticated Strategies
A set of approaches used by advanced actors to capture trading fees from a token economy at the expense of other participants. On most trading platforms, these strategies are possible because fee logic lives at the pool or venue level rather than in the token itself.
The most well-documented form is Just-in-Time (JIT) liquidity. A bot watches for a large pending trade, drops a tightly targeted liquidity position into the pool right before the trade executes, collects the bulk of the trading fee from this single trade, and removes the position immediately after. Other liquidity providers in the same pool earn close to nothing on this trade. Researchers at Imperial College London identified 36,671 JIT attacks across roughly 20 months of activity on Uniswap v3, with one bot capturing 92% of the total profit and existing liquidity providers experiencing an average fee dilution of 85% per event (Xiong et al., 2023, “Demystifying Just-in-Time (JIT) Liquidity Attacks on Uniswap V3,” IEEE S&P Workshop / IACR ePrint 2023/973). Uniswap’s own research found JIT accounted for less than 1% of total v3 liquidity, but this small share was concentrated on specific pools and specific trades where the extraction per event was significant (Uniswap Labs, “Just-In-Time Liquidity on the Uniswap Protocol,” 2022).
A related approach uses range orders. These are tightly placed liquidity positions that function similarly to limit orders. When the token’s price crosses through the range, the position converts, effectively executing a trade that does not appear on a typical price chart. These positions can absorb volume and influence price movement without being visible to most traders.
Boardwalk’s built-in fee lives in the token, not in any one pool. Every non-exempt interaction with the token triggers the fee, so the repeated position adjustments these strategies depend on cost the operator each time, removing the cost advantage that makes them profitable elsewhere. The exemption covers adding and removing liquidity through Boardwalk’s standard pools, along with auction claims, vesting claims, and LP staking flows; the exempt set is fixed at initialization (see the Technical Appendix).
Staker
A BWLK holder who has staked. Stakers can vote during each epoch on where the designated portion of Boardwalk’s fee should go, provided they meet the 1.5% Voter Points ratio.
Start Delay
The 24-hour window between when an Advanced launch is created and when its auction opens for contributions. Express launches have no start delay.
Time-Weighted Bonus
The early participation bonus inside an auction. It starts at 10% at the beginning of the auction and decays to 0% by the end. It affects how the auction allocation is split among contributors.
Token Profile Page
A single-page view for a launched token. It brings together market information (price, chart, market cap, volume), liquidity profile and earned fees, project details and intro video, fee and vesting allocations with pending changes and change history, auction results, and the link to the token’s Café Boardwalk thread.
Upvote
A community signal that moves a token or auction higher in the default discovery ranking. Using Upvote burns BWLK as a one-way cost. Each address can use one Upvote per token or auction every 30 days.
V2-Style Pool
A standard liquidity pool where the liquidity is spread evenly across the price curve, rather than concentrated into narrow ranges. Boardwalk-launched tokens trade in Uniswap v2 pools of this kind. The fee a trader pays on those swaps is set by the launch fee schedule — see Post-Launch: Fees & Liquidity.
Vesting
A schedule that makes tokens claimable over time instead of all at once. Some launches include vesting for specific recipients as part of the launch setup.
Vesting Cliff
The waiting period before a vesting stream begins releasing tokens. On current launch settings for issuer-directed vesting, that cliff is 7 days from liquidity seed.
Visibility Score
The score that shapes default discovery ranking inside Boardwalk. It is total Upvotes minus total Downvotes. Because Upvotes and Downvotes reset every 30 days, the visibility score resets every 30 days as well.
Voter Points
Points that build over time while BWLK stays staked. They are added on top of staked BWLK to form total Fee-Direction Weight. They are non-transferable and have no monetary value. Points burn proportionally on unstake.
Voter Points Ratio (1.5%)
The eligibility requirement to vote in a given epoch. A staker needs Voter Points equal to at least 1.5% of their staked BWLK.
Winner-Take-All
The rule used in the vote direction of designated fees. The option with the most support gets the routing for that epoch. There is no split across second or third place.