Tailored Auctions
Onchain token launches powered by Uniswap Continuous Clearing Auctions
Every Umia launch is funded through a Tailored Auction: Umia's configuration of Uniswap's Continuous Clearing Auction (CCA), an onchain mechanism that discovers a token's market price over a set window and then seeds a Uniswap v4 pool with the proceeds at that discovered price. One mechanism handles the three things a launch actually needs: price discovery, distribution, and day-one liquidity.
What a CCA Is
A Continuous Clearing Auction runs fully onchain over a set window (typically about a week). Each bid carries two things: a budget and a max price. Tokens release gradually according to the configured schedule, and at each clearing moment the released supply is allocated to the highest-max-price bids first; everyone clearing in that moment pays the same clearing price, and supply that goes unsold in one moment rolls forward to the next. The price is discovered gradually across the window: it moves as demand accumulates, and a bid stops filling if the clearing price rises above its max, with the unspent budget refundable. The rule for what you pay is simple: never above your max, and your average entry price is the average of the clearing prices while your bid was live, so earlier bids average lower.
The mechanisms it replaces make price a function of timing rather than demand. On a bonding curve, price is set by your position in the queue: earlier buyers get a mechanically lower price regardless of what demand actually is, so the launch turns into a rush for the front, and "price discovery" is really just a first-come race. A Dutch auction has the opposite pathology: the price descends until someone blinks, so participants are rewarded for waiting and punished for conviction, and the final price reflects who won the game of chicken more than what the market believes. Both compress the pricing decision into a single decisive instant, and both leak value to whoever plays the timing game best.
A CCA spreads the pricing decision across the entire window. The clearing price emerges from accumulated demand rather than from queue position or brinkmanship, and no participant can concentrate demand at a single decisive moment (which also removes most MEV). Because the level is discovered gradually, showing up early with conviction is structurally rewarded rather than punished: valuation matters more than timing. Parameters are immutable once set, so participants can verify the rules won't move mid-auction. When the auction closes, the proceeds bootstrap a Uniswap v4 pool at the discovered price, so the token starts trading immediately with real, treasury-owned depth rather than a market-making deal. (For the mechanism in full, see Uniswap's CCA documentation and whitepaper.)
How an Auction Unfolds
A Tailored Auction is built from buckets (called steps in the contracts): portions of the sale supply that release over time. An early-bid round, when configured, is simply the first bucket with an eligibility gate.
Early Bid (Optional, Gated)
The auction can open with a gated bucket: an early-bid round for participants who prove eligibility through the Umia Extension or a per-wallet allowlist. Early bids fill on the same clearing terms as every other bid, but because they enter while the clearing price is still at its earliest levels, they accrue the most exposure to the lowest prices of the auction. Per-wallet limits keep participation broad; a bidder who can't fill their full intended amount here can bid the remainder once the public auction begins.
Public Window
The remaining supply releases across a sequence of buckets, each with its own duration, its own share of supply, and optionally its own eligibility gate. Early buckets can be gated tighter, later buckets open to everyone.
Close and Migration
When the window ends, the auction finalizes its clearing state. Proceeds and the LP allocation seed the Uniswap v4 pool at the discovered price; participants claim their tokens.
What You Configure
This is the checklist a founder works through with the Umia team when setting up a Tailored Auction. Together these parameters are what makes the auction "tailored":
- Supply on sale: how much of total token supply the auction distributes, and how much is reserved for the LP seed.
- Chain: any EVM network where Uniswap v4 is deployed.
- Rounds: how many buckets, each one's duration and share of sale supply, which are gated and by what zkTLS or allowlist criteria, and per-wallet caps on gated ones. An early-bid round is the first bucket, gated.
- Price bounds: the floor price the auction starts clearing at, and optionally a maximum accepted bid price.
- Minimum proceeds (graduation threshold): the floor below which the auction fails to graduate and every commitment becomes refundable in full.
- Bidding currency: the base asset bids are placed in (USDC is the common default).
Durations, splits, and gating are all configurable; the defaults are starting points, not constraints. Aligning these choices with your allocation plan is covered in Tokenomics Recommendations.
Where the Stablecoins Go
When the auction graduates (clears the minimum proceeds), the cleared stablecoins split two ways. A portion pairs with the reserved LP token allocation to seed a Uniswap v4 pool at the discovered price; the LP position is owned by the project's noncustodial treasury, giving the token real, treasury-owned liquidity from day one. The rest flows directly into the project's noncustodial onchain treasury, never a team wallet, and the project's formation executes automatically at that same moment (see the Legal Framework). If the minimum proceeds aren't met, the auction doesn't graduate: every bid becomes refundable in full, no entity is formed, and no IP is assigned.
Participating
Bidders participate onchain from a wallet. Depending on the launch, retail participants can also join with direct credit-card deposits (via MoonPay and Privy), so a gated community round isn't limited to crypto-native participants.
What Umia Adds on Top of the Base CCA
- Gated buckets via zkTLS: eligibility-gated rounds through the Umia Extension, fully privacy-preserving.
- Treasury integration: proceeds settle into the decision-market-governed treasury, and formation is triggered by auction completion.
- Any-stage flexibility: first auction or follow-on for a live token, the same mechanism configures to fit. For projects with an existing token or prior auctions, see Curated and Community Tracks.