Continuous Clearing Auction
How every NovaPier launch discovers its price, using the auction design created by Uniswap Labs.
The Continuous Clearing Auction (CCA) takes a classic uniform-price auction, where every winner pays the same price, and runs it continuously over time. It gives a new token fair price discovery and real starting liquidity, takes the advantage out of timing games, and rewards people who join early. It was designed and open-sourced by Uniswap Labs; NovaPier runs it for every launch.
Overview
Getting a new token a fair price and solid liquidity is hard. The usual ways of launching each have a weak spot:
- Fixed-price sales guess the price up front and turn into a race to get in first, often leaving thin, shaky liquidity.
- Dutch auctions reward waiting for the right second, which favors professionals over regular buyers.
- One-shot auctions invite people to hold back demand and snipe at the last moment.
- Bonding curves depend on who buys in what order, which bots and early sellers can exploit.
- Centralized market makers ask you to trust them and take a large cut.
The CCA avoids these by spreading every bid across time and discovering the price continuously.
How it works
The key idea: tokens are sold a little at a time, to whoever is bidding at that moment. Each bid has a budget, how much you want to spend, and can also carry a maximum price.
Every block has one clearing price, and everyone bidding in that block pays it, just like a uniform-price auction. The difference is that the CCA finds this price step by step instead of all at once. Each block releases a set number of tokens, which go first to bids willing to pay the most.
A bid with a maximum price leaves the auction once the clearing price passes it. The price settles just where the bids still in the auction can buy all the tokens being released, so the supply always sells to real demand.
What this means for bidders:
- Nobody can pile all their demand into a single moment.
- What you think the token is worth matters more than when you click.
- Early bidders get more of the lower early prices.
- Sniping and last-second tricks stop paying off.
How NovaPier runs it
- No price cap. Bids placed on NovaPier have no maximum price, so a bid stays in and keeps buying every block until bidding closes. A 0.25% bid fee applies.
- Release schedule. 60% of the auction's tokens are released evenly over the window and the last 40% in the final block, at the final price.
- Bidding stays open until the timer ends, even after the minimum raise is met.
- Minimum raise met: the raise, minus a 0.75% success fee, opens the token's pool on Topaz at the final auction price, and that liquidity is locked forever. Tokens can be claimed about 5 minutes after bidding ends.
- Minimum raise missed: no pool opens, and every bid can be claimed back minus the bid fee.
- Nobody can sell until bidding closes and the pool opens.
More questions? See How it works. Ready to bid? Bid on $NOVA.
The Continuous Clearing Auction was designed and open-sourced by Uniswap Labs. This page explains it in NovaPier's own words. On NovaPier, each token's pool opens on Topaz. Not investment advice: locked liquidity does not protect token prices.