First a bonding curve, where the price is a formula and the contract is the only counterparty. Then a pool, opened in that same contract when the curve sells out.

Creating it is a minute: you pick the pair it trades in, the pool it graduates into, the taxes and the split, and a first buy of your own, if you declare one, is its first trade. The curve is most of its life. When the last token on the curve sells, trading pauses and its pool opens on its own, on Shards or on Rhea, and then it trades in that pool, on the same page.

Create it. You give it a name, a ticker and a picture, pick the pair it trades in and the pool it graduates into, set the buy tax and the sell tax (1% to 10% each, up to 4% on a Rhea pool), and choose how the tax is divided. You can also make the first buy yourself. Creating a token is the whole of it.

The curve. Anyone buys and sells against the contract. Every token sold costs more than the one before it, nine times over from first to last — that is the curve.

The pool. When the last token on the curve sells, trading pauses and the pool opens on its own. A Shards pool opens inside the token's own contract, and a Rhea pool opens on Rhea, both usually inside a minute. Your balance is untouched while it does. Graduation is what happens at that seam.

Nothing about the token changes at either seam. Same page, same panel, same balance. On a Rhea pool the panel's trades become swaps on Rhea, and the tax is still charged on each one. What is fixed stays fixed through both.