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The 3% creator tax

Every buy and every sell pays a flat 3% tax, denominated in ETH (TAX_BPS = 300), sent to an immutable creator address. It is the protocol's only fee, and it is deliberately simple.

The rules​

  • Flat rate. 3% on both sides — buys and sells alike.
  • In ETH. The tax is always taken in ETH, never in CVN, so the creator's revenue does not add sell pressure on the token.
  • Immutable recipient. The creator address is set once at deployment (creator, an immutable) and can never be changed. There is no admin function to redirect it.
  • Levied by the hook. The tax is applied inside the swap, before covenant retention or absorption, so it is impossible to route a trade around it.

How it is taken on each side​

The two sides differ in when the ETH is skimmed, because of how Uniswap v4 deltas work:

  • On buys, the tax is accrued as an ETH claim during beforeSwap and physically paid out via flushTax(), which the router calls after each swap. The TaxCollected event records it, and CreatorTaxFlushed records the payout.
  • On sells, the tax is skimmed from the realized ETH output in afterSwap and paid to the creator immediately. (This requires the hook's afterSwapReturnDelta permission — taking ETH out of the swap output is impossible without it.)

What it is not​

The creator tax is not framed as punishment or a "sell tax gimmick". It is a transparent, flat protocol fee that funds the creator, disclosed on every surface. It does not fund buybacks, it is not reflected to holders, and it does not vary with covenant state.

See the exact delta accounting in the v4 hook.