Photon guide: fees, referral code and review

Key facts

What is Photon?

Photon is a web terminal aimed at fast token trading on Solana, with an ETH version also documented.

What should you watch out for on Photon?

Its fee is the simplest to understand: a flat 1% on every buy and every sell, so a round trip costs 2% before network and priority fees and price impact.

More about the referral programme

Photon publishes no referral discount and no referral payout rate.

Photon guides

Comparisons

Why Photon's flat fee is easy to model

1% on every buy and every sell means a round trip costs 2% of what you committed before network and priority fees, regardless of size. There are no tiers or referral discounts to calculate.

Priority and MEV settings

On Solana, a priority fee helps your transaction land faster in busy moments. Set it deliberately: too low and trades fail or arrive late, too high and you overpay on every trade.

Who Photon suits

Desktop traders who want a straightforward fee and fast execution, and who already understand wallets, slippage and priority fees.

What a round trip costs on Photon

Platform fee only, at 1% per side plus network and priority fees. Network, priority and pool fees and price impact come on top.

How trade size changes what you really pay

Platform fees are only part of the cost. On every buy and sell you also pay network fees, sometimes a priority tip, the liquidity pool's own fee and price impact. Price impact grows as your order gets bigger relative to the pool's liquidity, which is why the same token can be cheap to buy for $50 and expensive for $5,000. Before any trade, look at the expected output on the confirm screen, not just the headline fee.

Plan your exit before you enter

Memecoins can drop 50% in minutes and some become impossible to sell. Write down three numbers before buying: the most you will lose (then sell), the price at which you take back your stake, and a time limit after which you exit if nothing happens. Rules decided in advance beat decisions made while the chart is moving.

Account security checklist

Use a unique password and app-based two-factor authentication on the email or Apple/Google account you log in with. Never share login codes or private keys with anyone, including people claiming to be support. Bookmark the official domain and use it instead of search ads or links from DMs. Keep only trading money in a hot wallet.

Records and taxes

Selling, swapping and cashing out can all be taxable depending on where you live. Export or screenshot your history regularly; on-chain explorers show every transaction from your wallet address if you need to rebuild records.

Other platforms

What Photon doesn't publish

Photon's documentation has no referral page, no volume tiers and no published referral discount. Pages quoting a 0.9% 'referral rate' are not citing anything Photon published.

Break-even after fees

Because you pay 1% on the buy and 1% on the sell, a token has to rise roughly 2% just for you to break even on platform fees, before network fees and price impact.

Setting up Photon safely

Use the official domain only, connect or create a wallet you secure yourself, set slippage and priority deliberately, and test with a small amount.

Memecoin glossary: the terms that cost beginners money

Liquidity: the funds in the pool you trade against; low liquidity means your own trade moves the price. Price impact: how much your order moves the price; shown as the difference between the quoted and the received amount. Slippage tolerance: the maximum price change you accept between submitting and confirming; set too high, it invites worse fills, set too low, trades fail. Market cap: price times circulating supply; a small market cap can move violently on small orders. Bonding curve: a pricing formula used by launchpads such as pump.fun where price rises with each buy until the coin graduates to a normal pool. Graduation / migration: when a launchpad coin moves to a regular liquidity pool. Rug pull: when insiders remove liquidity or dump supply, leaving holders unable to sell at any reasonable price. Honeypot: a token whose contract lets you buy but blocks or heavily taxes selling. MEV / front-running: bots that see your pending trade and trade around it to profit at your expense. Priority fee: an optional tip to get a transaction included faster. Contract address (CA): the unique on-chain identifier of a token; names and tickers can be copied, the address cannot.

Our test

Frequently asked questions