How Reactor works

No crypto knowledge needed. Read the short version, or read the whole thing — it takes about five minutes.

The short version

Fifteen seconds

You hand in JitoSOL. It goes into a vault called Containment, and you get a token called rxSOL back. rxSOL is your receipt for what is in the vault.

Every time rxSOL is made, cashed in, or sent to someone else, a small fee is taken. Part of that fee is destroyed for good. That does not take anything from anybody. The JitoSOL in the vault stays where it is, and there is now less rxSOL sharing it — so every rxSOL that is left is backed by a little more.

The rest of the fee goes into a pot called the Core. The Core drips out slowly to the people who make rxSOL easy to swap. What they get is called Output.

Nobody is paying you a wage. All of it comes from fees that people pay when they use Reactor. When nobody uses it, there is nothing to share.

The story: the town storehouse

It is easier to picture with sacks of beans than with tokens. Here is the same thing as a story. After each step, the real Reactor word is in bold.

The pictures below move. This stops them.

  1. A person carries a sack of JitoSOL into the storehouse. It lands on the pile inside, and a ticket — one rxSOL — comes back out to the person.

    1. You hand in a sack

    A storehouse stands in the middle of town. You carry in a sack of beans. The keeper weighs it, puts it on the pile, and gives you a paper ticket that says how many beans are yours.

    The pile is Containment — the vault that holds all the JitoSOL. The ticket is rxSOL. Handing your sack in is a Fuse. Handing the ticket back and walking out with your beans again is a Split.

  2. A row of tickets moves towards the door. The keeper's hand holds a few of them back; the rest carry on out.

    2. There is a small handling fee

    The storehouse is not free. It keeps a few tickets back every time it hands some over. It does the same when you take beans out. And it takes a few every time a ticket passes from one person to another.

    Those are the three fees: — to Fuse, — to Split, and — every time rxSOL moves — including every swap on an exchange.

  3. The held-back tickets slide onto the counting table and part into three piles: one for the keepers, one that gets torn up, and one that goes into the jar. The piles are drawn at the sizes the three shares are set to right now.

    3. The fee is sorted into three piles

    The tickets the keeper held back go onto the counting table. They are sorted into three piles, in this order.

    The first pile pays the people who build and run the storehouse: — of the fee. The next pile is torn up: — of the fee. The last pile, — of the fee, goes into a jar behind the counter.

  4. Two tickets tear in half and fall away. The pile of beans underneath does not change. The bar under the tickets that are left — what each one claims — grows a little.

    4. Tearing tickets up makes the others worth more

    This is the strange one, so read it twice.

    When tickets are torn up, no beans leave the pile. There are simply fewer tickets sharing the same beans. So every ticket still out there claims slightly more beans than it did this morning.

    Nobody's tickets are taken to do this. The torn-up ones come out of the fee. Reactor calls this the Burn-off.

  5. At the counter, a ticket slides one way and coins slide back the other way. One ticket out of the swap flies back to the counting table as a fee.

    5. The swap counter in the market

    Not everyone wants to walk to the storehouse. So there is a counter in the market where you can swap tickets for cash on the spot, in seconds.

    The counter only works if it is stocked with both: a stack of tickets and a stack of cash. Anyone can stock it. You put in some of each, and you get a claim slip for your share of the counter's stock.

    The counter is a pool on Raydium — an exchange we do not run. Its two stacks are the pool's other token and the tickets. Stocking it is Enrich, taking your share back out is Deplete, and the claim slip is called fuel.

  6. The jar drips steadily into three cups below it. Each cup is as wide as that person's share of the drips.

    6. The jar has a tap, and it drips

    Back at the storehouse, the jar behind the counter has a small tap that is always open.

    If you hand your claim slip in at the desk — that is Load — you get a share of every drip for as long as it is there. Your share is called Output, and it collects in a cup with your name on it. Empty the cup whenever you like (Harvest). Take your claim slip back whenever you like (Eject). Harvest can never be switched off.

    The jar never empties in one go, and it never runs dry. About half of whatever is in the jar drips out in —.

  7. Four stops go round in a circle: swapping, fees, the jar, the people who keep the counter stocked — and back to swapping.

    7. Why the storehouse bothers

    The counter is what makes a ticket useful. If you cannot swap it, it is just paper.

    So the storehouse pays the people who keep the counter stocked, out of the fees that the swapping itself produces. More swapping means more fees, which means more drips, which means more reason to keep the counter stocked.

    That circle is the reactor.

    And it works the other way too. No swapping means no fees, which means no drips. Output can be zero.

  8. A clerk walks from the market back to the counting table, carrying the little fee boxes, and goes round again.

    Who carries the fee boxes?

    The fees taken on a transfer wait on the account that received the tickets. About every ten minutes a clerk goes round and empties those little boxes onto the counting table. Anyone can be that clerk — it is not a special power, and it is not us.

Where the story is not quite right
  • A paper ticket could not charge a fee when it changed hands. rxSOL can, because the fee is a rule written inside the token itself.
  • The jar does not pour at a steady rate. It releases a slice of whatever is in it, all the time, so it gets slower as it empties and faster when new fees arrive.
  • The counter is not part of the storehouse. It is a different business (Raydium), with its own rules and its own risks.
  • "Worth more beans" is about beans, not about money. What one rxSOL sells for is decided by whoever is trading it, not by Reactor.

Follow the money

Two pictures. The first is what happens when somebody puts JitoSOL in or takes it out. The second is what happens when rxSOL is sent or traded. Both end up in the same place.

1. When someone Fuses or Splits JitoSOL

JitoSOL goes into the vault, rxSOL comes out, and a slice of it is held back as the fee.

Skip the diagram
Money moves along the arrows. The three parts of the fee are shown by colour, by pattern and by name — you do not need to see colour to read it. The arrows are all the same thickness; the bar further down shows the real proportions.

The same diagram, in words

  1. Containment — Someone sends JitoSOL from their wallet into Containment, the vault. That is a Fuse.

  2. rxSOL — Reactor makes new rxSOL and sends it to that wallet, minus the Fuse fee of —. Going the other way is a Split: the rxSOL is destroyed, the JitoSOL comes back out, and the fee is —.

  3. The fee — The fee goes to one place, where it is split three ways, in this order. A transfer of rxSOL pays — and is split exactly the same way.

  4. Project treasury — First, — of the fee goes to the project's treasury.

  5. Burn-off — Then another — of the fee is destroyed for good. That is the Burn-off.

  6. The Core — Everything still left goes into the Core: — of the whole fee.

  7. Backing — Because the destroyed rxSOL is gone while its JitoSOL stays in Containment, every rxSOL still out there is backed by a little more.

  8. People who Loaded fuel — The Core lets go of what is in it slowly: about half of any amount in —. Everyone who has Loaded fuel gets a slice. Your slice was worked out once, when you Loaded, and it stays the same until you take your fuel back.

2. When rxSOL is sent or traded

Every time rxSOL changes hands the same fee is charged, and the money comes back round — so this one is drawn as a ring.

Skip the diagram
The same fee, arriving a different way. This is the loop the protocol is built around: swapping pays fees, fees fill the Core, the Core pays the people who keep the pool stocked, and a stocked pool is what makes swapping possible.

The same diagram, in words

  1. A swap or a transfer — Someone swaps the pool's other token for rxSOL at the pool on Raydium — or simply sends rxSOL to another wallet.

  2. The transfer fee — Every transfer of rxSOL charges —. The fee is held on the account that received the tokens.

  3. The sweep — About every ten minutes, a housekeeping job sweeps those held fees back to Reactor. Anyone can run it; it is not a special power.

  4. The three-way split — From there the fee takes exactly the path in the first picture: — to the treasury, then — destroyed, then — into the Core. All three are shares of the whole fee.

  5. The Core — The Core drips out to everyone who has Loaded fuel.

  6. People who Loaded fuel — Those are the same people who keep the pool stocked. Their stock is what let the swap in step 1 happen at all. That is the loop.

In the Core
Released per day at the current rate

Total loaded weight

Where does a fee go?

Pick an amount. These are the real settings on the chain right now, not made-up numbers.

Example amount

You hand in
Reactor would make
Fuse fee (—)
You receive

The fee is then split three ways, in this order:

  • To the project's treasury — — of the fee

    Pays for building and running Reactor.

  • Destroyed for good — Burn-off, — of the fee

    Gone. The JitoSOL behind it stays in Containment, so every rxSOL left over is backed by a little more.

  • Into the Core — — of the fee

    Waits in the pot and drips out to people who have Loaded fuel.

Where every fee goes

  • Protocol — —
  • Burn-off — —
  • Core — —

The fee is taken in rxSOL, not in JitoSOL. Splitting back works the same way, at —. So does every transfer, at —.

Why does my rxSOL balance grow on its own?

Because of the tearing-up.

This app shows your rxSOL as the amount of JitoSOL behind it. Other apps show a different, smaller number. When Burn-off destroys some rxSOL, the JitoSOL behind it stays in Containment. Fewer rxSOL now share the same JitoSOL, so each one is backed by more — and the number goes up without you doing anything.

No transaction happens. Nobody sends you anything. Nothing is created out of nothing. It is division, not magic.

Some wallets show a smaller, different number for the same balance. That is the plain number of tokens, before we work out what they are worth in JitoSOL. Both are correct. This app always shows what your rxSOL is backed by.

10 sacks20 ticketseach ticket = 0.5 sacks2 torn up10 sacks18 ticketseach ticket = 0.55 sacks
Made-up numbers, to show the idea.
Right now

And one more thing, which is not Reactor's doing.

JitoSOL is a token issued by a third party. It is not SOL and not Reactor's token; Reactor does not control it or what it is worth. Every number on this site counts JitoSOL, not SOL.

What is a pool, really?

Say you want to swap rxSOL for the pool's other token. You need somebody on the other side who wants the opposite trade. Waiting for that person is slow.

A pool skips the waiting. It is two piles of tokens sitting in one place: a pile of rxSOL and a pile of the pool's other token. You add to one pile and take from the other, straight away. A fixed rule decides how much you get: the more you take out of one pile, the more each extra token costs you.

The piles have to come from somewhere. People put them there. That is called providing liquidity, and whoever does it gets a token back — a receipt for their share of both piles. Reactor calls that receipt fuel.

Every swap pays the rxSOL transfer fee. That is why the Core fills up when people trade, and why the protocol pays the people who keep the piles stocked.

rxSOLthe pool's other tokenin one side, out the other
How a swap moves the two piles. Not drawn to scale.
In the pool right now
Price right now

The catch with pools

The pool always trades one token for the other, so the mix keeps changing as people swap. If the price of rxSOL moves a lot in either direction, the pool ends up holding more of whatever got cheaper and less of whatever got dearer.

When you take your share back out, you get that new mix. It can be worth less than if you had simply kept the two tokens in your wallet and done nothing.

People call this impermanent loss. The name is misleading — nothing says it goes away.

Providing liquidity is not a deposit. Nobody promises you get the same amount back.

What can go wrong

The short list. The long one is on the risks page, and you should read it.

  • Software can have bugs. A bug in the programs, in something they rely on, or in this site could lose some or all of the JitoSOL in Containment and any fuel you have Loaded. Nothing here is insured.

  • Providing liquidity can lose value. See the section above.

  • The market sets the price of rxSOL. On an exchange rxSOL trades at whatever people pay. That can be below what it is backed by.

  • Output can be zero. It comes only from fees other people pay. No activity, no Output. It is not a wage and it is not an interest rate.

  • The admin can pause things. Fuse and Load can be paused for as long as the admin likes. Split and Eject can only be paused for up to 72 hours at a time, and the app shows you when that ends. Harvest can never be paused.

  • JitoSOL has its own risks. It is somebody else's token, with its own contracts and its own price against SOL. If JitoSOL loses value, so does everything backed by it.

  • You need a little SOL as well. Solana charges its own fee on every transaction, always in SOL, even when you are fusing JitoSOL.

Read the full risks

Words we use

We use our own words for things. Here they are, next to the story and next to plain English.

The sack of beans you bring

JitoSOL
The token you hand in. Reactor holds it and gives you rxSOL.

The pile in the storehouse

Containment
The vault holding every JitoSOL that backs rxSOL. Only the program can open it.

The paper ticket

rxSOL
Your receipt for what is in the vault.

Handing your sack in

Fuse
Turn JitoSOL into rxSOL.

Handing the ticket back

Split
Turn rxSOL back into JitoSOL.

The tickets the keeper holds back

the fee
Taken on a Fuse, on a Split, and on every transfer of rxSOL.

The clerk who empties the fee boxes

the automatic collection
About every ten minutes a housekeeping job sweeps up transfer fees. Anyone can run it.

The first pile on the counting table

the protocol share
The part of each fee that goes to the project's treasury.

The pile that is torn up

Burn-off
The part of each fee that is destroyed for good.

The jar with the slow tap

the Core
The reward pot. The rest of each fee goes in.

The drip

gradual release
About half of whatever is in the Core is released in —.

The swap counter in the market

the pool
Two piles of tokens on Raydium, rxSOL and the pool's other token, that let anyone swap instantly.

Stocking the counter

Enrich (undo: Deplete)
Put in both tokens, get a share of the pool.

Your claim slip

fuel
The pool's token — your receipt for the stock you supplied.

Handing the slip in at the desk

Load (undo: Eject)
Register your fuel to get a share of the drips.

Your share of the drips

Output
Rewards, paid in rxSOL.

Emptying your cup

Harvest
Collect your Output. Can never be paused.

All the words, in one list

Ready to try it?

Start with a small amount. We cannot reverse anything for you — we cannot undo a transaction and we never hold your funds.

You will need two things in your wallet: some JitoSOL to Fuse, and a little SOL to pay Solana's own transaction fee.

Fuse JitoSOLMake fuelLoad fuel into the CoreSee the live numbersRead the risks
Get JitoSOL

Get JitoSOL

Reactor does not swap or stake for you. Both routes below are run by other people.

Check you are receiving JitoSOL — mintJ1toso1uCk3RLmjorhTtrVwY9HJ7X8V9yYac6Y7kGCPnView on explorer (opens in a new tab)