Pricing and NAV

Shares minted on an ape#

MEME500 does not use a price oracle to decide how many shares you receive. Shares are minted in proportion to how much the vault's holdings grow, measured on the smallest relative increase across all tokens:

shares = totalSupply × min_i( bought_i / held_i )

bought_i = amount of meme i bought by this ape
held_i   = amount of meme i in the vault before the ape

Taking the minimum means a buyer can never receive more than their real contribution to the basket. Even if someone manipulates one meme's pool price, they cannot mint cheap shares, so existing holders cannot be diluted. The person aping can still lose to a sandwich if they set no minimum output, which is why the app always sets minOut from the quote.

First mint#

first mint: 100 MEME500 per 1 ETH   (1 MEME500 = 0.01 ETH)
dead shares: 1e3 wei of MEME500 minted to address(0)

When the supply is zero the hook buys by the target weights and mints 100 MEME500 per ETH. A tiny amount of dead shares is minted once so the supply can never return to exactly zero.

NAV per token#

NAV per MEME500 = Σ_i ( held_i × price_i ) / totalSupply

IndexHook.navPerToken(MEME500) returns this value in ETH (scaled by 1e18) for display. It is not used to mint or redeem. The ETH you actually receive on a redeem is the result of selling your share of each holding, so it reflects real pool prices and slippage at that moment.

Worked example#

Suppose 1 MEME500 is worth $10.00 and the basket is exactly at its target weights. The value of each slice is the weight times the NAV:

• PEPE doubles and everything else is flat: the PEPE slice goes from $3.50 to $7.00, so NAV rises from $10.00 to $13.50, +35%.
• MOG goes to zero and everything else is flat: the MOG slice of $0.70 disappears, so NAV falls to $9.30, down 7%.
• All five fall 50%: NAV falls 50%. An index spreads single coin risk, it does not remove market risk.

Why MEME500 is not chart tradable like a meme#

A normal meme trades on a curve whose price moves with buying pressure. MEME500 has no such curve: every ape buys the basket and every redeem sells it, so its price is pinned to the value of the five memes it holds. Buying a lot of MEME500 does not pump MEME500 relative to its basket; it pumps the five memes slightly, which the 3% guard limits. If MEME500 ever traded somewhere else at a different price, anyone could ape or redeem through the hook and sell on the other venue until the gap closed.