This is the whole flow end to end. Doing it once on devnet first costs nothing and catches the mistakes that are expensive on mainnet.
Rehearse on devnet
Devnet is a full copy of Solana with worthless SOL. Point your wallet at it, request an airdrop from a faucet, and run the entire flow — create the token, revoke the authorities, open a pool. Everything behaves the same as mainnet, so anything that surprises you here would have cost real money.
The mistakes worth catching this way are supply-decimal confusion and revoking an authority you meant to keep. Neither is reversible.
Prepare before you connect
- A square image, 500x500 or larger, legible at thumbnail size.
- A name and a ticker of eight characters or fewer.
- A one- or two-sentence description — this is what appears in wallets and scanners.
- Any social links you want written into the metadata, since adding them later means a metadata update.
Create the token
Fill in the details, choose which authorities to revoke, and approve the transaction. Your wallet shows every instruction including any fee before you sign. The mint address it returns is the token's permanent identity — save it.
Open a pool
Pair the token against SOL. The ratio sets the opening price and the total sets how much a single trade moves it. Think about the size honestly: a thin pool makes the chart look dramatic in both directions and makes the token unpleasant to actually trade.
After launch
Submit the token to the aggregators and scanners so it resolves with a name and image rather than as a bare address. Decide what you are doing with the pool tokens, and say so publicly — holding them quietly is the thing people check for.