Moonshot review: fees, memecoins and safety

In short

• Buy Solana memecoins with a card, Apple Pay or Google Pay — no separate wallet needed to start.
• Fees are tiered: 2.5% (with a roughly $0.99 minimum) on $2–$100 trades, 1% above $100.
• Moonshot covers network and priority fees for you, including Solana’s one-off account rent on a first buy.
• Default slippage tolerance is dynamic up to 5%, so a $100 buy can land anywhere near $95–$105 of value.

Overview

Moonshot exists to remove the three steps that stop most people buying a memecoin: installing a wallet, writing down a seed phrase, and finding a way to fund it. You download an app, register with an email address, attach a card or Apple Pay, and buy a Solana token in about the time an exchange signup takes.

The spot side is deliberately narrow: trending lists, simple charts, a buy/sell sheet, no order book and no limit orders. For a first position that is a feature — every extra control is one more thing to get wrong when a coin is moving. Alongside it sits a leverage product offering up to 250x long or short on SOL, ETH and BTC — a different risk category entirely, and one a first buyer should leave alone.

The cost of that simplicity is explicit and worth doing the arithmetic on. On a $50 buy the 2.5% tier costs $1.25 in platform fees, versus a few cents in trading fees on a CEX plus whatever the on-ramp spread is. Above $100 the rate drops to 1%, which is competitive with Solana trading bots and terminals, but the round trip still costs roughly 2% because the fee applies to the sell as well.

Moonshot pays network and priority fees on your behalf, which is why buys settle in seconds rather than failing during congestion. On Solana, the first purchase of a given token also triggers a one-off rent charge for creating the token account — normal for the chain, not specific to Moonshot.

Moonshot also launches coins. Create runs a bonding curve that graduates to a full liquidity pool at a $1M market cap, charges 0.5% per trade before bonding and 0.3% after, and pays the creator up to half of that — 0.25% pre-bond, up to 0.15% post-bond — settled hourly. That is a different fee schedule from the one you pay as a buyer, and it is worth knowing which side of it you are on.

Memecoin coverage

Coverage is Solana-first and skewed towards what is trending: BONK, WIF, POPCAT, FARTCOIN, PNUT and the current rotation of newer launches typically appear well before a centralised exchange lists them.

Because the app pulls from on-chain liquidity, a coin can be tradeable within hours of launch rather than after a listing review. That cuts both ways — the same speed that gets you into an early winner gets you into rug pulls.

Trading settles on Solana, so EVM-native memecoins are still out of reach — but funding is not: you can send ETH, BTC, USDT and others from Ethereum, BNB Chain and elsewhere and Moonshot converts them to SOL or USDC on arrival.

Moonshot also lists tokenized equities — AAPLx, TSLAx, NVDAx, COINx, MSTRx and a handful of index products — routed through Jupiter and backed 1:1 by the underlying stock, where local rules allow it. They are not memecoins, but they sit one tab away from them in the same app.

Key facts

What it costs

• The administrative fee is tiered by trade size: 2.5% with a minimum of roughly $0.99 for trades between $2 and $100, and 1% for trades above $100.
• The fee applies to both buys and sells, so a completed round trip costs about 2% on larger sizes and materially more on small ones.
• Moonshot pays dynamic gas and priority fees for you. Buying a token for the first time on a chain with rent, such as Solana, adds a one-off network charge.
• Sends do not carry an administrative fee — only network costs.
• Slippage tolerance defaults to a dynamic band up to 5%. On a volatile launch that band, not the fee, is usually the larger cost; lower it in the buy sheet settings if you care about the fill.
• Leverage trades are priced separately from spot: 0.20% with a $0.25 minimum on $5–$100 and 0.10% above $100, charged to open and to close, plus a borrowing fee that compounds hourly on the borrowed amount and is settled when you next touch the position.
• Funding is not free even though trading network fees are covered. MoonPay charges a fee on fiat deposits and withdrawals that varies by payment method, and a crypto deposit from another chain costs about 0.1% when it only needs a swap and about 0.25% when it has to be bridged.

How to buy on Moonshot

1. 1

   Install the app and create an account

   Download Moonshot, register with an email address, confirm the one-time code and turn on biometrics. Moonshot itself does not verify your identity — that happens at the payment partner when you first fund with a card or a bank.

2. 2

   Attach a payment method

   Add a card, or use Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo or a bank transfer — or link a Coinbase or Robinhood account and move crypto across directly. Check whether your bank treats crypto purchases as a cash advance; that surcharge is invisible inside the app.

3. 3

   Find the coin and check the contract

   Search the ticker, then compare the contract address with the one on our coin page. Trending lists surface imitators alongside the real token.

4. 4

   Set slippage before you buy

   Open the settings icon in the buy sheet and tighten the slippage tolerance from the default band if the coin is volatile. Then buy — sizing so a total loss is survivable.

5. 5

   Export to your own wallet for anything you plan to keep

   Send the position to a Solana wallet you control, such as Phantom, ideally with a hardware wallet behind it. Sends carry no platform fee.

Safety and risks

• The wallet is self-custodial: Moonshot never holds your keys and cannot freeze, move or recover your funds. That also means the recovery phrase in Settings is the only backup — export it and store it offline.
• The app surfaces very new tokens. Speed of access is not a quality filter — check liquidity, holder distribution and whether liquidity is locked before buying.
• Watch the slippage band on volatile launches; a 5% tolerance on a fast-moving coin is a real cost, not a theoretical one.
• Card issuers sometimes add cash-advance fees to crypto purchases; confirm with your bank rather than the app.

Nothing here is financial advice. Memecoins are high-risk and can go to zero; only risk what you can afford to lose.

Alternatives to Moonshot

• MEXC — Far cheaper per trade (0.05% taker) once a coin is listed, if you can fund with USDT instead of a card.
• Photon — A Solana terminal with real charts, limit-style tooling and a 1% flat fee for traders who have outgrown a simple app.
• Ledger — Hardware custody for positions you intend to hold past the current cycle.

Coins to research next

• Bonk
• Dogwifhat
• Fartcoin
• Popcat
• Pudgy Penguins

Frequently asked questions