$sato and $sat1 , what’s the difference, and why are they causing FOMO? Even those who missed out should understand them.

The two most popular tokens on Ethereum in recent days, rollercoaster rides.
Both are designed based on Ethereum’s UniSwap hook mechanism.
First, the core difference (mechanism level, the most critical is “state splitting” vs “unified state”)
Their mechanisms are almost identical:
- Issuance method: users pay ETH to the Hook contract → automatically mint new tokens (price increases exponentially with accumulated ETH).
- Exit method: sell tokens → burn tokens + get ETH back (inverse curve).
- Supply curve: asymptotic, roughly expressed as supply(e) = K * (1 - exp(-e / S)) (e = accumulated ETH, K ≈ 21 million), never reaches 100%, but at 99% supply (about 20.79 million), triggers permanent stop of minting, leaving only the burn pool.
- Fees: 0.3% fee on both sides, not given to anyone, all kept in the curve reserve to deepen liquidity.
- Fairness: purely on-chain fair launch, no admin privileges, no backdoors.
The biggest difference lies in the design of state variables:
SATO (original version): used two sets of states (ethCum = total accumulated ETH + totalMintedFair = fair issuance amount).
Buy orders mainly use ethCum, sell orders/self-devaluation mainly use totalMintedFair.
This results in “state splitting”:
Mint (buy on the official site) prices are far higher than secondary market.
Burn (sell) prices are slightly lower than the market.
Long-term round-trip (buy then sell) can lock some ETH, causing graduation (99% devaluation) to possibly never be reached, and the curve “freezes.”
SATO’s official update to White Paper 2.0 overnight acknowledged this issue, changing the website buttons from “buy/sell” to “mint/burn,” and clarified that the official site is just an “entry point into the curve,” not the best execution price.
SAT1 (clone/upgrade version): enforces a single unified state, only keeps one core variable ethCum, and all prices, supply, graduation judgments are derived from the same source in real-time.
Fixes the existing bug to ensure buy = sell prices match.
Fees are also strictly kept in the curve, avoiding creating a second accounting track.
Self-deprecation trigger threshold is lower (around 1361 ETH accumulated ETH = 99%), allowing earlier “graduation.”
The SAT1 white paper directly regards SATO as a “tribute + cautionary example,” with the core principle: “One curve. One position. One source of truth.”
In summary: $SATO is an “experimental prototype with bugs,” $SAT1 is a fixed, cleaner, more reliable version.
But yesterday, SAT1 plummeted sharply, with “top KOL conspiracy theories” causing a stir, dropping to around 1.1M, with lots of FUD and rights protection actions.
As the first innovative project of its kind, SATO remains quite strong, currently around 18M.
Personally, I think both projects carry high risks, so don’t FOMO lightly.