Moonshot affiliate program review: 35% of fees in USDC, individuals only, no public links
Moonshot pays 35%, 10% and 5% of its fee in USDC after each referred trade. The contract admits individuals only and bans public links. Score 5.5/10.
Moonshot, the memecoin trading app of Buy Moonshots, Inc. of Miami, pays referrers 35% of its trading fee on every trade by the users they sign up, 10% on the users those users sign up, and 5% one level further, in USDC, after each trade. The rate is public and so is the fee it applies to, which is more than most programs in this series manage. The paperwork then takes most of it back. The Referral Program Agreement, last updated 13 April 2025, admits natural persons only, renews in three-month periods, can be ended by either side at any time, and leaves accrued rewards to Moonshot’s discretion if the program changes. The Terms of Use effective 22 September 2026 forbid posting a referral link on a website, a blog, Twitter or Reddit, and forbid paying to advertise one. We read every page cited below on 12 October 2026. Our score is 5.5/10.
Key points
- 35%, 10% and 5% of Moonshot’s fee, three levels deep. The referral guide and section 3.3 of the agreement publish the same ladder. The agreement’s own example: a referral who trades $10,000 in a day pays $100 in fees and earns you $35.
- $3.50 per $1,000 of referred volume at the standard tier. The fee page charges 1% on trades of $100 and more, and 2.5% with a minimum of about $0.99 on trades between $2 and $100. Only Moonshot’s own fee is shared; network and routing costs are not.
- USDC, “promptly following the referee’s trade”. Section 3.2 names the asset and the trigger. No minimum, no calendar, no payout fee and no claim procedure are published, and the same section lets Moonshot set “different Referral Reward rates for users” at its discretion.
- Individuals only, three months at a time. Section 2.1 excludes corporations, LLCs, partnerships and trusts. Section 10.1 renews the agreement in three-month periods and lets either party terminate “at any time for any reason”; section 10.3 leaves rewards “accrued but not yet distributed” to Moonshot’s “sole discretion” if the program is changed or ended.
- No websites, no blogs, no Twitter, no Reddit, no paid ads. Section 20 of the Terms of Use restricts referral links to your “warm network of personal connections” and lets Moonshot “retroactively revoke or void” rewards obtained through “unauthorized channels”. Trustpilot shows 2.2 from 12 reviews, none of them about referral payments.
Who runs the program
The agreement is “a legal contract between you and Buy Moonshots, Inc.” The Terms of Use give the company’s notice address as 1065 SW 8th St #1822, Miami, FL 33130, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s record for application 99245169, a logo mark, lists Buy Moonshots, Inc. as a Delaware corporation at the same address. That application was filed on 20 June 2025, published on 21 April 2026 and expressly abandoned by the applicant on 4 September 2026; we cite it for the owner’s identity, not for anything else. The privacy policy of 15 April 2026 says the company is “headquartered in the United States” and “provides a software interface for users engaging with the Solana blockchain”.
That phrasing is deliberate. The Terms of Use state, in capitals, that Moonshot “is not a broker, financial institution, financial advisor, investment advisor, or intermediary” and “cannot initiate a transfer of any of your cryptocurrency”. Fiat enters through MoonPay, Inc., which runs the identity checks and charges its own deposit and withdrawal fees, or through Coinbase for Apple Pay and Coinbase purchases up to $1,000 a week or 15 transactions over the life of an account. No financial licence or registration is claimed on any page we read, and we found none.
The About page dates the company to 2024 and claims “over $4B in volume processed” and “2M+ traders”; both are Moonshot’s own figures. The product began as a Solana memecoin trading app and has added tokenized equities, branded xStocks, and perpetual leverage, neither of which is available to users in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada. The Google Play listing names Buy Moonshots, Inc. as developer and shows 500,000-plus downloads and 4.4 stars from 36,800 ratings, last updated 2 October 2026.
This is a retail referral scheme, not a publisher program. There is no application form, no rate card and no partner tier; the link appears in the app once you have an account. We cover it under our exception for unusually large recurring rewards, and the difference from a negotiated publisher contract is set out in our exchange affiliate programs comparison.
Commission structure
Three levels, all on “Moonshot’s fee on every trade”. The fee page splits each trade into a Moonshot fee, a “crypto fee” for the blockchain and for routing the order, which “goes to the network and other third parties, not to Moonshot”, and price impact. Only the first part is shared. The Moonshot fee is tiered by trade size.
| Trade size | Moonshot fee | Your 35% (direct) | 10% (second level) | 5% (third level) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | about $0.99 (minimum) | about $0.35 | about $0.10 | about $0.05 |
| $50 | $1.25 (2.5%) | $0.44 | $0.13 | $0.06 |
| $1,000 | $10 (1%) | $3.50 | $1.00 | $0.50 |
| $10,000 | $100 (1%) | $35.00 | $10.00 | $5.00 |
Our arithmetic, at the published tiers. The agreement’s illustrations use the $10,000 row. Two things follow from the fee table. A referral who trades $1,000 a day earns you $3.50 a day, so recovering $100 of production cost takes about $28,600 of referred turnover at the 1% tier. And small trades pay better per dollar than large ones: a $10 buy carries the 99-cent minimum, 9.9% of the trade, of which you keep 35 cents, so an audience of small, frequent memecoin traders is worth more per dollar traded than a few large ones.
The 35% is the published rate, not a guaranteed one. Section 3.2 says Moonshot “will determine the Referral Reward that you will receive at its sole discretion” and “reserves the right to establish different Referral Reward rates for users based on their activity and engagement with the platform”. Nothing published says what moves a rate up or down. The agreement also links to a fee page that no longer exists; the current one is linked above.
Two other Moonshot payouts should be kept out of this calculation. The first is the sign-up bonus. Its terms, last updated 27 March 2025, pay “up to $100 of memecoin tokens” from a pool supplied by “third party sponsors” when a new user redeems a code and deposits at least $5 through the fiat on-ramp, after both users pass identity checks. The published odds are 90% for $3 of memecoins, 5% for $5, 4.9% for $10 and 0.1% for $100, an expected value of about $3.17. The bonus help page limits it to iOS users located in the United States or Singapore, and the terms still carry a mail-in entry route “postmarked by December 31st, 2025”. The referral guide’s “No purchase necessary. While supplies last.” links to this document, not to the fee share.
The second is creator fees, paid to people who launch coins on Moonshot out of trading in their coin, “hourly, provided your unpaid balance exceeds $1”. That hourly rule and that $1 floor belong to creators; the referral agreement publishes neither.
Attribution and cookies
Attribution is by sign-up, not by cookie. Section 2.3 links to your account the “users who create a new Moonshot account using your referral link”; section 3.4 pays nothing for a user who “created a Moonshot account prior to your referral”; section 2.2 allows one referral account per person and section 2.3 cancels every referral and every reward if you “self-invite through multiple accounts”. The Terms of Use add a tie-break: a referred person “may only use one Referral Link”, and only the referrer whose link “was actually used” to register is paid. There is no click window, no first-click or last-click rule and no cross-device procedure in any document; the privacy policy names AppsFlyer for analytics and says nothing about referral attribution. The fee share has no identity-check condition of its own, unlike the bonus, although anyone depositing fiat passes MoonPay’s checks.
How long a referred account pays depends on the agreement surviving, and the agreement is short-lived by design. Section 10.1 renews it “for 3 month periods” and lets either party terminate “at any time for any reason immediately upon notice”. If you terminate, “you will no longer be entitled to Referral Rewards”. If Moonshot alters, suspends or ends the program, section 10.3 says it “shall not be liable to any participant for any rewards that could have been earned” and that accrued, undistributed rewards “will be handled according to Moonshot’s sole discretion”. Section 14.1 makes amended terms binding on anyone who keeps participating. The word “lifetime” does not appear.
Payouts
Section 3.2 is the whole payment clause: the reward “will be calculated and distributed to you promptly following the referee’s trade”, and “Moonshot will distribute the Referral Reward in USDC”. That is better than most programs we have read, which name neither an asset nor a trigger. It is also all there is. No minimum balance, no payment day, no transfer fee, no holdback, no claim step and no clawback formula are published. The Terms of Use’s general rule, that referral payouts “will be calculated and paid at our sole discretion”, applies only “unless otherwise stated” in the referral terms, which on asset and trigger they are.
Where the USDC lands is not stated either; the app is a self-custodial Solana wallet, so the reasonable reading is the wallet behind your account. From there the withdrawal guide offers USDC on Solana or SOL, “may vary based on your region”, plus bank and card off-ramps through MoonPay at MoonPay’s fees. Moonshot takes no fee on sends; the network fee applies. The troubleshooting page tells users to contact support if funds have not arrived “within 5 days of the transaction finalizing”, a support threshold for wallet withdrawals, not a payment deadline for referrers.
Section 3.4 withholds rewards where the referee is ineligible, where the referee breaks Moonshot’s terms, and where Moonshot “suspects or determines” fraud, a breach of the code of conduct, or a violation of any law. Suspicion is enough.
The terms that bite
Section 20 of the Terms of Use, “Referral Program”, is the clause a publisher has to read. Referrals “are personal and should only be sent to individuals that you personally know and must be used only for personal and non-commercial purposes”. Sharing a link “outside of your warm network of personal connections is strictly prohibited”. Links “may not be published or distributed, including on commercial websites (such as coupon websites, Twitter, or Reddit) or on blogs”. You may not pay to advertise a link or give anything of value to anyone to obtain a reward. Before sharing, you must tell the person you will receive a reward and “obtain the express consent” of that person. Under “Reservation of Rights”, Moonshot may “retroactively revoke or void” any reward it deems procured “via distribution through unauthorized channels”. The section refers to itself as “Section 18” twice, a leftover from an earlier numbering; the clause’s effect does not depend on the label.
The referral agreement reads as if written for a different audience. Its Exhibit A, the code of conduct, requires that “all marketing and promotional materials” disclose your relationship to Moonshot, bans referral links “on websites or in mobile applications” carrying alcohol, drugs, gambling, political commentary or similar content, bans SMS, telemarketing, unsolicited email, pop-ups, pop-unders and contests, forbids sites that “mirror the look and feel” of Moonshot’s, and reserves a “blacklisted list” of sites that Moonshot “may provide you with from time to time”. A code that regulates which websites you may advertise on presumes you may advertise on websites. The Terms of Use say that if they “are inconsistent with the Supplemental Terms, the Supplemental Terms shall control”; whether a code that assumes websites is “inconsistent” with a clause that bans them is a question we would put to Moonshot in writing before publishing anything, and keep the answer. The same warm-network sentence appears word for word in GMGN’s terms of 2 October 2026, so this is a template clause, not a Moonshot quirk.
Geography is handled by reference. Section 4.1 bars soliciting residents of “Excluded Jurisdictions”, defined as wherever “Moonshot does not offer products or services”, and ends your participation if you move to one; no list is attached. The Terms of Use require that you are not on an OFAC list and are not otherwise prohibited under OFAC programs. United States residents are served for spot trading, which is why the bonus is open to them, while leverage and xStocks are closed to the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
The two documents also disagree on where a dispute goes. The referral agreement, section 13.1, chooses Delaware law and JAMS arbitration in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The Terms of Use choose California law, arbitration under the American Arbitration Association, courts in Santa Clara County for anything that escapes arbitration, a 30-day window to opt out of arbitration by letter to the Miami address, and a liability cap of “the greater of (a) $100; or (b) the remedy or penalty imposed by the statute under which such claim arises”. A referrer with an unpaid balance would first have to work out which forum applies.
What affiliates report
The Trustpilot profile for moonshot.money, claimed by the company, showed 2.2 from 12 reviews on 12 October 2026, 75% of them one-star and three posted in the last twelve months. It is a brand page with no affiliate on it. The oldest cluster is from the week of the TRUMP token in January 2025: a review of 27 January 2025 says a bank withdrawal had not arrived after a week, one of 31 January says “more than 3 weeks and nothing”, and one of 27 February gives five stars because withdrawal “worked fine for me”. Moonshot answered the two complaints on 23 February 2026, thirteen months later, with the same paragraph directing both writers to the in-app support centre. The 2026 entries are a one-star review of 22 September about “the $MCAT coin launch” and an entry of 6 October that exists to name a “refund” outfit, the recovery-scam pattern we saw on Axiom’s page. Nothing on the page concerns a referral reward.
The Google Play listing is the larger sample: 4.4 stars from 36,800 ratings in the header, 36,600 in the phone breakdown. The reviews shown first on 12 October include withdrawal complaints (“It’s been weeks of back and forth with support trying to withdraw my money”), and Moonshot’s replies use the same support-centre paragraph as on Trustpilot. On neither platform did we find a complaint about a referral reward owed and not paid, and we found no report of one being paid either; the program has no public footprint among affiliates, which is what the warm-network clause is designed to produce.
Moonshot against the alternatives
The nearest schemes are the referral programs of two other memecoin trading tools, Axiom and GMGN, which we have reviewed and re-read the same day. None of the three is a negotiated publisher contract, so the comparison is of what each puts in writing.
| Program | Published share | Fee base | Direct reward per $1,000 traded | Public link rule | Payment terms published | Our score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moonshot | 35% direct, 10% and 5% deeper; rate discretionary per user | 1% on trades of $100 and more; 2.5% with a 99-cent minimum below | $3.50 | Terms ban websites, blogs, Twitter, Reddit and paid ads; individuals only | USDC, after each referred trade; no minimum or calendar | 5.5/10 |
| Axiom | 30% direct, 3% and 2% deeper | Net fee “starting at 1%”, less the 10% referral discount and promotions | $2.70 | Terms allow links “on social media, websites”; spam and self-referral banned | None fixed; timing, form and rate discretionary | 5.5/10 |
| GMGN | 10% to 30%, rising with referred volume; ladder unpublished | 1% of every trade | $1.00 to $3.00 | Same warm-network ban, word for word; guides invite public posting | None | 5.5/10 |
Moonshot has the richest published cash offer of the three and is the only one that names the paying company, the asset and the trigger. It is also the only one that excludes companies outright. Axiom’s terms are the only ones of the three that permit a website, which is why its weaker rate is not the weaker deal for a publisher; our Axiom review sets out what its terms leave discretionary. GMGN’s contract carries the same sharing ban as Moonshot’s while its guides invite public posting, a contradiction our GMGN review covers.
Verdict
5.5/10. On our rubric for wallets, cards and tools, 8 and above needs a published percentage, a cookie of 30 days or more and a monthly or better payout. Moonshot has the percentage and, on paper, a per-trade payout in a named stablecoin from a named Delaware company with a street address, which is why it does not fall to 5. It has no attribution window because attribution is by sign-up, a rate the contract calls discretionary, a three-month term that either side can end on notice, accrued rewards at Moonshot’s discretion if the program changes, and a Terms of Use clause that forbids the website, the blog, the X account and the paid campaign through which a publisher earns. Add the exclusion of legal entities and the program is unusable by any media business as a business.
Who it suits is an individual trader with a private audience, a group chat or a circle of friends who already trade memecoins, who wants a third of their fees in USDC and can live with the contract ending at any time. Anyone with a public channel needs written permission from Moonshot covering that channel, and a written answer on what happens to accrued USDC if the program changes, before counting the 35% as income. Until Moonshot publishes a partner tier for publishers, 5.5 is where it sits, level with Axiom and GMGN for different reasons.
FAQ
What is the Moonshot affiliate commission?
35% of Moonshot’s trading fee on every trade by the users you refer, 10% on the trades of the users they refer, and 5% one level further, per the referral guide and section 3.3 of the agreement. The fee is 1% on trades of $100 and more and 2.5% with a 99-cent minimum below that, so the direct share is $3.50 per $1,000 of standard-tier volume. The agreement lets Moonshot set different rates per user at its discretion.
When and how does Moonshot pay referral rewards?
In USDC, “promptly following the referee’s trade”, under section 3.2. No minimum, payment day, fee or claim procedure is published. The hourly payout above a $1 balance that appears on Moonshot’s help site belongs to the separate creator-fee program for people who launch coins, not to referrers.
Can a company join the Moonshot referral program?
No. Section 2.1 limits participation to natural persons and names trusts, corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships and general partnerships as ineligible. A media business would need a separate written arrangement; none is published.
Can I post my Moonshot referral link on a website or on X?
Not under the Terms of Use. Section 20 prohibits publishing links “on commercial websites (such as coupon websites, Twitter, or Reddit) or on blogs”, prohibits paying to advertise them, and lets Moonshot revoke rewards obtained through “unauthorized channels” after the fact. The referral agreement’s code of conduct assumes websites exist and only restricts their content, and the Terms say supplemental terms prevail where inconsistent, so the position is arguable. Get Moonshot’s permission for your specific channel in writing before relying on it.
Is the $100 sign-up bonus part of the referral program?
It is a separate sweepstake under terms last updated 27 March 2025: iOS only, United States or Singapore, a $5 deposit through the on-ramp, identity checks for both people, and memecoins from a sponsor pool at published odds of 90% for $3, 5% for $5, 4.9% for $10 and 0.1% for $100. It is not a $100 CPA and should not be modelled as one.
Is the Moonshot referral program legit?
There is a named counterparty, Buy Moonshots, Inc., with a Miami address on the Terms of Use and a Delaware incorporation on a federal trademark record, a public agreement, a published rate and fee base, and a live app with 500,000-plus Android installs. We found no complaint of a referral reward owed and not paid. What we cannot say is that payment is guaranteed: the rate, the continuation of the program and any accrued balance at the moment it changes are all at Moonshot’s discretion by contract, and no regulator supervises the arrangement.
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