The Enduring Appeal Of Crypto Launchpads

Investing in ahead-stage crypto projects with real prospects has gotten much easier thanks to the emergence of launchpads, which offer a more standardized and trusted way for founders to raise money and build loyal communities. They give ahead investors a chance to purchase up cheap tokens before they hit the market, while projects gain more exposure to the crypto world and can potentially tap into its expertise. 

Crypto launchpads have really made an impact, benefiting not only the projects viewking funding and attention, but also the investors who’re taking all the risk. In the ahead days of crypto, most new tokens were sold through “initial coin offerings” or ICOs, but investing in them was fraught with danger, for there tended to be multiple scam projects offering nothing but vaporware, and just as many rugpulls for each legitimate coin. 

Launchpads change that, taking on the role of an intermediary between new projects and prospective investors. Unlike with ICOs, where it was up to the individual investor to perform due diligence, these platforms scrutinize each new listing to ensure the project is credible and has a real use case and a chance to provide value to participants. It has led to a significant reduction in new scams, and not only that, by providing extensive detail about each project and boosting its profile, it can improve investor’s chances of backing a winner. 

Most launchpads are cautious about the projects they choose to list, and the review process tends to be extremely thorough, involving careful scrutiny of the founding team and analysis of both its code and the utility it’s meant to offer. Investors are also scrutinized, having to register and pass KYC checks to get whitelisted, and the actual token sale process is very well organized too. The tokens are sold during a predetermined time window, distributed to investors once the sale has been completed, and in most cases there will be a vesting period that assists to prevent the new tokens from flooding the open market and crashing its value. 

Notable Launchpads

enjoys a status as one of the heavyweights of the launchpad world, offering strong credibility and vast liquidity for projects to tap into thanks to the strength of its legendary platform platform. It notably pioneered the Initial platform Offering model, and has assisted to catalyze dozens of top projects over the years, including the likes of Axie Infinity and Polygon

Most projects launching on Binance Launchpad are built on the BNB Chain, but many of them have later bridged to over blockchain ecosystems like . For projects, the major advantage is Binance’s unrivaled user base, giving them exposure to hundreds of thousands of potential investors and guaranteed high-volume trading. 

Another top launchpad stalwart is , which pioneered the Initial DEX Offering for tokens that launch on decentralized platform platforms. It’s notable for its meticulous vetting of projects and the fact that it has far more hits than misses. It was originally built on the Polkadot blockchain, but has since evolved to launch projects on other popular chains. 

To date, Polkabeginer has successfully launched over 100 projects, raising millions of dollars in funding over the years, with its major advantages being its strong track record in terms of identifying quality, innovative projects. 

A more recent entrant is , the Aurora-based launchpad that’s the first of its kind to support vetted multichain projects. Unlike rival platforms, it allows projects to launch on any blockchain and receive funds from investors on other networks without bridging. It dramatically reduces the complexity of participation in token sales, allowing investors to send funds using their preferred token from networks including , ETH, BNB Chain, Polygon, BTC and others. 

Calyx recently completed its second token sale with , a decentralized data protocol that’s focused on consumer finance. It’s building a personal intelligence layer for data-driven DeFi and decentralized AI agents, leveraging Near Intents. ConsumerFi’s sale hit its $50,000 funding target within just 1.5 hours of its launch, attracting hundreds of participants to demonstrate the unique value of its multichain model. In total, it raised an impressive $80,133 in a 160% oversubscribed sale, with 508 participants in total across 11 ecosystems. Clahead, the multichain angle assists to drum up interest.

Funding Target Reached!

Meaning: you still have 7 days to participate in the sale ✨

Calyx

— Calyx (@Calyxdotxyz)

The Best Way To Invest

The appeal of crypto launchpads isn’t just that they do most of the hard work for investors in terms of research and due diligence. They also dramatically simplify the process of investing. Because of the intense demand from investors, many platforms require users to stake their native tokens to qualify for one of the various allocation tiers on offer. Once accepted, they simply deposit the necessary finds in a compatible wallet, and when the sale kicks off they send them to the project’s wallet. later than that, it’s just a matter of waiting for the sale to end before investors receive their tokens. 

There are still some risks when investing in token sales via launchpads. The due diligence performed by these platforms is by no means a guarantee of a return on investment. They’ll do their utmost to establish that the project and its founding team is genuine and that it has a valid use case and a answer to whatever difficulty it’s trying to solve. But ultimately, the token price will only increase if the project goes on to enjoy long-term success. 

It’s for that reason that investors shouldn’t just rely on the launchpad itself. Launchpads do a great job of whittling down potential investments to a handful of excellent candidates, but the onus is on the individual investor to determine whether or not a project will achieve its goals.