This checklist outlines the core elements that determine whether a project ranks in the top 15% of sustainable development or falls into another chart that only declines.
Written by: Stacy Muur
Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
Token issuance is not a marketing campaign, but an economic stress test.
In fact, most TGE failures are not due to poor products or inexperienced teams, but because their foundations were never ready for public scrutiny, competition, and narrative shifts.
In this article, I share a story with @AlexTops1 from @CoinList about how to increase the chances of a successful protocol launch.
You may be a B2B software company, but if you are issuing tokens, you are now also a B2C startup targeting a retail audience.
The market is ruthlessly efficient:
If your community is hollow, your token economics are weak, your utility is incomplete, or your go-to-market strategy is inconsistent, these will be exposed within minutes of listing. You only have one chance to issue tokens, so don’t mess it up.
This checklist outlines the core elements that determine whether a project ranks in the top 15% of sustainable development or falls into another chart that only declines.
Building Community and Mindshare
Before the TGE, market heat is liquidity.
Winners will build sustainable, credible mindshare for weeks, while losers will try to create heat in the last 72 hours.
Your goal: to be ubiquitous, consistent, and not appear contrived.
Craft a Story Everyone Can Understand
Your business has two distinct target audiences: those who use your product and those who will buy your tokens. To connect with them, ditch the jargon and start from the basics:
Why is your project important?
Who does it matter to?
What is the core message?
How do you plan to spread this message?
Once the core message is established, tell your story and user stories over and over again. A great product is meaningless if you can’t explain it simply; consistency and clarity are the only ways to gain attention. If you are a founder with a technical background and struggle with messaging, hire someone who excels at it. The success of your token issuance depends on this.
Sustainable Mindshare (2-3 Months Before TGE)
Top projects maintain a stable, organic presence for at least 2 to 3 months before the token sale or TGE event.
No sudden negative events
No disappearing acts
No sudden major announcements
Zero Bot Activity and False Hype
Nothing kills credibility more than fans skyrocketing from 20,000 to 60,000 overnight.
Use TweetScout or Moni Discover to audit your own social media.
Check the non-organic interactions of collaborating KOLs. Red flags to watch for include a large number of followers but low tweet impressions and engagement rates, silence after a spike in activity, repetitive tweet replies, and no mutual followers. Use tools like Kaito or Cookie3 to check credibility.
Avoid giveaway campaigns, bot-driven tasks, or mandatory "follow to earn" activities.
If the audience appears inauthentic, your TGE will not be authentic either. Exchanges and investors will look at your data, but they won’t be fooled by vanity metrics.
Pre-TGE Sentiment and Community Engagement
Poor market sentiment can destroy your issuance even before the token goes live, but artificially positive atmospheres are equally harmful.
Use Kaito, Lunarcrush, or Santiment to track sentiment.
Overly positive sentiment is as suspicious as overly negative sentiment.
When collaborating with KOLs, ensure their evaluations feel organic and fair.
When screening influencers, look for real engagement rather than follower counts.
If KOLs can highlight both the pros and cons of your approach, that’s better than traditional hype.
Track the percentage of users generating UGC (memes, threads, fan art, dashboards).
A healthy ecosystem should show 5-10% active creators, not just responders.
Start building credibility with educational content, then shift to conversion-focused messaging as momentum builds.
Activate top KOLs across regions and languages, including English, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Spanish.
Discord / Telegram Health Check
A quiet group = a quiet TGE; community vitality must be visible.
Measure DAU (Daily Active Users)
Healthy range: 10-20% of total group members
Below 8% means you are operating a "ghost town" before issuance.
A strong GTM (go-to-market strategy) determines whether the token issuance ignites the market or fades into silence after 48 hours.
Intensify Business Development as the Launch Approaches
Integrating with other crypto projects is a huge growth channel that can generate market interest before the token issuance.
In many ways, it’s easier to partner with other projects, exchanges, and market makers before you have circulating tokens. Once you have a token with transparent metrics and revenue, that’s never enough.
Collaborate with projects that have similar user bases or target markets so you can leverage their communities and heat.
Accept any high-quality joint Twitter Spaces, social media promotions, or offline events. Extract maximum value from each collaboration.
Never go silent after issuance.
Silence can kill momentum more than sell-off pressure.
Failing to provide demand drivers post-TGE → token crashes.
Failing to communicate post-TGE incentives → token crashes.
Failing to launch a series of strong partnerships/product releases → token crashes.
Nothing kills your user acquisition more than a chart that only declines.
Token Economics and Economic Design
Token issuance failures are often not due to "poor marketing."
They fail because supply overwhelms demand.
A successful token issuance (success = long-term potential) is 20% hype, 80% economic engineering design.
Here’s a checklist of pre-TGE token economics that every serious team needs to pass before going live.
Note: I won’t cover the basics of lock-ups/vesting/internal locks here, but will emphasize more overlooked categories.
Basic Requirements (Non-Negotiable)
These are the basics that distinguish legitimate issuances from amateur ones:
Complete transparency: no hidden allocations, no "to be announced" lock-ups, no incomplete vesting charts.
Minimize sell-off pressure: airdrops should vest in stages; early buyers should not exit immediately; FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) should not penalize retail users. The terms you offer your community in the token sale should be equivalent to (if not better than) the terms you offered VCs and insiders in your last private round.
If these two points are not in place, it indicates you are not ready for a TGE.
Token Claim Mechanism
If everyone claims 100% immediately (especially in the case of airdrops or very favorable FDV public sales), you will have a massive liquidity event + no reason to hold the token.
What to do:
Use tiered claim options, such as:
Option A: Claim 100% now, but with an unfavorable FDV (e.g., claiming at a low 2x valuation).
Option B: Claim 25% now, with 75% vesting over 6-12 months, and with a higher, more favorable FDV.
This forces users to choose between liquidity and loyalty, stabilizing early trading.
Governance is Not Utility
Tokens with only governance functions = zero natural demand. No reason to buy, no reason to hold.
Ensure the token has real, structural utility:
Staking for protocol revenue
Fee discounts or rebates
Access to premium features
Buyback and burn funded by revenue
Collateral use within the ecosystem
Necessary for node operation/network security
Utility should be directly tied to protocol usage.
Additionally, if tokens only flow out and not back, it will lead to price inflation and value erosion.
Consider ongoing deflationary mechanisms, such as:
Burning a certain percentage (0.5-1%) of each transaction
Buyback and burn from protocol revenue
Burning unclaimed rewards
Burning during redemption/minting operations
Without deflationary mechanisms, inflation will worsen, and you should be able to compensate for it.
Utility Driving Demand Should Launch at TGE
There are many tokens in the market slowly going to zero because teams rushed to issue tokens before launching products that genuinely need those tokens.
If you are not live yet, postpone the TGE.
If your mainnet is not launching on the same day as the token listing, postpone the TGE.
You won’t get a second chance here, don’t mess it up.
Product
This article primarily discusses marketing and token economics, but there is a critical part that cannot be overlooked: product-market fit.
If your product operates without needing a token, prioritize achieving utility. Issuing tokens too early can distort user behavior, lock in flawed assumptions, and obscure deeper product issues. While incentives may stimulate short-term growth, they cannot fix a product that fails to resonate.
I have observed this repeatedly: token issuance attracts a lot of users, but without utility, participation plummets once the incentives disappear. Tokens are most effective when layered on top of a product that can already provide value.
My View: The Key Distinction Between Winners and Losers
Winners:
Organic community, not purchased fans
Real market demand achieved before token issuance
Transparent token economics
Momentum plan post-TGE
A genuinely useful token
Losers:
Stories relying solely on hype
Hidden unlocks and suspicious vesting
Tokens without use cases
Silence after listing
Teams treating TGE as the finish line
A TGE is not a celebration, but the beginning of a stress test.
The market is unforgiving.
You can spend months building hype, but one mistake like hidden unlocks, unfinished utility, fake fans, or a lifeless community can erase everything in minutes.
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