2025 is gearing up to be a pivotal year for TGEs, not just from a volume perspective (there are a lot in the rearview already and more to come), but also the accelerating pace of change of the TGE ‘meta.’
Last week during ETHDenver, CoinFund teamed up with Blockworks and our sponsor Chorus One to host Token Unlock, an event that brought together over 250 founders, developers, business development executives and investors with one goal: discuss the best practices for launching a token this year.
After a brief networking session over drinks and bites, guests took their seats as I moderated a panel discussion with Movement Labs Co-Founder Rushi Manche and Blockworks Co-Founder Mike Ippolito, who brought their unique perspectives as project and business leader respectively. We discussed MOVE’s recent token launch and how it can serve as an example of a successful TGE, how regional crypto regulation has historically impacted token launches, and what founders need to do to build their community and communicate to their audience before and after launching a token. Once the discussion wrapped up, attendees flocked to their breakout groups led by 12 expert partners at Anchorage, BitGo, Blockworks Advisory, Blockdaemon, Chorus One, CoinFund, Fireblocks, Horizons Global, Leeward Management, Scrib3, Teknos and World, covering Tokenomics and Institutional Strategy, Marketing and Community, and Boosting TVL — with the most attended groups being Legal and Structuring and Distribution.
Reflecting back on the event, it’s clearer than ever that there’s a climbing number of processes that founders need to understand pre-TGE — and good advice is highly valuable.
The current state of token launches
Right now is a busy time in the market, and with projects frequently launching new tokens, our founders often ask us for our advice on how to nail their TGEs. Given our role as a cryptonative investment firm, our deep commercial understanding of successful token launches on top of our network of partners working within our portfolio make us well equipped to help facilitate these conversations.
We often see that founders who successfully launch tokens are very intentional about their timing. When a project has found product-market fit, it’s ready to scale, and its founder is ready to engage with a new stakeholder group, it might be the right time to launch a token. On the other hand, the wrong time is when a founder is hoping to shortcut product-market fit or access to new capital, hoping post-TGE fundraising is easier (it’s often not.) The biggest misconception about launching a token in 2025 is that it’s a one-time event when in fact, the launch itself is merely the beginning of a continuous and iterative process that requires expertise in tokenomics, community building, distribution and more.
Don’t fly solo
If there’s one takeaway from Token Unlock, it’s that there’s more competition than ever for TGE buzz and mindshare in the crypto space. As companies plan to launch tokens in 2025, it’s not going to get any easier for projects to make noise. However, in order for projects to hold the best TGE possible, it’s important they ask for advice to arm themselves to make the right decisions. If you’re a founder looking to launch a token, the best places to learn more about successful TGEs are from peer groups, your investors, and in some cases, Crypto Twitter (depending on your source.) Be sure to stay tuned for more CoinFund events that attract the best and brightest leaders in crypto looking to expand their networks — and maybe even launch a token.
