How to plan a perfect TGE launch?

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.

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 odds of a protocol’s successful launch.

You might be a B2B software company, but if you’re issuing a token, you’re now also a B2C startup facing a retail audience.

The market is brutally efficient:

If your community is hollow, your tokenomics are weak, your utility is unfinished, or your go-to-market strategy is inconsistent, these will be exposed within minutes of listing. You only get one chance to launch your token—don’t mess it up.

This checklist outlines the core elements that determine whether a project joins the top 15% of sustainable growth or becomes just another chart that only goes down.

Community and Mindshare Building

Before TGE, market hype is liquidity.

Winners spend weeks building sustainable, credible mindshare; losers try to generate hype in the last 72 hours.

Your goal: be everywhere, be consistent, and don’t appear forced.

Craft a Story Everyone Can Understand

Your business has two distinct target audiences: those who use your product and those who will buy your token. To connect with them, drop the jargon and start from the basics:

• Why does your project matter?
• Who does it matter to?
• What is the core message?
• How do you plan to spread this message?

Once the core message is set, tell your story and your users’ 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 win attention. If you’re a technical founder and not good at messaging, hire someone who is. The success of your token launch depends on it.

Sustainable Mindshare (2-3 Months Before TGE)

Top projects maintain a steady, organic presence for at least 2 to 3 months before token sales or TGE events.

• No sudden negative events
• No going silent
• No abrupt major announcements

Zero Bot Activity and Fake Hype

Nothing kills credibility faster than seeing your followers jump from 20,000 to 60,000 overnight.

Use TweetScout or Moni Discover to audit your own social media.

Check for inorganic engagement from partner KOLs. Red flags include large follower counts but low tweet impressions and engagement rates, activity spikes followed by silence, 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 your audience looks fake, your TGE will be fake too. 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 launch even before the token is listed, but artificially positive vibes are just as harmful.

• Use Kaito, Lunarcrush, or Santiment to track sentiment.
• Sentiment that’s too good is as suspicious as sentiment that’s too bad.
• When working with KOLs, ensure their reviews feel organic and fair.
• Screen influencers for real engagement, not just follower count.
• If a KOL can highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of your approach, that’s better than traditional one-sided 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 with educational content to build credibility, 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

Silent groups = silent TGE. Community vitality must be visible.

• Measure DAU (Daily Active Users)
• Healthy range: 10-20% of total group members
• Below 8% means you’re running a “ghost town” before launch

A strong GTM (go-to-market strategy) determines whether your token launch ignites the market or fades into silence after 48 hours.

Ramp Up Business Development as Launch Approaches

Integrating with other crypto projects is a huge growth channel that can draw market attention before your token launch.

In many ways, it’s easier to form partnerships with other projects, exchanges, and market makers before you have a circulating token. Once you have a token with transparent metrics and revenue, it’s never enough.

Partner with projects that have similar user bases or target markets so you can leverage their communities and hype.

Accept any high-quality joint Twitter Spaces, social media promotions, or offline events. Squeeze maximum value from every collaboration.

Never go silent after launch.

Silence kills momentum more than sell pressure.

• If you fail to provide demand drivers after TGE → token dumps.
• If you fail to communicate post-TGE incentives → token dumps.
• If you fail to roll out a series of strong partnerships/product launches → token dumps.

And nothing kills user acquisition faster than a chart that only goes down.

Tokenomics and Economic Design

Token launch failures are rarely due to “bad marketing.”

They fail because supply overwhelms demand.

A successful token launch (success = long-term potential) is 20% hype, 80% economic engineering.

Below is a pre-TGE tokenomics checklist that every serious team needs to pass before going live.

Note: I won’t cover the basics of lockups/vesting/internal locks here, but will focus on more overlooked categories.

Basic Requirements (Non-Negotiable)

These are the basics that separate legitimate launches from amateur ones:

• Full transparency: no hidden allocations, no “TBA” lockups, no incomplete vesting charts.
• Minimize sell pressure: airdrops should vest over time; early buyers shouldn’t exit immediately; FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) shouldn’t punish retail users. In token sales, the terms you give your community should be equal to (if not better than) those you gave VCs and insiders in the previous round.

If you don’t have these two points in place, you’re not ready for TGE.

Token Claim Mechanism

If everyone claims 100% immediately (especially in airdrops or very favorable FDV public sales), you get a massive liquidity event + no reason to hold the token.

What to do:

Use tiered claim options, for example:

• Option A: Claim 100% now, but at an unfavorable FDV (e.g., claim at a 2x lower valuation).
• Option B: Claim 25% now, 75% vests over 6-12 months, and at a higher, more favorable FDV.

This forces users to choose between liquidity and loyalty, stabilizing early trading.

Governance Is Not Utility

A token with only governance features = 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
• Required for node operation/network security

Utility should be directly tied to protocol usage.

Also, if tokens only flow out and not back in, it leads to price inflation and value erosion.

Consider ongoing deflationary mechanisms, such as:

• Burning a percentage (0.5-1%) of every transaction
• Protocol revenue buyback and burn
• Burning unclaimed rewards
• Burning during redemption/minting operations

Without deflationary mechanisms, inflation will worsen, and you should be able to offset it.

Demand-Driving Utility Should Be Live at TGE

There are plenty of tokens in the market slowly going to zero because teams rushed to launch before releasing products that truly require the token.

If you’re not live yet, delay the TGE.

If your mainnet isn’t launching on the same day as your token listing, delay the TGE.

You won’t get a second chance here—don’t mess it up.

Product

This article mainly discusses marketing and tokenomics, but there’s one key part that can’t be ignored: product-market fit.

If your product doesn’t need a token to function, prioritize delivering value. Issuing a token too early distorts user behavior, locks in flawed assumptions, and masks deeper product issues. While incentives may drive short-term growth, they can’t fix a product that fails to resonate.

I’ve seen this repeatedly: token launches attract a flood of users, but without value, engagement plummets once incentives disappear. Tokens are most effective when layered on top of a product that already delivers value.

My View: The Key to Distinguishing Winners from Losers

Winners:

• Organic community, not bought followers
• Real market demand before the token
• Transparent tokenomics
• Post-TGE momentum plans
• A genuinely useful token

Losers:

• Stories based solely on hype
• Hidden unlocks and suspicious vesting
• Tokens with no use case
• Radio silence after listing
• Teams that treat TGE as the finish line

A TGE is not a celebration, but the start of a stress test.

The market is ruthless.

You can spend months building momentum, but a single mistake—like hidden unlocks, unfinished utility, fake followers, or a dead community—can erase everything in minutes.