原文标题：Token Printing: What's Next? From Community Tokens to Public-Private Sales
Original author: Ignas
Original source: https://www.ignasdefi.com/
编译：火星财经，Daisy
I STARTED TO FALL IN LOVE WITH MEME COINS AND EVEN BOUGHT MOODENG.
It's the psychology of "fear of missing out" (FOMO). My default expectation is that the price will drop to 0, but I don't want to miss the chance for it to be the next Doge. I want to be a part of the success story and be a part of that bullish community.
Indeed, buying meme coins stems more from an intrinsic need to belong than buying other utility tokens, wanting to be a part of a story and join a community that shares the optimism of "making dreams come true".
You know, this kind of optimism and bullishness is hard to find in other crypto spaces.
Ethereum holders expect ETH to rise only 3 to 4 times in this cycle, and BTC may be similar. SOL could reach $1,000. And for those coins with low liquidity and high fully diluted valuation (FDV), the overall sentiment is quite pessimistic.
It's also a breach of my promise that I don't trade meme coins. I won't buy most of the meme coins that are recommended on the X platform, but I will try to buy some coins that I think have the potential to take off.
I changed my mind because my most important principle in cryptocurrency investing is to keep an open mind and be willing to try new things. It's dangerous to be an extremist (believing in just one investment strategy or currency), but identifying and investing in those extremist communities can pay off dramatically.
Therefore, this blog post will explore the latest developments, especially around the analysis of emerging token issuance methods.
Identifying the latest token issuance trends is probably one of the most lucrative trades we can make. Meme coins are just one of the trends, and there are others that are emerging in this cycle.
A brief history of the token issuance
"Cryptocurrencies are a hedge against fiat money printing" is the biggest lie we tell.
While Bitcoin may be an exception, the way the entire crypto industry "prints money" is the envy of even central banks. There are currently 14,741 cryptocurrencies listed on CoinGecko, and there are thousands more crypto projects that simply don't survive to be included in them.
And with each cycle, the issuance of tokens becomes easier.
I detailed the history of the token offering and what to expect in this bull run in my article from a year ago, but since that blog post is now only available to paid subscribers, I have to do a quick recap here.
Echoes of the past: Familiar markets tell us signals of the next bull run
Here are a few key "money printing" models you need to know about and their impact on the market landscape (if you've already read my previous blog post, you can skip this part).
1. Litecoin and the Early Altcoin Era (2011):
Litecoin is one of the first altcoins, born in 2011 as a fork of Bitcoin. Before Litecoin came along, people always thought that Bitcoin was what blockchain was all about! However, Litecoin's fork not only changed the technical consensus, but also "forked" people's understanding of private money - that is, we can create our own cryptocurrency. This period saw the birth of several Bitcoin forks and a handful of proof-of-work (PoW) altcoins, including Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV. These forked coins bring "free" tokens to Bitcoin holders at the time of the fork, creating new arbitrage opportunities.
2. ICO Boom (2017):
The ICO (Initial Coin Offering) craze is fueled by Ethereum's ERC20 standard, which significantly reduces the cost and difficulty of creating new tokens. No more PoW hardware mining! Thousands of new tokens are popping up, and each project comes with an ambitious commitment. ICOs are often able to raise huge sums of money, but many projects fail to deliver on their promises, bringing huge losses after the market crash in 2018. This phase is a prime example of speculative "money printing" – teams can launch new tokens with very little effort, which ultimately leads to overextension and collapse of the market.
3. The Era of DeFi and Liquidity Mining (2020):
The next wave of innovation came in the DeFi summer of 2020, with liquidity mining and yield farming becoming popular. Projects like Compound (COMP) and SushiSwap have introduced liquidity mining rewards, where users earn governance tokens by participating in the protocol. This model incentivized liquidity supply and user participation, but the over-issuance of new tokens eventually outstripped market demand, leading to a subsequent market crash.
4. The Era of Fair Distribution:
This era was short-lived. Yearn Finance's YFI token is a prime example of the concept of "fair issuance", where the tokens are distributed directly to users without an ICO or pre-sale. In this way, anyone can participate, and YFI's initial liquidity mining rewards have attracted a lot of attention. However, the community soon discovered that the so-called "fair distribution" was not really fair. Many teams pre-mine before marketing, and the fair distribution model does not bring enough benefits to the team, resulting in a skewed incentive mechanism.
5. NFTs and the Ponzi Economic Model (2021):
The NFT craze, represented by the Bored Ape Yacht Club, has opened a new mode of "printing money". A steady stream of new NFT collections mimics the speculative token creation model that previously led to market crashes. A lot of money and attention was scattered across various emerging NFT projects, which eventually led to the collapse of many new NFT projects. NFTs are like meme coins, but the cap of up to 10,000 NFTs per series and the high selling price limit the size of the community, leaving many investors out.
Although there are different ways to "print" money in the market, the market will eventually collapse whenever the amount of money "printed" exceeds the "hard currency" that enters the market.
In the process, we issued too many tokens, and the market demand was difficult to digest, which eventually led to the bursting of the market bubble.
The 2023-2024 bull market money printing story
The first phase of the current bull market is marked by the rise and fall of the points airdrop trend.
The integral meta game evolved naturally to solve some liquidity mining problems. By giving teams more flexibility to execute TGEs (Token Generation Events) and attract capital into the protocol, it drives the growth of TVL (Total Value Locked), "proving" product-market fit. This, in turn, allows the team to obtain a higher valuation from venture capital (VC).
Initially, this trend was as generous as Jito and Jupiter were rewarding users, and the effect was significant. However, once the rules of the points airdrop metagame become clear, the return on investment (ROI) of the airdrop tends to become negative.
Some users earn points by mining, but the interest they end up paying often exceeds the amount they receive from the airdrop. In addition, the points system lacks the transparency that liquidity mining activities have during the DeFi summer months.
They make you believe that by staking "DYM" or "TIA" you can get multiple airdrops (but these airdrops never came) to make you rich.
However, the worst culprit that marks the decline of this trend is the issuance of tokens with low liquidity, high fully diluted valuation (FDV). As TVL grows, the market perceives these protocols as more valuable, so tokens issued at insanely high valuations leave no upside for new buyers.
High Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) is not a joke, here's what we've learned.
Points aren't completely gone, but a decline in sentiment and usage is gradually emerging. For example, Eigenlayer decided not to do the airdrop for Season 3 and opted instead for "programmatic incentives", which is a fancy way of saying that is actually liquidity mining.
At present, most mainstream agreements have entered the second, third, or even fourth "points farming season". And for the points farm launched by the new agreement, people's enthusiasm is gradually fading. I've been sharing "Farm of the Week" on this blog on a regular basis, but now I'm finding it hard to find the ideal points farm opportunity in the market.
New protocols that missed the "points boom" had to innovate on the token issuance model in an attempt to attract users and create a wealth effect. Here are some of the new "money printing" models that are emerging:
Public and private token sales
ICOs are dead. Long live the ICO.
Cobie, perhaps the most influential cryptocurrency trader at the moment, wrote in his blog in May that the problem with the current crypto market is that the release of new tokens is almost impossible for ordinary participants to invest in due to the "capture" of "private gains".
Most of the price discovery takes place in private funding rounds with venture capitalists (VCs), who lock in the token at a low price before it goes public. As a result, when these tokens enter the market, they are often already overvalued, with fully diluted valuations (FDV) inflated, leaving little profit margin for public investors. This situation benefits insiders, while public investors are exposed to high-risk, low-return investment opportunities.
For example, ETH's valuation at the time of a seed round or ICO leaves investors with a huge upside.
However, this no longer applies to low-float, high-fully diluted (FDV) tokens like STRK, EIGEN, or other current cycles.
Therefore, Cobie's proposed solution is to launch Echo – a platform focused on early-stage token investing.
How Echo works:
1. Group Leader:
"Experienced investors" (or KOLs) create groups and share investment opportunities with members. Panelists can choose to follow and invest on the same terms as the group leader.
2. On-chain investment:
All investments are made in USDC on Base L2.
3. Smart Contracts:
Investments are legally managed by Echo through smart contracts, so the group leader doesn't handle your funds directly. Only you can decide when to sell your tokens (in the case of token investment).
4. For the founders:
Founders looking to access decentralized, community-driven funding can raise capital through the Echo group, avoid centralizing VC ownership, and distribute equity or tokens to real on-chain native investors.
To participate, you'll need to pass KYC verification, connect your X or Farcaster account, complete a questionnaire, and then join a panel to view investment opportunities.
Their first major deal was Initia, which raised $2.5 million from at least 500 participants at a valuation of $250 million, which is 28.57% lower than the $350 million valuation of the Series A funding round (according to The Block). The maximum investment amount for each participant is $5,000.
It's great that Echo's participants were able to invest at a discount to the Series A funding valuation. But the concept is largely a return to the early ICO model of the past, which many people once missed.
Of course, I can create my own group and invite my followers to co-invest in early agreements. These protocols are able to benefit from a larger community compared to venture capital (VC) rounds, but this does not address many of the pain points faced by projects, such as larger capital injections, industry linkages, strategic guidance, marketing and credibility, and long-term support.
Nonetheless, I believe projects can benefit from a variety of funding sources: first with significant support from well-known VCs, and then with a community-building round through Echo. Just like Initia did.
However, Echo is currently an exclusive community, which is what makes it so profitable: most popular ICO platforms, such as Coinlist, are difficult to get into and have very small allocations.
If you can get involved, give it a try.
“赞助销售”（Patron Sales）
I've only been involved in two rounds of KOL funding: Bubblemaps and Vertex.
Recently, I was involved in the third round of funding: Infinex. I say "yes" because it's not a typical KOL funding round.
In a typical KOL financing, the project party will provide the influencer with "investment opportunities" on better terms than those offered to venture capital (VC). The question is? KOLs need to tweet about the project on social media. The lack of these promotional conditions attracted me to Bubblemaps and Vertex. But if I don't advertise, what's the point of being an investor?
Synthetix's Kain took a different approach in the Infinex token sale.
In addition to gamified yield farming, he also sponsored NFT sales. I received a private message from Kain telling me that I could invest by choosing one of the three lock-up and valuation terms: unlock, yearly vesting, or 1-year cliff plus 2-year vesting with a 75% discount.
Infinex raised $65 million from 41,000 sponsors!
In a podcast with Blockworks, Kain noted that the current prevalent way of distributing tokens, which rely heavily on airdrops and private sales to accredited investors, is flawed.
He advocates a fairer approach, arguing that everyone from venture capitalists (VCs) to influencers and ordinary investors have an equal opportunity to buy tokens at the same price.
"Everyone is on a level playing field. It's the best thing you can do, right? If everyone has the same rules, you provide as much information as possible. You prevent someone from rushing in for fear of missing out and not knowing what's going on. ”——Kain
Like Echo, Infinex looks for inspiration in the ICO era as well as the trend of points, but adapts it to the needs of the current era. Yes, many of the participants are influential CT personalities, so this sale excludes a large community. But there are a number of different ways to qualify for sales (point farming).
Unfortunately, this model may not work for less popular projects. However, I would definitely participate in more token sales if more token sales were able to offer no-strings KOL sales, with a choice of options on the website, rather than requiring an unclear SAFT contract with an unclear TGE timeline attached.
Still, there is a new trend that allows anyone to participate in the token sale.
The application of runes or other token models on Bitcoin
Personally, BTCfi is the most exciting 0-to-1 innovation in the crypto space this cycle. I had a lot of fun minting Ordinal NFTs and playing with BRC20/Rune Tokens.
I admit that the infrastructure and user experience (UX/UI) are not perfect, but they are gradually improving. However, ORDI (the first BRC20 token) was minted for free and reached a market cap of $1.8 billion, generating staggering profits for early adopters. This is the success story we should be looking for!
I also hold ORDI, but it was sold too early......
BTCfi used to be one of the hottest narratives, but the heat ended shortly after the launch of the Runes protocol.
Nevertheless...... I still believe that BTCfi can do very well: the infrastructure is improving, and the community is strong (and it's mostly in Asia, so you hear less about BTCfi on CT). Prices are also picking up. Take a look at the performance of the top 10 runes over the last 7 days.
However, the most important BRC20 and Runes innovations are how they are released to the market.
Anyone can mint runic tokens on Bitcoin and only pay the transaction fees for Bitcoin. If you want to try it, you can go to Luminex and choose a token to mint. Or you can launch your own memecoin and choose a percentage of pre-mining. This pre-mining will be clearly visible to all.
I'm optimistic about runes because they oppose our frustrations with venture capital rounds, pre-sales, low-liquidity tokens, and the lack of transparency in the current memecoin offering. The runes represent the fairest token issuance model available.
In addition, the smaller Bitcoin transaction fees and very slow transaction speeds add enough friction to the phenomenon of over-issuance and concentration of tokens in a few wallets, avoiding the problems faced by other on-chain memecoins.
I believe a new catalyst is needed to spark a new wave of FOMO.
Currently, Fractals L2 is gaining traction, so it could create heat for runes, as runes can first be minted on Bitcoin and then bridged to Fractals (or other Bitcoin L2s), where they can gain the power of smart contracts.
By the way, Fractal's token FB is mined like Bitcoin, and you can participate in cloud mining by renting a PoW machine. Due to high inflation, the price of FB will only fall.
Finally, a new Bitcoin token standard may emerge, perhaps through OP_CAT upgrades to enable innovative token models.
My point is that tokens that are fairly issued on Bitcoin have great speculative potential and are worth your time to keep an eye on the BTCfi ecosystem.
Tap to Earn: Ton mini app
Tapping on my phone's screen isn't my favorite way to make money.
However, Ton and Telegram's click-to-earn mini-apps have already attracted millions of users. These users are usually not based in the United States, so most people in the crypto circle (CT) are missing out on this new trend.
In my previous article, we discussed what makes South Asia a unique crypto market.
We understand that for many people in developing countries, click-to-earn airdrops offer the opportunity to earn new income in the midst of economic challenges. This aligns better with the blockchain's promise to make cryptocurrency accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy who would most benefit from the click-to-airdrop model.
But after the DOGS, Catizen, and Hamster craze, it's unclear what will happen next. All tokens are currently in sell-off mode, so new catalysts are needed to attract new "degen" crowds to the Ton mini app.
Be the first to notice a change in trend to get the most out of your profits.
Memecoins
Memecoins is a tokenized community.
Murad does an excellent job illustrating the value proposition of memecoins in the video below. He clearly explained how memecoins outperform many utility tokens in the current state of the market (e.g. venture capital unlocks, lack of transparency, regulatory issues, etc.).
However, he only covered one aspect of the memecoin story.
However, he only shows one side of the memecoin story.
His screenshots show the superior performance of memecoins, but ignore that 99.5% of memecoins drop to zero in a day or two.
Contrary to his optimistic view, memecoins are usually launched by in-house teams, have a large pre-mined supply, and are promoted by KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) who are either paid or heavily distributed and ready to sell on new buyers.
It doesn't really have a community. Just sell the illusion of a community. That's why I stay away from memecoins: finding the real gem in a pile of junk is cumbersome and time-consuming. Jumping around with different memecoins can quickly burn your capital. Therefore, it is wiser to hold Bitcoin.
Despite this, memecoins is the sector with the most optimistic community in the crypto space. This greed is a key breeding ground for real gems, and a Doge competitor may emerge. That's why I'm not 100% giving up on memecoins.
In addition, during this cycle, platforms like Pumpdotfun have solved the initial liquidity problem, used dynamic bond curves, and mitigated many security risks by introducing a fairer issuance mechanism to prevent insider trading.
Investing in memecoin launch platform tokens, such as Ethervista or the upcoming Rush platform, could be a good option. I know the Rush development team, so it shouldn't be a scam. You can use my link to join the waitlist. Be careful, though: Ethervista's token has been falling since its launch.
Rewrapping + New Tokens
Old coins are boring, and the "degens" want something new.
What if you could change the brand name, create a new token symbol, and start over with a new chart? That's exactly what's happening now. I first wrote about this trend in June.
We've seen multiple rebranding, such as MATIC rebranding to Polygon and launching a new token POL, Orion rebranding to Lumia (ORN becoming LUMIA token), Covalent (a decentralized protocol for the AI era) migrating from CQT to CXT tokens, Connext rebranding to Everclear (and introducing a new token economy), and many other examples!
The most interesting examples are Fantom's migration of $FTM to $S and Arweave's launch of the AO protocol.
Arweave has decided to launch a new token for the AO Protocol (AO) instead of using AR. This makes sense, as AO is a different protocol, but the highlight is that AO tokens can be mined by simply putting AR in a wallet. It's a "money printing machine"!
Unfortunately, the performance of these rebranded tokens doesn't give much hope to this trend. Perhaps only Fantom's reinvention is thriving, while even Polygon is struggling in this cycle.
Still, focus on those rebranding that spark interest in the community. This shows that the team is still here, has not abandoned the protocol, and is still developing.
Community/Social Tokens
该死的FriendTech和0xRacer。
This was one of my biggest mistakes in this cycle.
They had the opportunity to build a consumer-grade app that might have outpaced the crypto "Degen" crowd, but they chose the shortcut to trick users.
In any case, FriendTech changed the industry by normalizing the use of Privy to improve the user experience and make social tokens popular.
In the v1 version of FriendTech, the social token is based on the KOL (Key Opinion Leader) personality, while in the v2 version, the goal is to tokenize the community.
Like "Memecoins", community tokens are built around the community and provide access to exclusive clubs.
The most successful example is the DEGEN token, which recently went public on Coinbase and rose by 127%! Initially, it was a community token airdropped to active Farcaster members. Personally, I made about $40,000 by posting on Warpcaster.
The beauty of DEGEN is its community-driven launch and its integration with Farcaster, which is facilitated by the open nature of the platform. Tokens like DEGEN reward participation and help solve the classic "chicken and egg" problem of social platforms: users don't post because there aren't enough users. By generously rewarding early members, other social apps can employ similar strategies. Lens also has its own airdrops.
My point is to try out new decentralized social apps like Phaver (where I made a couple of posts and also got a $250 airdrop).
However, their usefulness in specific applications limits their adoption. DEGEN has decided to launch its own L3 to scale, so keep an eye out for decisions from other community tokens.
What's more noteworthy: we're likely to see the launch of Farcaster, Lens, OpenSocial, and other SocialFi tokens.
What to watch for in this bull market?
The best returns usually occur at the beginning of an emerging trend. Liquidity mining, integral farming, fair issuance, and NFT minting have generated millions of benefits for early adopters. My mission is to identify these new token minting trends and find ways to capitalize on them.
A good sign of high potential is a mix of initial chaos in the community with love or hatred. As long as people care, stay focused.
Investigate how this token minting creates a flywheel effect that rewards early adopters and incentivizes them to stay in the ecosystem. This may look like a Ponzi scheme, but the best "money printing mechanisms" often have similar characteristics.
At the same time, remember to always keep an open mind. Try something new, and if you find something interesting, feel free to let me know!