Let’s talk Pre-TGE.

Hiyooo, 

So last time we talked about why having a token isn’t your spiritual awakening. In case you wanna go with the token plan. Let’s talk about your pre-TGE strategy.

You need to know that a good TGE is just the finaleish ( there is also post TGE, we’ll yap about it next week). The work is a season of training the right behaviors, pre-allocating demand, and removing all the avoidable chaos (unlock optics, scam surface area, liquidity potholes). 

Hype is scenery. Execution is the plot.

Let’s talk about it.

The season map (how the run-up actually flows)

Phase 1: Proof-of-use (T-6→3 months).

Your goal isn’t “hype.” It’s activated, returning users + balanced day-one liquidity

Let’s repeat that together 

Your goal isn’t “hype.” It’s activated, returning users + balanced day-one liquidity

A great pre-TGE campaign does three things: it proves real product usage, concentrates credible community energy, and pre-allocates distribution so price discovery isn’t a rug pull.

So phase 1 is to educate, then drill the core loop your product lives on: 

bridge → stake/LP → claim → vote → repeat. 

When Base treated adoption like culture with Onchain Summer, the ritual paid off: ~268k wallets minted ~700k assets in 2023, then 2M+ wallets minted 24M+ assets in 2024. 

Rituals compound. Screenshots don’t. 

Tactic to steal: build a 4-week “learn → use → earn” arc where week 1 is wallet + intro flows, weeks 2–3 are core actions tied to your north-star metric, and week 4 requires multi-app usage in your ecosystem.

Phase 2: Conversion & credibility (T-60→30 days).

Turn waitlists into KYCs into activated users. Publish a plain English tokenomics preview, wait I need to put that in all caps PLAIN ENGLISH TOKENOMICS, public unlock calendar, and a safety hub with verified contract addresses and scam education.

Why so serious you might ask? Because ~90% of token unlocks pressure price, and the bleed often starts 30 days before the cliff. If you don’t set expectations, CT will do it for you. 

Phase 3: Liquidity rehearsal (T-30→0).

Run the CEX launchpool for reach and mirror flows on DEX so price discovery isn’t hostage to one venue. Binance’s own posts brag $1.75B+ in Launchpool rewards in 2024,  huge top-of-funnel if you treat the pool page like a product page (what the token does, where the sinks live, who should not ape). 

Your Pre-TGE bible (and yes, we measure)

Imma give you a quick rundown of what you should do. Literally I’ll spell it out for you. 

Onchain quests that teach habits.

Design quests as sequences, not single clicks. Every step maps to a post-TGE behavior, every reward proves progression. That’s how Base turned their “onchain summer” hackathon into 2M+ wallets / 24M+ mints the next year. 

Pair quests with dashboards so you can show activation and D7/D28 retention instead of vanity totals. 

Points/ InfoFI, powerful, but bring seatbelts.

Points can move mountains fast we saw this with Blast who racked up ~$611M in deposits in a week and $2B TVL pre-mainnet off a lockdrop + yield design. Then critics asked the grown-up question: how much is sticky vs. mercenary?

InfoFi campaigns show the same dynamic. Multiple projects shot attention and mindshare through the roof, but they also became magnets for farmers chasing short-term rewards.

Whether it’s points, InfoFi, or any other incentive layer, the lesson’s the same: if you don’t have a system with weighted actions, capped accrual, hold-time gates, and anti-Sybil rules baked in, you’re just renting attention. 

Distribution you can actually control.

Launchpools are education with a built-in liquidity rehearsal. Mirror it on DEX, pre-seed MM inventory, and spell out the token’s job and sinks in human language. If your pool page is vibes and your DEX pair is a puddle, enjoy your slippage carnival. 

Binance’s 2024 Launchpool rewards cleared $1.75B, which is another way of saying “your top-of-funnel is bigger than your content calendar.” If you don’t educate, you’ll import tourists. 

Creators who do, not say.

Hire demonstrators, not narrators. 

The brief is “show the bridge, show the stake, show the claim onchain, on camera.” Pair that with partner circuits (3–5 apps in your stack) so users feel the ecosystem, not a one-app cul-de-sac.

Oh also we were fucking tired of campaigns that measured influence through surface-level engagement, likes, retweets, posts. Real impact happens when influence turns into capital onchain.

So we flipped the script.

Comms that de-risk the candle.

Announce the unlock calendar the same day you drop the meme. Put a status page behind it. Treat each cliff like a product release with dashboards, support SLAs, and MM coverage. 

I didn’t make the rules. The data speaks for itself. Don’t play coy. 

Sybil is a GTM problem, not a postmortem.

Criteria public.

Clustering turned on.

Self-report + appeals open.

LayerZero kept ~1.28M wallets after filters, and told people what the rules were. If your “community” is half puppets, the only thing you’re decentralizing is regret. 

The scoreboard (what to track)

Acquisition quality. Cost per qualified action; quest→activation in 72h; D7/D28 for activated cohorts.

Usage depth. Median tx per user; % completing your A→B→C loop; % touching ≥2 partner apps.

Liquidity rehearsal. Sticky TVL share (30-day), deposit volatility, top-holder concentration, MM inventory vs. float.

Credibility signals. Waitlist→KYC→claim conversion, unlock-post sentiment, scam-report response time.

Safety surface. % traffic via verified links; phishing takedowns; contract address mismatch rate.

Cool ? cool.

Benchmarks to keep you honest:

Activation in 72h ≥ 40% (green), 25–39% (amber), <25% (red).

D7 retention ≥ 30% (green). Sticky TVL ≥ 60% (green). 

Top-10 pre-TGE concentration ≤ 30% (green). 

Anything worse? rerun playbooks, not PR.

TL;DR

Read all of the above. It’s too important. I can’t summarize this.

Got questions? Feedback? You know where to find us 📞—we’re here to help you get organized, even if we’re still figuring out our own lives.

Until next lesson,

stay cookish. 🍪