You don’t need a fucking token.

Heyoooooo, 

I was gonna write about pre-TGE and post TGE marketing strategies (I will next week) but then I was like let’s say the quiet part loud:

You don’t need a fucking token.

Crypto teams treat their TGE like a spiritual awakening, like the moment they go from building to becoming eyefuckingroll

But most of the time?

They’re just unlocking a six-figure MM bill, a bunch of unlock cliffs that haunt their tg chat, and a community that cares more about candle patterns than the actual product.

Don’t come for me

A token can be useful, but only when it’s actually doing something. 

If your system needs to meter scarce resources (like blockspace, bandwidth, or compute), secure a validator set, or route fees between network participants, then yeah, you’re in token territory. That’s infrastructure.

But for the love of god if the token doesn’t serve a mechanical purpose (if it’s not literally required for the thing to function) you’re just adding complexity with no upside. You’re taking on regulatory exposure across jurisdictions (hi, MiCA), accounting liabilities (pre-sales = deferred revenue), unlock volatility, market-maker obligations, and a community that expects liquidity, governance, and price action on day one. All of that becomes a tax on your team’s focus.

And for fucking what?

This ain’t 2018 babe

Remember the ICO boom? Ah what a time for magic internet money

• $7B raised in 2017

• $19.7B in 2018

• Then back to ~$4.1B by Oct 2019

But that was a fundraising era, not a sustainable business model.

The macro was different. ETH was pumping. Regulation was unclear.

Tokens were efficient capital, for a moment.

Today’s market doesn’t care about your nostalgic tokenomics.

A green candle isn’t PMF. Sorry.

Returns at launch tell the same story. The “Digital Tulips?” study finds ~+179% average underpricing from ICO sale to first trading day and ~+48% average buy and hold abnormal returns in the first 30 trading days.

Translation: early listing volatility was generous to traders, but that doesn’t tell you anything about retention, cash flow, or product-market fit. Your protocol doesn’t become valuable because the first candle was green. 

And when teams try to use a token as a defibrillator for stalled growth, it rarely fixes fundamentals. Friend.tech for example launched its token in May 2024; coverage recorded an intraday spike near $169 that collapsed to about $2 within hours, and it was later noted it was down ~96% by September.

A ticker can’t manufacture PMF. Users don’t stay because a coin exists; they stay because the product solves a habit.

You don’t build loyalty, retention, or LTV with a ticker.

You build it by solving someone’s actual problem. Cool? cool.

The unlock cliff is real, and it’s coming for you

You can’t ignore token unlocks. Everyone else sees them.

Market research says ~90% of unlock events = price dip.

Why? Easy math: new supply + same demand = 🚗 skrrt 🚗

If you’re not ready with a full comms plan, liquidity routing, and MM strategy, don’t launch. You’re not “early,” you’re just underbaked.

So… when do you actually need a token?

When it’s plumbing, not jewelry. You need a token if:

• It meters scarce resources

• It pays or secures validators

• It powers decentralized governance (for real, not vibes)

• If it has an actual damn utility

Otherwise? Use ETH. Use stables. Use points.

“But Nour….. GOVERNANCE” Sit your ass down.

Imma leave this here for you to read:

Token weighted governance is cute until you realize it just hands power to the richest whales in the room. If you can run things with a multisig, a council, or literally any system with real accountability, do that. Don’t mint a governance token just to cosplay decentralization.

Shouldst I 'r shouldn't I

Real world examples keep the lesson honest. Uniswap spent years compounding PMF before dropping $UNI to formalize governance and fortify against competitive pressure. The token showed up to defend a moat that already existed.

If you’re deciding internally, trade the meme for a question you can answer in one sentence: “The token unlocks X utility our users cannot get with ETH or stables.” 

If you can’t fill in X with something real, access to scarce resources, participation rights that genuinely steer the system, or incentives that price productive contributions, you don’t have a token use case; you have marketing. 

Then sanity-check the rest. Can you credibly run permissionless governance without handing control to the richest wallets? Do you have budget for compliance, audits, listing, and market structure? Will emissions create habits you want instead of mercenary farming? Does your finance team have a clean revenue recognition story? If several answers wobble, the best “tokenomics” is focus.

Don’t get me wrong my boy, none of this argues for permanent token abstinence. It argues for sequencing. Ship the product. Prove repeatable value. Build a community that shows up when there’s no airdrop on the horizon. When the protocol needs a native meter, when decentralization is a feature not a tweet, when the economy around your app has real participants who will use ,rather than just trade, the token, then press the big red button. Launch with a rational float, public unlock calendar, explicit sinks, and liquidity coordinated across venues. Publish verified contract addresses and a safety page to blunt the inevitable phishing clones. Treat unlock dates as product moments with status updates and dashboards, not gotchas.

And if you’re not launching a token? Own it. Say you’re value first: you ship, you earn trust, you leave the door open to a token only if it makes the experience better. Incentivize with points, fee rebates, grants, and revenue share in stablecoins where it’s legal and clean. Tell people exactly how to verify any future claims so your brand doesn’t become a magnet for fake airdrop drainers. The “no token (for now)” narrative lands when the roadmap screams progress and the unit economics are transparent

Final word: a token is not a resurrection spell

If your product is mid, a ticker won’t fix it.

You can’t stake your way to PMF. You can’t unlock your way to community.

And you can’t bullshit your way past fundamentals.

So unless your token is doing something vital, necessary, and genuinely hard to replace…

Maybe just don’t.

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. 🍪