The term ‘crypto launchpad’ is one that most digital currency enthusiasts would have heard about at some point or the other over the past half decade or so. This is because these platforms allow blockchain projects to raise capital seamlessly while providing investors with access to various early-stage token sale opportunities before they go public.
Also, over the last couple of years, the cost of launching projects via crypto launchpads has reduced quite significantly, resulting in more and more developers making use of these avenues.
Not only that, there has been an increased need for transparency and security when it comes to fundraising in relation to the digital asset market, since most people still have the 2017 ICO debacle fresh in their memories. As a quick refresher, the aforementioned ICO bubble resulted in a whole host of scammy projects raising copious sums of money from investors, leading to widespread public outrage as well as legal pullback.
A closer look at the fast-evolving crypto launchpad ecosystem
Since the legislative landscape surrounding the cryptocurrency market has evolved quite dramatically in recent times — especially when it comes to the launch of new tokens — more and more people have begun to look closely at the technological as well as financial proposition put forth by crypto launchpads.
For example, UpLift DAO, a cross-chain platform designed to support projects based atop any blockchain network, has started to garner a lot of mainstream attention since late last year. To elaborate, the system helps facilitate long-term investment opportunities for its projects while allowing investors to lock in their funds within a specific project in lieu of its native token offering.
In addition to this, UpLift is open to everyone, not just private investors or venture capital funds in possession of large asset pools. Also, since the platform is completely permissionless and decentralized, it allows projects operating within the DeFi space to harness its various incubation, acceleration and launch capabilities with the touch of a button.
Lastly, the project serves as a fully functional decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) backed by a community that is spread out across more than 80 countries, thus creating global exposure for each of its listed projects.
Another project that has gained a lot of appeal amongst developers in recent times is Occam, a decentralized fundraising vehicle that comes replete with a host of compliance and RegTech tools alongside a feature-rich UX designed to accommodate a vast variety of fundraising profiles.
That said, one key drawback of Occam in comparison to UpLift is that it only supports projects that have been devised atop the Cardano network, thus limiting its overall use cases.
Trustpad too has been able to make its mark within the crypto fundraising space. In essence, the protocol serves as a decentralized, permissionless launchpad for Initial DEX offerings (IDO) but much like Occam, Trustpad is also limited in its functional capabilities.
To this point, its use is largely relegated to just the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) — even though it offers integration capabilities with Ethereum — as opposed to UpLift that is compatible with tokens associated with any network.
The future of fundraising is decentralized and rightly so
With each passing week it appears as though a flood of new digital currencies are making their way into the market, which is exactly why crypto launchpads are becoming more popular by the day. To elaborate, these offerings not only allow projects to raise funds for themselves but also provides users with an analytical deep-dive into the DeFi projects with the most potential for delivering exponential returns.
To this point, one of the biggest challenges plaguing the crypto sector at the moment is that of knowing which projects are worth investing in and whether they are really legitimate and safe.
Launchpads help ease out these specific pain points by doing a bulk of the hard work — i.e. deep diving into the project’s fundamentals, background checks, etc — on the investors behalf, thus curating the best possible deals/options for them. In the case of UpLift, for example, it is worth mentioning that the platform not only incubates and facilitates a project’s growth during its pre launch/launch phases but also helps drive its growth once it has made its way into the market successfully.
Thus, as we head into a future driven by crypto-enabled technologies, it will be interesting to see how this space continues to evolve from here on out.
