Competition Among Four Popular Launchpads: Oversubscription is Common, Over 70% of Projects Still Yield Positive Returns

Author: Nancy, PANews

A new round of TGE waves is accelerating, accompanied by the rapid rise of various innovative LaunchPad platforms. With unique mechanism designs and diverse gameplay, these platforms provide investors with rich participation avenues, greatly invigorating the new investment ecosystem and becoming a new hotspot for retail investors to seek profits. As the enthusiasm for new investments continues to heat up, high fundraising cases are frequently seen, and participants are obtaining impressive returns, often several times or even dozens of times their initial investments.

This article by PANews will review the new listing data and project performance of four popular LaunchPad platforms (Buidlpad, Legion, MetaDAO, Metaplex Genesis) for players' reference (Note: Since echo has not disclosed detailed data publicly, it has not been included in this statistical scope).

Overall, these platforms generally exhibit characteristics such as high popularity, high first-day returns, and strong short-term volatility. In terms of participation scale, market funds and user sentiment remain highly active, with the four major platforms' projects generally experiencing oversubscriptions; some projects have even set subscription records of several dozen times, and the number of participants in individual projects on certain platforms has exceeded several hundred thousand. Regarding return performance, the short-term returns of new projects are impressive, with average returns of about 4.5 times on the day of TGE, particularly notable are Buidlpad and MetaDAO, both of which had average first-day increases exceeding 500%, and some star projects recorded four-digit increases. From a longer-term perspective, there has been no significant capital withdrawal; currently, the average return of all new projects since their launch is approximately 190.8%, with over 70% of projects maintaining positive returns and about 30% of projects still exceeding double returns.

Buidlpad

Buidlpad will be launched in December 2024, available for KYC-compliant users in non-restricted areas. Its founder is Erick Zhang, managing partner of Nomad Capital, who was previously the head of Binance Research and was responsible for the Binance Launchpad platform.

So far, Buidlpad has launched 4 projects for subscription, and from the data statistics, these projects are generally favored by the market, with participation numbers exceeding 100,000. The market enthusiasm has also directly driven the subscription scale of the projects, with an average oversubscription multiple of about 14.1 times, especially the oversubscription multiple of Falcon Finance reaching as high as 28.2 times, setting a historical record for the Buidlpad platform.

From the return rate on the day of the TGE, participants had an average yield of about 563.3%, with overall performance being very impressive. Especially Falcon Finance, which had a return rate of as high as 1557.1%, far exceeding other projects. Other projects like Solayer, Lombard, and Sahara AI also saw remarkable short-term returns.

Looking at the timeline in the long term, the average return on investment for these projects to date is 286.7%, mainly influenced by the high yield uplift average of Falcon Finance, which has a relatively short TGE cycle. Aside from Falcon Finance, the long-term returns of other projects are significantly lower than the returns on the day of TGE, but most still maintain positive returns.

Overall, Buidlpad's new projects are generally highly popular, and the wealth effect is evident in the short term, but long-term returns depend more on the project's own development and market cycles.

It is worth mentioning that Buidlpad recently launched the Pre-TGE HODL staking activity, with the first project being Momentum. This activity aims to encourage users to earn high returns by providing liquidity, while also enhancing their eligibility and priority for participating in new projects on the Buidlpad platform, which has also driven the growth of the project's TVL.

Legion ✖️ Kraken

In September of this year, the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced a partnership with the ICO platform Legion to launch MiCA compliant token sales on its newly launched Kraken Launch platform.

Legion has raised $7 million through two rounds of financing, with investors including VanEck, Coinbase Ventures, Kraken, Delphi Digital, and Alliance. The platform primarily evaluates user eligibility through the “Legion Score” system, which encompasses dimensions such as social influence, on-chain activity, and developer activity.

YieldBasis is the debut project launched in collaboration between Legion and Kraken. In this sale, over 67,000 people applied, but only 4,187 were selected, accounting for about 7% of the total applicants, indicating that the competition for new shares is very fierce. The subscription scale of YieldBasis exceeded $195 million, with an oversubscription rate as high as 98 times, demonstrating the market's extremely high enthusiasm and recognition for the project, and setting a record for the highest oversubscription of any token sale on the Legion platform to date.

From the perspective of return performance, the average return rate on the first day of TGE was approximately 322.2%, and the overall return is still impressive at 243.4%. This performance is related to the project just being launched, and market enthusiasm supports its strong performance in the secondary market.

MetaDAO

The Launchpad platform MetaDAO on Solana has gained popularity recently. The platform raised $2.2 million in funding led by Paradigm last year. As of now, the total fundraising amount on MetaDAO is approximately $9.88 million.

It is important to note that the MetaDAO community has proposed “selling up to 2 million META at market price or with a premium,” which includes Proph3t representing MetaDAO selling up to 2 million META at market price or with a premium; this portion of tokens will be newly minted.

So far, MetaDAO has conducted multiple rounds of new project launches. According to data statistics, these projects have generally attracted market attention, but there are significant differences in participation scale among different projects. In terms of the number of participants, Umbra is the highest, reaching 10,500 people, while Omnipair and mtnCapital have 321 and 1,931 participants, respectively. The data shows that MetaDAO has significantly enhanced its user reach and community mobilization capabilities in the latest projects, and its market coverage is gradually expanding.

From the perspective of subscription scale and oversubscription situation, the platform's popularity continues to rise. The average oversubscription multiple for these projects is about 12 times, with Umbra's oversubscription reaching as high as 20.6 times, far exceeding other projects. This indicates that the brand effect accumulated by early MetaDAO projects is being released, and the fundraising appeal of new investment activities has significantly increased.

In terms of return performance, the average return rate on the day of TGE was about 525.3%, significantly boosted by Umbra's extremely high return of 1172.3%. The strong growth potential of the platform's new projects has greatly increased MetaDAO's visibility and discussion in the market.

However, from a longer-term perspective, project prices generally experience a certain degree of correction after the initial excitement fades. The average return rate since launch is approximately 365.4%, which has narrowed compared to the TGE day, but overall remains at a high level of returns. In particular, Omnipair's return rate to date has reached as high as 902.7%, significantly boosting the overall average.

Next, MetaDAO has already launched or will soon launch the new project activities for Avici, Loyal, ZKLSOL, and Paystream.

Metaplex Genesis

Metaplex is Solana's decentralized NFT infrastructure. In 2022, the platform completed $46 million in strategic financing, with investment institutions including Multicoin Capital, Jump Crypto, Solana Ventures, and Samsung Next. In July this year, Metaplex announced the launch of the on-chain token issuance protocol Genesis.

Metaplex Genesis has launched multiple rounds of new token offerings, attracting widespread attention from the market. In terms of fundraising speed, most projects can complete their funding goals within seconds to minutes. For example, Portals and Goated completed their subscriptions in just 11 seconds and 13 seconds respectively, while DeFiTuna took only 4 minutes, showcasing the high level of market participation.

In terms of subscription scale, compared to other LaunchPads, the project scale of Metaplex Genesis is relatively moderate, mostly ranging between several million dollars. This reflects that the platform is still primarily focused on small to medium-sized new projects at this stage.

In terms of return performance, the average return rate on the day of TGE was 188.9%, primarily driven by Portals with a high return rate of 531.1%. This not only brought substantial profits to investors but also significantly enhanced the platform's exposure. Looking at a longer period, the return rates have shown a clear divergence, with an average level of approximately 270.6%. Collector Crypt and Exotic Markets achieved robust returns of 270.6% and 90.8% respectively, while Portals and Goated experienced negative returns. Overall, the short-term market appeal of Metaplex Genesis's new project has strengthened its influence and community appeal.