The Evolution of Crypto Fundraising Amid the 2025 Presale Boom

Introduction: The Return of the Presale Boom

Between 2021-2022, the DeFi market saw a wave of airdrops and initial offerings (IDOs). In September 2020, decentralized exchange protocol Uniswap distributed approximately $6.43 billion worth of UNI tokens via airdrop; in March 2022, the ApeCoin project airdropped tokens worth about $354 million. These major airdrop events were seen as important milestones in the crypto space, significantly boosting user engagement and community enthusiasm. At the same time, IDO platforms based on exchanges and communities (such as BSCPad, DAO Maker, etc.) emerged, bringing numerous early investment opportunities. As the bear market hit in 2022, the market fell silent for a while, but entering 2025, the “presale model” returned to the spotlight. Analysts believe investors are actively seeking ‘early participation’ opportunities before token listings, hoping to exchange higher risks for potentially higher returns. Indeed, early entrants who timed it right in each bull market often reaped astonishing returns: as one commentary stated, “In every major bull market, the few who initially entered through presales often turned small investments into life-changing wealth”. Evidently, the “early bird effect” of presale projects has once again become the focus of investor attention. Surrounding these phenomena, we need to raise two core questions: Why has the presale model re-emerged as a hot trend in the crypto world? Compared to the previous cycle, how has the current investment logic changed?

Evolution of Presale Mechanisms: From Speculative Frenzy to Structured Financing

Definition and Main Types

Presale typically refers to the stage where a project raises funds from investors before the token is listed, mainly in forms including whitelist sales, fair launches, auctions (open bidding), and dynamic pricing (such as Bonding Curve).

• Whitelist Presale: One must first enter a list through community tasks, identity verification, or other conditions to be eligible for token purchase.
• Fair Launch: In this model, all investors can purchase tokens at the same price, emphasizing the concept of openness, transparency, and community-driven. According to reports, the fair launch model is gaining popularity due to its characteristics of “equal purchase opportunities, no early discounts”, becoming a more popular fundraising method than traditional private sales.
• Auction: Determines subscription ratios and prices through competitive bidding, common in some innovative financing models.
• Dynamic Pricing (Bonding Curve): Token prices automatically adjust with purchase quantities, typically implemented through smart contracts, a continuous issuance mechanism where price is linked to demand.

Development Stages

The presale model has gone through several evolutionary stages:

• Rise of IDO Model (2021-2022): Leveraging the liquidity advantages of decentralized exchanges, IDOs became a hot topic. IDOs were popular due to their high efficiency, low barriers, and quick fundraising capabilities. During 2021, IDO platforms like BSCPad and DAO Maker rapidly gathered funds, providing initial capital for many projects.
• Resurgence in 2025: As the market matures, the presale model is moving towards structurization and compliance. Current presale projects emphasize more on fund security and community consensus. Many projects clearly lock liquidity, announce linear unlocking plans, and accept third-party audits and team KYC during the presale stage to enhance transparency and trust. Participants demand higher standards for verifiable development progress and community governance, with excellent projects standing out - as analysis points out, “Those presale projects combining strong technology, transparent management, and genuine community participation are more likely to stand out amid the noise”.

Characteristics of New Generation Presales

Entering 2025, the new generation of presales exhibits the following features:

• Smart Contract Locking + Linear Unlocking: Tokens are automatically locked through smart contracts and released periodically, preventing concentrated selling by teams or early investors, enhancing market stability.
• Fund Transparency + KYC Audits: Projects generally undergo security audits before presales, with teams required to complete KYC verification, thus building credibility. As one report states, “Top projects completed Coinsult and CertiK audits during the presale stage, with team KYC conducted by Solidproof, greatly enhancing investor trust through such transparency”.
• Community Self-Governance and Compliance Awareness: Community members actively participate in project governance, with increased regulatory awareness. Under strict regulatory environments, compliant operations (such as account reporting, anti-money laundering checks, etc.) are becoming mainstream, helping the healthy development of the presale market.

Presale vs Airdrop

While both are early market activities, presales and airdrops have distinctly different goals and logic:

• Airdrop Model: Focuses on increasing project awareness and community activity, without requiring user investment. Its main purpose is user acquisition and promotion, encouraging participation by distributing tokens for free.
• Presale Model: Investors need to pay funds to purchase tokens, a direct financing behavior. Presales allow buyers to obtain new coins at discounted prices in advance, but also carry potential loss risks. The “participation as investment” nature of presales makes investors pay more attention to the project itself when making decisions, changing traditional financing logic.

Overall, the presale mechanism has evolved from an early speculative tool to a more mature financing method, emphasizing structured fund arrangements and community consensus. Effective presales not only consider project visions but also need to provide verifiable development progress and healthy community ecosystems to meet investors’ demands for transparency and long-term value.

Liquidity Migration: Why Funds Are Refocusing on Early-Stage Projects

In the first half of 2025, Bitcoin and Ethereum performed strongly, with prices continuing to rise and consolidate. Bitcoin climbed past the $100,000 mark, reaching an all-time high during consolidation, with a market dominance of 62.1%; Ethereum rebounded from its year-low of $1,853 to $2,488, but still below its opening price of $3,337. In contrast, many mainstream digital assets saw compressed profit spaces and increased market divergence, with traditional high-yield DeFi opportunities gradually diminishing. Consequently, some liquidity began migrating from mature large-cap coins (especially BTC/ETH) and arbitrage-type DeFi strategies towards more elastic new projects.

In terms of fund behavior, on one hand, stable funds are allocating towards mainstream assets: By the third quarter of 2025, Bitcoin and Ethereum-related ETFs attracted over $28 billion in net inflows, potentially signaling a shift from speculative trading to asset allocation. On the other hand, some risk-tolerant funds began chasing short-term arbitrage opportunities in presale projects. Several new chain and application project presales have raised tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, for example, the MegaETH project raised nearly $87.7 million in a single presale. These funds often favor project tokens at the presale stage (due to low discounts and high elasticity) and expect high returns after listing (short-term arbitrage + price elasticity). Meanwhile, KOL promotion and community traffic have become important drivers for presale projects: project teams quickly gather “liquid community” attention through celebrity and social media hype, rich airdrop tasks, converting retail traffic into subscription funds.

Notably, investor mentality is also adjusting: ‘speculative communities’ are transforming into ‘strategic investment groups’ - more and more investors are starting to focus on projects’ technical roadmaps and team credibility, rather than relying solely on community sentiment. This aligns with the trend of market maturation and regulatory clarity. Against this backdrop, early project presales provide an outlet for capital seeking new growth points: on one hand, they offer new high-growth windows; on the other hand, participants are more focused on value discovery and risk management, avoiding blind followings. Overall, data from active Launchpad platforms indicate that the number of presale projects launched and total funds raised in the first half of 2025 increased significantly, with average ROI levels higher than mainstream coin performance during the same period (CryptoRank and CoinGecko data show that successful projects’ presale ROI often reaches several to dozens of times). Although return rates vary greatly between platforms, mainstream Launchpads (such as high-end platforms using AI algorithms for project screening) generally maintained high activity levels and fundraising capabilities.

Case Studies: From Plasma to MegaETH

Plasma: A New Layer 1 Chain Focused on Stablecoin Payments

Source: https://www.plasma.to/?r=0

Source: https://www.plasma.to/?r=0
Plasma held two key token presale and public sale events. The first was a “deposit participation round” where users needed to deposit stablecoins like USDT and USDC into the official Vault to gain eligibility for future XPL purchases. This round was initially capped at $250 million, later increased to $500 million, but surpassed $1 billion in just 30 minutes, showing extremely high market enthusiasm. Deposits in this phase were not directly exchanged for XPL but served as the basis for calculating withdrawable assets after the mainnet Beta launch. Subsequently, Plasma conducted an official public Sale, selling 10% of the total token supply at about $0.05 per token, corresponding to a project valuation of about $500 million. The target fundraising was $50 million, but actual subscriptions reached about $373 million, significantly oversubscribed. Part of the public sale proceeds will be used for mainnet ecosystem incentives and stablecoin liquidity supplementation; XPL for non-U.S. investors will be unlocked at mainnet launch, while U.S. investors have a 12-month lock-up period. The high enthusiasm in these two presales not only provided ample funding for Plasma’s launch but also brought subsequent market circulation and governance pressure.

During the public sale of XPL tokens, the project initially aimed to raise about $50 million, valuing it at $500 million. The actual fundraising scale far exceeded expectations: committed funds reached about $373 million, over 7 times the target. The token was priced at about $0.05 per piece at sale, with the listing price later peaking around $1.7 (as of late October 2025, it had fallen back to around $0.5), theoretically giving early participants up to 30 times paper returns. Moreover, PLASMA distributed nearly 10,000 XPL tokens to each successful subscriber, greatly stimulating users’ interest in participating in such presale savings projects.

MegaETH: A High-Performance New Chain with Low Valuation

Source: https://www.megaeth.com/

MegaETH (token symbol MEGA) is positioned as a high-performance Layer-2 chain focused on enhancing Ethereum’s scalability. The project claims MegaETH has a modular network architecture, including dedicated sequencer nodes and proof nodes, to achieve extremely high transaction throughput and low latency. The chain aims to break the 100,000 TPS barrier, providing near real-time transaction experiences.

Fundraising Results and Allocation Situation: According to disclosures from multiple media and data platforms, MegaETH’s public sale officially ended in October 2025, with extremely impressive results. The public round sold about 5% of the token supply (approximately 500 million MEGA), raising funds between about $50 million to $450 million, with specific amounts varying due to different statistical methods.

According to The Block, the final raised amount was about $49.95 million, while media like CoinMarketCap and CoinDesk reported that this public sale raised a total of $450 million, with several times oversubscription. Some media even mentioned that the total committed bids for the auction exceeded $1 billion, showing rare market enthusiasm.

In terms of participation, official and third-party platform statistics show that this public auction attracted over 50,000 wallet addresses applying to participate, with about 5,000 wallets successfully allocated, a success rate of only about 10%. According to data from Bitget and ChainCatcher, the “Unlocked (non-locked) pool” had 49,976 wallets submit applications, with only 5,031 wallets ultimately receiving allocations. Additionally, according to CoinDesk, the overall participating addresses were about 14,491, while some channels disclosed total applications exceeding 53,000, indicating exceptionally high participation enthusiasm.

Synthesizing various reports, MegaETH’s public sale has not only become one of the most watched high-performance public chain presale events of 2025 so far, but its oversubscription, low allocation rate, and aggressive performance targets have collectively sparked widespread industry discussion. The market will closely monitor its token unlocking rhythm, liquidity arrangements, and mainnet launch progress to assess whether this high-heat presale can deliver on the technical promises of “100,000 TPS, real-time transactions”.

The Dark Side of Presales: Bubbles, Scams, and Trust Crisis

Although the presale model regained attention in 2025, the accompanying risks cannot be ignored. The core contradiction in the presale market lies in: the temptation of early high returns versus the trust gap brought by information asymmetry. In the past few months, rug pull events of some projects have once again sounded the alarm.

The latest case is the Aqua project event in the Solana ecosystem. On September 9, 2025, on-chain analyst ZachXBT posted that Aqua was suspected of implementing a Rug Pull, absconding with about 21,770 SOL (approximately $4.65 million). This project had previously received endorsements from ecosystem partners such as Meteora, Quill Audits, Helius, SYMMIO, Dialect, and was heavily promoted by several KOLs, once viewed as a rising star in the Solana ecosystem during the presale stage.

However, after the incident broke out, the team split the funds into four parts and transferred them to multiple centralized exchanges through intermediate addresses. Meanwhile, Aqua’s official account closed the comment function and gave no public response. This move not only caused investor losses but also triggered widespread community questioning about the effectiveness of presale project audits, KOL promotion responsibilities, and Launchpad platform due diligence standards.

The significance of the Aqua incident lies in that it reveals the most dangerous grey area in the 2025 presale market: when ‘trust’ is replaced by traffic, when ‘endorsement’ becomes a marketing tool, so-called “early opportunities” can easily evolve into systemic risks.

This incident reminds investors that even if a project passes multiple audits and external endorsements, it cannot replace independent judgment on the transparency of fund flows, public team identities, and the reasonableness of unlocking mechanisms. From Aqua to earlier failed projects, the presale bubble reflects the fragility of the market in its rapid recovery: market enthusiasm is rising, but the trust mechanism has not yet been truly rebuilt.

Future Trends: Can Presales Become the Core Narrative of the Next Cycle?

Looking ahead, the presale model may innovate by combining with various mechanisms. One trend is to combine Token Generation Events (TGE) with airdrop mechanisms, forming a composite model of online presale + airdrop traffic attraction. For example, Solana’s Meteora project conducted a token airdrop and TGE simultaneously at launch, releasing 48% of the total supply almost immediately without lock-ups, replacing traditional linear unlocking with community incentives. Additionally, projects like BlockDAG introduced “presale codes” (TGE Code), allowing early participants to purchase at extremely low prices and gain airdrop eligibility, directly linking pricing rights with airdrop rights, emphasizing rewards for early loyal users.

On the compliance front, major Launchpads and project teams will strengthen KYC and custody reviews. Solutions like Blockpass’s Launchpad KYC allow platforms to conveniently access global compliant identity verification, ensuring adherence to KYC/AML/CTF requirements. This trend is particularly evident under regulatory frameworks in Europe, America, and Asia: the US, EU, and Japan are pushing for standardization of crypto issuances, requiring project teams to disclose information and introduce custodians or compliance advisors. In the future, we may see more crypto offerings with pre-audits, fund custody mechanisms, and even regulatory bodies establishing disclosure norms for early projects, incorporating investor protection into the institutional framework.

Technologically, innovative tools will also be introduced in the presale field. For example, smart allocation contracts can dynamically distribute quotas based on user profiles, avoiding excessive subscriptions from single addresses; on-chain credit evaluation systems based on blockchain behavior can risk-grade whitelist users; new mechanisms like Proof of Contribution may also be adopted, linking community participation and actual contributions with subscription weights. Overall, presales will continue to play an important role as a channel for Web3 capital formation, but with more flexible means and higher standardization: through diversified issuance methods, smart contract automation, and compliance audit endorsements, the presale market in the next cycle is expected to find a new balance between acquiring funds and maintaining trust. In the long term, both project teams and investors will focus more on sustainable value creation, with the maturity and health of presales as tools for guiding funds and validating projects significantly influencing the development direction of the entire ecosystem.

Conclusion: The Return to a Rational and Trust-Based Early Investment Era

Observing the current market landscape, there is a deep logic behind the resurgence of presales: against the backdrop of mainstream assets oscillating at high levels, funds are craving new opportunities; while the development of blockchain technology and the evolution of regulatory frameworks also provide more landing scenarios and compliance paths for early projects. This wave of presales is both an inevitable result of market liquidity migration and a product of the industry’s development to a certain stage. However, regardless of how trends change, the core of investment always remains value discovery and risk control. Project teams must win trust through openness and transparency, while investors should avoid pitfalls through in-depth research and prudent judgment.