The fundamental baseline for thinking about fundraising tranches in tokenomics

* Each investor wants to buy as many tokens as possible for as cheap as possible, wants to liquidate them as quickly as possible, and wants to not have other investors liquidate their tokens first.

* You, as the project, want to make sure that each investor is happy with their tranche, that you don’t give too much allocation to investors, that the overall sell pressure doesn’t come quicker than you can handle, and that fundraise enough capital.

Only 4 L1s have outperformed BTC so far this month:

- KAS (+31%)

- SUI (+17%)

- SOL (+6%)

- AVAX (+4%)

The rest? Lagging significantly, including ETH, TRX, BNB, and TON

There are 9 data points one has to keep in mind when designing the fundraising tranches.

These are all inter-related: you change 1, you need to change the others.

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Daniel Malinovski is unpacking what VCs are really looking for in 2025.

Hosted by Laura K. Inamedinova (Gate.io & Gate Ventures)

Alongside:
• Petro Yanytskyi – Monolith VC
• Maks Charyev – AlfaCatalyst
• Andrey Baral – PrimeLink
• Sergey Khusnetdinov – Gain Ventures

🔗 https://x.com/i/spaces/1dRKZYPnBmwxB

If you’re building or fundraising this year, don’t miss it.

92% of projects fail by confusing holders with users.

So how do you make people actually care about your product?


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Worth the 4-minute read if you’re launching anything with a token:

https://www.simplicitygroup.xyz/blog/token-holders-are-not-users

Right now, we’re working on the biggest research project in the industry on successful TGEs.

Here’s some alpha on what makes them work:

Tokenomics
Sustainable emissions and a launch strategy driven by supply and demand.

Marketing
Web3 performance ads targeted at wallet holders; hype-building starts at least 2–3 months in advance.

Secret sauce
You'll have to find out when reading the paper.

We're excited to partner with Portal to Bitcoin - the only custodyless, cross-chain infrastructure for native Bitcoin!

Portal is building tools for global financial self-sovereignty. Trust-minimized swaps across BTC, ETH, SOL, and more. No bridges, wrapping, or custodians.

Portal to Bitcoin is the safest and easiest path to $BTC from other chains and L2s. Their Bitscaler-based infrastructure makes cross-chain transactions fast, simple, and secure.

So many projects who contact us struggle to fundraise.

The first issue is always the same: the blurb.

It's the very first thing a VC sees.
The dating profile of your project.
You’ve got 5 seconds before they swipe left.

The blurb gets them to open the deck.

The deck gets them on a call.

The call gets them to read the docs.

The docs (maybe) get you a wire.


Here’s one we wrote, and it works.

Why?

It explains what they do at a high level with zero filler.

It shows traction, even at a super early stage.

It highlights the team cleanly. Because at this stage, team is the product.

It’s quick, clear, and built to make investors stop, read, and reach out.

Today, our co-founder Daniel Malinovski talks tokenomics with alpha speakers from Sushi, GDA Capital, IoTeX, GEODNET, and Cork Protocol.

Yay Protocol hosts the conversation as part of The Founders Show, episode 42: Tokenomics: Million Ways to Ruin Your Project

Dan will cover common issues 98% of teams face, like

- how to balance investor and community allocations
- common tokenomics mistakes
- how to set up incentives that actually work

🕔 3 PM UTC

Set a reminder: https://x.com/i/spaces/1mrxmPevQLzJy

🔎 Analysis of Revenue Generating Web3 Projects

Narratives come and go. But at the end of the day, every protocol is a business. And businesses need revenue to survive.

Together with Solus Group, the alliance of Web3 degen-companies, we dug into the data to answer one question:

Which protocols are actually earning in Web3?

▪️ $4.2B in total protocol revenue
▪️ $2.1B in the last 12 months
▪️ Dominant model: transaction fees

Some takeaways:

- Solana’s Jupiter, Jito, and Meteora are leading through real usage, not incentives.
- Ethereum’s Lido, Ethena, and Morpho show how capital flows can be monetized predictably.
- Tokenless products are quietly printing, proving you don’t need complexity to capture value.

🔗Read the full report:

https://solus.partners/Revenue-Generating-Apps-with-Simplicity-Group

One of our portcos, Zoth, went through a serious exploit during mainnet expansion.

Instead of vanishing or stalling, the team handled it.

They added AI-powered monitoring, external audits, open-source infrastructure, a public bug bounty, and improved governance. Compensation came in the form of stable assets and vested $ZOTH, backed by the ecosystem.

The community stayed, with retention above 80%. Investors backed them with a $15M token commitment from Bolts Capital.


best in class crisis management, rebuilding the roadmap, and back on track.

Excited to be working with Folks Finance!

Folks Finance is a community-driven, permissionless DeFi platform live across multiple networks. With over $123M in total value locked, Folks offers a full suite of tools to lend, borrow, stake, and trade.

Their flagship products include xChain, which allows users to deposit and borrow across chains like BNB, Polygon, Arbitrum, Monad, Base, Ethereum, Avalanche; and the Algorand app, the largest protocol on Algorand offering everything from lending and liquid staking to DEX routing and loan looping.

One of our clients, Nebulus Finance: The AUM Protocol, came in for a light audit, just to "confirm" their token utilities and economy were fine.

But they weren’t. At all.

The audit was brutal. Token had no real connection to the product. Utilities looked good on paper but did nothing to drive usage, revenue, or value accrual. We told them exactly that.

And that was the problem - the product was the real deal, but the token didn’t do it justice.

They didn’t argue. They rebuilt.

A month later, the client came back. We are doing the re-audit now, and the difference is massive:

The economy makes sense.
Utilities are actually tied to the product.
Buy pressure, value sinks, user flows - all clicks.

The documentation is one of the most comprehensive sets of policy notes we’ve seen from any project.

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If you think your token's fine, always double-check. If you’re not sure where the value comes from, fix it.

We’ll tell you if it’s broken. And we’ll help you make it work.

Not all top protocols are actually earning. So we checked.

Here are the top 10 protocols on Ethereum (selected based on market cap), ranked by annualized revenue.

Read the full 76-page analysis we put together with Solus Group:

https://solus.partners/Revenue-Generating-Apps-with-Simplicity-Group

Lightweight, high-volume models without native tokens outperform in absolute revenue terms.

Among the top 5 protocols by annual revenue, 4 are tokenless:
Meteora
Pump.fun
Photon
Phantom

The only one with a native token is Solana-native Jupiter.

We analyzed the projects actually generating revenue - and we’re sharing the full 76-page report completely free:

https://solus.partners/Revenue-Generating-Apps-with-Simplicity-Group

Appreciate you spreading the word.

Polkadot's governance lets DOT holders lock tokens for more voting power. Longer lock = Higher conviction

Turns out, most users aren't even locking for long:

~60% of votes come from no lock, or only 7-day lock

Only 16.2% of voters commit to 28 days for a 3x multiplier

Simplicity didn’t start by accident

Here is the why behind it all.



Watch the full episode with Alex: https://youtu.be/nXdk5oEnoWE?si=o0rCx1P2_-T3ut4j