I think launches have been crimed so long that folks have forgotten what organic market creation actually looks like — it’s messy, it’s chaotic, but it’s fair. At Token we had a dinner and sitting at the table was a large maker, a large taker, a large voter, and the first team to use the community launch model in Syndicate. A representative from every stakeholder group involved in the first Community Launch. One-by-one they each reported how successful it was for them, each was expecting that surely their success had to have come at the expense of one of the other participants at the table — but slowly it became clear that everyone saw it as a win. How is that possible in a game that is traditionally so zero sum? Because there wasn’t a single centralized player extracting a bunch of value from all sides. So here is what the launch actually looked like: Instead of Syndicate giving 10%+ of supplies to MMs and CEXs, they gave 1% of supply to $veAERO voters — keeping 6% in reserve they’d usually have given up. Those voters decided how much in $AERO emissions to direct to the pool, eating the opportunity cost of voting for pools with priced assets vs this new token. They delivered to the pool over $1M in $AERO emissions, streaming immediately after epoch flip. There was no initial liquidity to snipe or dump into: just emissions flowing to the pool. The opening price was not set by the team or a market maker, but by whichever $veAERO voter who was willing to take on the risk to put up both sides of the pool. So someone adds X in UDSC on one side against Y tokens on the other, basically earning an infinite APR. Folks start trading into the pool, other folks deposit liquidity as well diluting the APR, each action is high risk and high reward — and is in essence an expression on the market value of $SYND. Liquidity grows, price discovery happens, some win and some lose -- but this is true organic market creation. And within an hour it begins to trade directly on @coinbase without any back room deals. There is no classic pump and dump here -- that is what is what you see on other platforms when snipers, market makers, and CEXs control 10%+ of the supply and paint a chart designed for extraction. This is pure open market mechanisms -- organic price discovery with risks and rewards on all sides -- it is a fair game vs a rigged one. There is no magical launch mechanism that can ensure that price only goes up — just look at graveyard of tokens on other platforms. Organic markets are messy, but full of opportunity. Meanwhile, @AerodromeFi’s Community Launch model is not just up to 10x more efficient for projects, but a shot across the bow of a billion dollar plus industry usually gated to centralized insiders — this is what the tech is for, this is why we are here. As the model evolves I think more folks will learn how to engage in it optimally and know that the typical heuristics here don’t work — a messy chart is a feature not a bug — but it will win over extractive models because there is simply more value on the table for all participants to compete for. Can’t wait for the next round. 🛫