📚 How to Crypto Investor | BASIC: Tokensales and WL
Longread! A lot of necessary information about tokensales and whitelisting.
✅BASIC TERMS FOR TOKENSALES
Private/Seed/Strategy: these are different stages of the presale of a token before it enters the exchange/dex.
IDO: Initial decentralized offer (placement) of project tokens. Synonyms ICO, IEO, ILO, and SHO are essentially the same as IDO, differ only in nuances. Last stage before listing on dex/cex
Launchpad (launch platform): a platform on which new projects conduct their initial token offering, i.e. IDO
Allocation: how many tokens of a new project per wallet are allowed to be redeemed during IDO (most often). There are general allocations for IDO (how many tokens and for what amount the project offers totally), as well as individual ones (how many tokens and for what amount you will be allowed to redeem).
Claim: you do not always receive your tokens in the wallet, sometimes they need to be claimed. That is, you can complete the procedure for obtaining tokens yourself. There is often a very simple 2-step procedure. Connect your Metamask to the site where the claim is being held, pressed the claim button, paid for gas for the transaction, and received our tokens.
Tier (level, status): a level that is assigned and gives a certain allocation to the holder of platform tokens (launchpad). To get the tier of the desired launchpad, you need to buy a certain amount of these launcher tokens. The gradation of tiers can be different, the higher the tier, the more tokens you need to hold. The highest tiers usually give additional bonuses.
Whitelist: lottery that is made by project to give a chance to win allocation in that project. Usually main conditions are to subscribe to socials and sometimes visit another project's resources. Total allocation for lottery pool much less than for launchpads, so here comes FCFS (usually, but not every time)
FCFS (first come, first serve): battle for allocation :) For example, there are 1000 whitelist winners, but only 200 slots with allocation. So, only 200 participants will be able to get allocation. The faster you operate - the more chances you will buy. The less free slots - the harder FCFS, I think you understand why.
Soft Cap/Hard Cap: minimum/maximum amount of money project needs to close sale round.
TGE (Token Generation Event) - token creation event. Often matches the listing. The moment when tokens redeemed on IDO or in other sales are sent to you according to allocation and vesting.
Unlocks and vesting: the conditions for the distribution of the redeemed allocation (your tokens). For example, unlock 25% on TGE, then linear vesting 25%: means that at the time of TGE / listing you will receive 25% of the tokens from your allocation, and then every month 25% until the allocation is received in full.
Cliff (pause): the period of time during which you will not receive tokens from your allocation. In this case, the vesting might look like this: 25% unlock on TGE, then a 3-month cliff, then a 25% linear vesting. Those in here you will start receiving the balance of tokens only from 4 months after TGE/listing.
So, in order to participate in IDO on some kind of launchpad, the user needs to redeem a certain number of launchpad tokens, for which he is assigned a Tier and an allocation according to Tier is provided. OR, users can participate in Whitelists without holding any launchpad tokens and still get chance to get his allocation in project.