What is a crypto launchpad?
A crypto launchpad is a platform where early-stage token projects raise funds and launch to the public. The pad vets the project, publishes the sale terms, rations access through tiers tied to its own token, and takes the token to market at listing. This guide covers the mechanics, the fees and the tier math.
How do crypto launchpads work?
A launchpad sits between two groups with opposite problems. Token projects need capital, buyers and attention before any exchange will list them. Retail buyers want early entry but have no way to vet a stream of unfamiliar whitepapers. The launchpad charges the first group and rations the second, and everything else about the model follows from that position.
The format went mainstream in January 2019, when BitTorrent's sale on Binance Launchpad filled a raise of roughly $7 million in minutes. Hundreds of pads followed, on every major chain. Their pipelines are nearly identical:
Teams apply. The pad reviews the team, token design, audit status and legal posture, then accepts a fraction. This filter is the product being sold to buyers.
Sale price, raise size, allocation rules and the vesting schedule are set with the team and published before anyone commits a cent.
Buyers qualify by holding or staking the pad's native token. Tiers, lotteries or both decide who may contribute, and how much.
Tokens are created, the sale settles, and public trading opens, usually in a DEX liquidity pool. Vested portions unlock later.
Launch day has its own vocabulary, worth keeping straight. The moment the tokens first exist is the token generation event, or TGE. When the pool that opens is on a decentralized exchange, the launch is an IDO, and the mechanics of that sale format, from whitelist to pool seeding, are covered in what is an IDO. Most launchpads today run IDO-style launches, which is why the two terms travel together.
One boundary is worth drawing early. This guide covers curated launchpads, the kind that vet and structure sales. Self-serve token factories such as Pump.fun mint millions of tokens with no vetting at all, and they answer a different question entirely. A pad that accepts everything is a printing press, not a filter, and the filter is what the rest of this page is pricing.
How launchpads make money
Launchpads publish less about their own economics than about their deals. The revenue comes from four places, and three of them are paid by the project, not by you.
A percentage of the funds raised. Published ranges for IDO launchpads run from about 1 to 5 percent of the raise; self-serve pads charge around 2 percent plus a flat fee; centralized-exchange launch programs cost far more up front.
Pads commonly negotiate a slice of the project's token supply on top of the cash fee. This is the upside the platform keeps for itself, on the same vesting clock as everyone else or a better one.
Fixed onboarding charges, plus paid marketing, incubation and advisory packages sold around the sale.
The tier ladder ties deal access to holding or staking the pad's own token, so every buyer who wants an allocation must first become a holder of the pad. That loop, not the fee schedule, is what the launchpad model is really built on.
Read the incentives before the deals. A pad is paid by the projects it lists, so its vetting carries a built-in conflict: caution costs revenue. The only durable correction is a public track record, sale by sale, that you can check yourself. A pad that will not show you its full history is answering the question for you.
Launchpad tier systems, compared
Every major pad rations access the same way: stake the native token, reach a tier, receive rights in the next sale. The numbers differ more than the pattern. Three of the longest-running tier systems, side by side.
| Property | SeedifySFUND | PolkastarterPOLS | DAO MakerDAO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest way in | 250 SFUND staked or farmed (Tier 1). | 1,000 POLS Power, from held or staked POLS. | 250 DAO staked for at least 30 days. |
| What entry buys | A lottery entry for whitelist spots. | Lottery tickets: one per 1,000 POLS Power. | A weighted lottery entry for the round. |
| The full ladder | 9 tiers, 250 up to 100,000 SFUND, with pool weights from 1.2 to 325. | Multiplier levels at 1,000 / 3,000 / 10,000 / 30,000 / 50,000 POLS Power. | Power bands at 2,000 / 4,000 / 10,000 DAO add entries and allocation bonuses. |
| Where the lottery ends | Tier 2 at 1,000 SFUND: allocations follow the tier formula, not a draw. | 50,000 POLS Power: the allowlist spot is assured, no cooldown. | It doesn't. Every round stays a draw; higher bands only improve the odds. |
| Top-tier extras | Private allocations from Tier 6; seed-round access at Tier 9. | Cooldown removed at 30,000+; best ticket multiplier. | More concurrent allocations, up to a 15 percent size bonus. |
Tier rules as published by each platform, checked July 3, 2026. Platforms revise them, and the revisions matter: Polkastarter raised its entry bar from 250 to 1,000 POLS Power, and Seedify has rebuilt its ladder more than once. The position you buy into is not always the position you keep.
One more definition, because platforms blur it. A fixed tier allocation is a formula, not a promise: your share is the tier's slice of the pool divided across every wallet in it, and an oversubscribed sale shrinks it. What you hold at the end is an allocation, the right to buy a set amount at the sale price. That allocation usually vests, releasing over months, which is why token unlocks and vesting schedules deserve a read before any tier does.
The fine print of the model
The tier table looks like a menu. It is also a set of costs, and an honest explainer prices them.
Your capital goes into the pad's token before you see the first deal, and that token trades like any other. The key to the door carries its own market risk.
Entry tiers are lotteries. In an oversubscribed sale, most registrants receive nothing, and the tokens they staked to register stay staked.
The pad's revenue comes from the projects it lists. Vetting is real work, but it is work paid for by the party being vetted.
Acceptance filters out some scams, not weak tokens. Every long-running pad has launched projects that later failed. The sale format cannot fix the asset.
The sale price is a primary-market number. What happens at listing is set by a thin pool meeting open demand, and no tier protects you from it.
None of this is a case against launchpads. It is the case for reading a pad the way the pad reads projects: economics first, marketing last, and a position sized as if it can go to zero, because some do.
Launchpads and investment clubs are not the same thing
The word launchpad has stretched to cover almost any platform standing between early-stage tokens and buyers. The structural test is deal flow: who finds the deal, and which way the money that runs the platform moves.
On a launchpad, deals arrive by application. Teams come to the platform, pay for launch services, and the pad's job is to run a public sale well: vet, structure, ration, list. The pad is a service business whose customer is the project.
A crypto investment club inverts that. Deal flow arrives through the members: rounds surfaced, argued over and brought in by the community itself, usually earlier than any launchpad sees them. Clubs operate at seed rounds and private sales, before public pricing exists, and the platform's job is presentation and support rather than sale execution. Neither model is automatically better. They answer different questions: a launchpad answers "how does this token reach the public", a club answers "who saw it first".
Unitypad is the second kind, and the distinction is worth stating plainly. Deal flow is brought by the club community; Unitypad is the marketing platform that presents each round to member tiers and helps the team behind it grow. The deals are seed rounds, private sales and selected KOL rounds, not IDOs; Unitypad does not run public token sales at all. Access works through member tiers unlocked by holding and locking $UNITY, tiers ration access rather than promise it, and every position the community has taken, 64 at this writing, is logged by name. To see what that deal flow looks like in practice, start with the seed and private deals page.
Launchpad questions, answered
What is a crypto launchpad in simple terms?
A crypto launchpad is a platform where new token projects raise funds from early buyers before an exchange listing. It vets the projects, publishes the sale terms, and rations who can buy through tiers tied to holding or staking its own native token.
How do crypto launchpads make money?
Four ways: a fee on the funds raised (published ranges for IDO pads run roughly 1 to 5 percent), a negotiated slice of the project's token supply, fixed listing and marketing fees, and the tier system itself, which requires participants to hold or stake the launchpad's native token.
Do I need to buy a launchpad's token to join a sale?
On nearly every tier-based launchpad, yes. Entry starts at set thresholds, for example 250 SFUND on Seedify or 1,000 POLS Power on Polkastarter, and larger positions reach tiers with larger allocation rights. A few pads run open or first-come rounds that skip tiers, usually with small caps.
Are crypto launchpads safe?
A vetted venue is not a safe token. Launchpad screening filters some scams, but listed projects still fail, allocations usually vest while the price moves freely, and listing day is the most volatile part of the process. Check the pad's full track record and size any position for a total loss.
What is the difference between a launchpad and a crypto investment club?
Deal-flow direction. A launchpad takes applications from teams and runs their public sales for a fee. A club sources deals through its own community and enters earlier, at seed and private rounds, before public launchpad pricing exists. Unitypad follows the club model and does not run IDOs.
The deals come
from the club.
Unitypad is not an IDO launchpad. The community brings the deal flow: seed rounds, private sales and selected KOL rounds, presented to member tiers and logged, all 64 of them, in a public portfolio.