Directly hitting the Korea Blockchain Week! Buidlpad, Nomad Capital founders and HackVC, Virtual discuss the future of the launch platform.

During the Korea Blockchain Week event, there was a discussion that piqued my interest, titled "The Year of Launch Platforms." The speakers included Jason Teng, founder of Virtuals Protocol, Rodney Yesep, general partner of Hack VC, and Erick Zhang, founder of Nomad Capital.

The author is particularly focused on Erick Zhang, who is also the founder of the ICO platform Buidlpad. The tokens launched by this platform include well-known projects such as Solayer, Sahara AI, Lombard, and Falcon Finance. He has also served as an executive at Binance and CoinMarketCap.

Fair launches are subject to manipulation, and having an unlocking plan can further create incentive alignment.

The key to the future development and growth of Launchpad should be to establish a structure that allows participants to engage more steadily and for a longer term, such as token vesting periods and incentive consistency, thus forming "sustainable expansion". Taking Buidlpad as an example, the projects launched on it generally have a four-year vesting period or corresponding unlocking plans, and there is a high level of transparency for supporters, which better fosters consistency in long-term incentives.

In contrast, meme coins that focus on fair launches and many products that seem to have fair launches and fair distributions are actually manipulated by the team using hundreds of addresses to make the numbers appear fair. Buidlpad, on the other hand, offers a transparent cryptocurrency investment project. A well-structured vesting and unlocking plan aligns the interests of investors.

Launchpad Competitive Key: Investment Killer Additional Features

How can Launchpad remain competitive? Jason Teng, the founder of Virtual Protocol, believes that we must now enter the stage of de-aggregation (. If you are a Launchpad focused on creator tokens, you need to figure out what creators need beyond the tokenization functionality.

Taking the AI agent launch platform like Virtuals Protocol as an example, the biggest demand is: "How to get more real users to use my agent-type products?" Virtuals focuses 70% of its efforts on solving this problem. They developed an "aggregated agent )aggreGated agent of X("; users just need to ask this agent any question, and it will scan a bunch of agents on the platform and tell you which agent is more suitable. These are the functions that must be deeply studied.

The key lies in who can provide killer additional features, as they will be the ones to win. Therefore, Virtuals chooses to invest in projects based on potential collaboration opportunities. Their team has previously collaborated with hundreds of token issuance projects, and with their own marketing team, they ensure that token issuance can be very successful. This is how Virtuals maintains its competitiveness.

Should the project choose VC or crowdfunding?

As for the future vision of the Launchpad, Hack VC general partner Rodney Yesep stated that they have not actually invested much in token issuance platforms, but they did hit on Pump Fun. He believes that every platform is looking for a path of differentiation.

He said, "When the Pump Fun team said they wanted to create the next Twitch or a competitor to Twitch, I thought that was wonderful, and adding a tokenized profit model makes it even better." He believes that in the future, every platform will find its own niche, making it difficult to compete directly because that would only lead to a 'zero-sum game.' However, at the same time, loyal communities will emerge, so the market is still developing, making it hard to assert anything.

Finally, regarding how projects should choose between "VC capital" and "community capital" in the new generation Launchpad, his response was: It depends on the founders and the project itself. If you want to move quickly and are willing to try, VC is a good choice. However, community participation is also very important, and often, community involvement is realized through airdrops. Currently, there is still regulatory uncertainty preventing them from participating in token sales on a large scale, but people like Erick are working to solve this issue. It would be better if friction could be further reduced in the future.

This article hits the Korean Blockchain Week! Founders of Buidlpad and Nomad Capital discuss the future of the launch platform with HackVC and Virtual, first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.