A crypto launchpad is a platform where new tokens are created, distributed, and sold, solving the cold-start problem of liquidity and market participants. The category has split into two worlds: curated launchpads that vet projects and run structured sales, and permissionless memecoin launchpads like Pump.fun that let anyone deploy a token instantly via automated bonding curves. Since January 2024, Pump.fun has launched over 11 million tokens on Solana, generating nearly $1 billion in cumulative revenue, permanently reshaping how tokens enter the market.
The cold-start problem and early launchpads
Every new token faces the same challenge: it needs a price and a market, but markets require liquidity and participants that a brand-new asset lacks. Launchpads solve this by providing the venue, mechanics, and initial audience to turn a contract deployment into a tradable asset. The earliest solution was the initial coin offering (ICO) era of 2017-2018, where projects simply published a whitepaper and a deposit address, relying on trust. The results were often catastrophic, with exit scams and vaporware prompting demand for intermediaries. Binance Launchpad's 2019 debut set the template for the curated model, where platforms screen projects, structure sales, and lend their reputation to launches. The core trade-off in launchpad design is between safety and openness, with every point on that spectrum having a failure mode.
How curated launchpads work
Curated launchpads follow a multi-stage pipeline. A project submits documentation, team credentials, tokenomics, and a roadmap for vetting, which includes identity checks, code audits, and economic review. Serious venues reject most applicants, as vetting is the product that attracts investor trust. Once accepted, the project announces sale terms including price, allocation sizes, dates, and vesting schedules. Participation mechanics vary: first-come-first-served at fixed prices, tiered access based on holding the launchpad's native token, lottery systems, or auctions. Buyers typically get in before public listing at a discount, but subject to vesting, with a portion released at the token generation event and the rest over months. After the sale, the platform coordinates a listing on its own exchange (in the IEO model) or a decentralized exchange (IDO), using sale proceeds to seed liquidity. At their best, curated launchpads function as underwriter, accelerator, and quality filter; at their worst, they are pay-to-play listing machines with merely cosmetic vetting.
Pump.fun and the permissionless revolution
In January 2024, Pump.fun on Solana deleted every stage of the curated pipeline, reducing token creation to a form with name, ticker, image, and roughly $2 in fees, with the token live in under a minute. The mechanism enabling this is the bonding curve: an automated pricing formula that acts as the token's first market. A fixed portion of supply is placed into the curve contract; buyers purchase from it at prices that rise with each purchase, and sellers sell back into it, pushing prices down. There is no order book or market maker, guaranteeing instant liquidity from the first second. When a token's bonding curve fills to a threshold market value (originally around $69,000, later revised), the accumulated funds are deposited into a liquidity pool on an open decentralized exchange, a process called "graduation." Most tokens never graduate, which is by design: the curve stage is a cheap arena where thousands of ideas can fail without wasting broader liquidity. Pump.fun has launched over 11 million tokens, generated cumulative revenue near $1 billion, and at peak accounted for the vast majority of new token launches on Solana. In July 2025, the platform sold its own PUMP token, raising $600 million in 12 minutes as part of a sale exceeding $1 billion—a fundraising event rivaling the largest ICOs of the previous era, executed by a company whose product makes fundraising unnecessary.