How to Launch a Token: A Step by Step Framework
Memento Research tracked 118 token generation events in 2025. In this data set, 85% traded below their launch valuation by year end, with a median drawdown near 71%. Projects that opened above a billion dollars in fully diluted valuation posted a 0% success rate. Projects that opened under 200 million dollars kept 40% of their cohort in positive territory (Memento Research).
These outcomes trace back to decisions you make months before the token generation event. Eight steps walk through that decision sequence in order, drawn from patterns across Helium, Hivemapper, GEODNET, and Render. Work through them early, and the pieces that matter are already resolved before your TGE date. Work through them late, and you're making those same decisions in public, with a community and a market already watching.
Before the token, founders need to know what problem they're solving and why DePIN gives them the best positioning to solve it. Helium spent five years and fifty million dollars building IoT hardware the traditional way. It pivoted to a token in 2019 because crowdsourcing the network was the only way it got built (Forbes). Hivemapper's founders wanted the world's most complete map, the kind Google builds by paying roughly 500,000 dollars a year per car (VanEck). The token was how Hivemapper made a fresher map possible on a different budget at a global scale. DePIN offers a system that deploys faster and can be targeted to immediate demand.
Step 1: Establish the Demand Mechanism First
Define what creates buy pressure for the token before setting a supply schedule. Helium burns HNT to create Data Credits, then mints new HNT on a fixed schedule to reward hotspot operators, the Burn and Mint Equilibrium design that anchors HNT directly to network usage (HIP 20). GEODNET takes a different route to the same goal, routing 80% of enterprise subscription revenue into open market purchases of GEOD that are then permanently destroyed (see full case study here). Wingbits runs a smaller version of the same model, committing half of its aviation data sale revenue to buying back and burning WINGS. The remaining half is split between treasury and operations (Wingbits).
Each of these tokens anchors its value to a measurable, recurring transaction, whether that transaction is a user paying to burn the token directly or the protocol buying it back with revenue. A token without that anchor has no way to convert product usage into price support once trading opens.
Contributor and operator rewards are typically front loaded to bootstrap participation before the network has meaningful usage. That means emissions outpace burns by the widest margin in the first months after TGE. This is precisely when the market is setting its first price on the token. DePIN Tokenomics 101: The Economics of Early Issuance covers this imbalance in depth. Founders should expect net inflation to be highest at launch, improving only as revenue and burns catch up to the emission schedule.
Step one is also where expertise and analysis compound the most. The demand mechanism decided here sets the ceiling on everything that follows: the float, the vesting absorption, the break even revenue. Helium's multiple rounds of post launch governance changes detailed in step eight trace back to decisions made in step one, before the network had any usage data to test them against. Bring GridEcon in at this stage, and post launch refinements become lighter or non-existent. Wait until after the design is set, and post launch updates become the only way to fix the token. Work with GridEcon on your demand mechanism. Founders doing preliminary planning on various mechanisms before that conversation can start with DePIN Tokenomics 101: A Guide for Builders.
Step 2: Size the Float Against Fully Diluted Valuation
Circulating supply at launch determines how much of the token's stated valuation the market actually has to defend. A token that opens with 10% of supply circulating and a billion dollar FDV prices the remaining 90% on unproven future demand. Memento's 2025 data shows that structure rarely holds up. Tokenomist's 2025 fundraising analysis found the same pattern across seven major token launches. Projects with FDV multiples above 50x averaged an 88% decline. Projects with multiples under 10x averaged 29% (Tokenomist).
Total addressable market size can discipline float, once converted into a capture rate against current revenue. GEODNET's positioning materials cite a $30 billion core market for centimeter level positioning data (VanEck). Against $9.4 million in trailing annual revenue, that market implies a capture rate near 0.03% (DefiLlama). A number that small signals real headroom for growth. A founder citing a $30 billion or $100 billion market without running this conversion is using the number as narrative. Convert the TAM into a capture rate before citing it, and check the result against the protocol's growth trajectory and customer concentration.
Founders should treat the opening float as a design variable. Size it against a valuation the current user base and revenue can support.
Step 3: Build the Vesting Schedule Around Unlock Absorption
Insider unlocks, investor and team tokens, are the second supply pressure a token faces after emissions. The release schedule determines whether the market absorbs each unlock or gets flooded by it. GEODNET is running that race in real time. Team and investor tokens each represent 25% of supply on vesting schedules completing by late 2026, and roughly 80 million tokens remain to unlock through the second half of the year (GEODNET). Whether the network reaches net deflation on schedule depends on revenue growth outpacing that unlock pressure. Render took a longer view at its 2019 launch, spreading its allocation across escrow, treasury, and reserve categories. Tokenomist still tracks that schedule as extending into 2051 (Tokenomist). Helium took a third path with HIP 138, reallocating unvested founder and investor tokens back to the community (HIP 138). Wingbits took a fourth approach at its 2026 launch. Investors face a 6 month lockup, then vest the remaining 90 percent linearly over 12 months. Team and advisor tokens lock for 12 months, then vest linearly over 24 months (Wingbits).
Each of these is a different answer to the same question: can the market absorb each unlock without selling pressure exceeding daily volume. GridEcon's allocation map lays out all three structures side by side for direct comparison. Model the unlock calendar against expected daily volume before finalizing vesting terms.
Step 4: Resolve the Legal Structure Before the Token Exists
Token classification depends on jurisdiction, distribution method, and the rights attached to the token itself. Work with securities counsel in every jurisdiction where the token will be offered. Structure any presale instrument, whether a SAFT or a token warrant, around a delivery timeline the team can meet.
Founders who treat legal structuring as a closing task learn this too late. The constraint surfaces after the tokenomics are already public.
Step 5: Model the Break Even Revenue Run Rate
Once the burn mechanism and emission schedule are set, calculate the revenue run rate at which burns offset new minting. This is the step where steps one through three either hold up or collapse. A sound demand mechanism, a carefully sized float, and a vesting schedule modeled against assumed volume only prove their worth once they produce a break even number the market can test.
The calculation itself is rarely simple arithmetic. It requires modeling revenue growth scenarios against a fixed emission schedule, then weighting the result against comparable protocol multiples across a range of outcomes. This is the work GridEcon does directly with founders, building the dilution models and sensitivity tables that turn steps one through three into a defensible number. Founders who want that number modeled directly can work with GridEcon on this step.
Step 6: Control the Distribution Channel Mix
Distribution determines who holds the token when it starts trading. Protocols solve this by paying contributors to do the work and build the network. Helium's early growth ran on hotspot operators earning HNT for the coverage they provided. GEODNET follows the same model, paying station operators for the coverage they contribute. Hivemapper drivers earn HONEY for the miles they map. GridEcon's own DePIN taxonomy has a name for this: work-reward matching, paying operators for measurable output instead of promises (DePIN Tokenomics 101: A Guide for Builders). The tokens land with people already doing the work the network needs. That gives the initial holder base a reason to keep participating.
Usage based distribution moves gaming from the wallet to the hardware. Helium found this out early. Its Proof of Coverage system rewards hotspots for demonstrating real wireless coverage. Operators figured out they could spoof their location and collect the reward without providing any coverage at all. Helium's fix was HIP 40, a denylist that blocks payouts to hotspots caught faking it (HIP 40). The catch is that a denylist only works after someone's already been paid. GridEcon's mechanism taxonomy points to a more preventive fix: operator staking (DePIN Tokenomics 101: A Guide for Builders). Running a node requires locked collateral that gets slashed for misconduct. Put money on the line before the reward, and gaming the system stops being free.
Usage based distribution takes longer to build. A network has to have infrastructure operators or paying users before it can reward them. The tradeoff is a smaller initial community that behaves differently at unlock. It holds through emissions because holding is tied to continued participation.
Step 7: Define the Conditions That Break the Thesis
A tokenomics model only gets tested once real usage arrives, and by then the cost of being wrong is already public. Run the scenarios before launch instead.
What happens if:
Revenue comes in at half the base case?
A large unlock lands during a weak market?
Emissions outpace burns longer than the model assumed?
Founders who've run these numbers can act fast when one hits. Founders who haven't are improvising in public.
At this step founders pull their work directly from steps one through five: the demand mechanism, the float, the vesting schedule, the break even math. Each step is tested against something worse than the case it was built on. A tokenomics model audit does this systematically. Founders who already have a working model and want a second opinion before launch can work with GridEcon on a tokenomics model audit.
Step 8: Build for Post Launch Iteration
Helium's tokenomics changed four separate times after launch. HIP 20 set the original 240 million token supply and minting schedule (HIP 20). HIP 53 introduced Utility Scores, shifting rewards from fixed role based allocations to usage weighted emissions (HIP 53). HIP 70 moved Proof of Coverage accounting off-chain and redirected validator emissions to hotspot operators (HIP 70). HIP 138 consolidated the network back to a single token model and reallocated unvested founder and investor tokens to the community (HIP 138).
A fifth change came from a different layer of governance entirely. HIP 143 authorized Nova Labs to negotiate and set the carrier-paid rate on the network's behalf, a standing grant rather than a per-decision vote. Mobile deployer earnings had been pegged since HIP 53 to whatever rate Nova set under that authority. In 2026, Nova exercised it, cutting the rate from $0.50 per gigabyte to roughly $0.10, and deployer income fell with it overnight, before any further token holder vote took place. The response came after the fact. HIP 149 added a floor and a cap tying deployer earnings to that same Nova-set rate within a protected band. The lesson sits a level below the other four. A single governance decision can hand a third party standing authority over a variable the rest of the tokenomics depends on, and that authority keeps producing outcomes long after the vote that created it is forgotten. (See more here)
Render made a more structural change. It launched in 2019 on Ethereum with a fixed token supply and no burn mechanism at all. In November 2023, the network migrated to Solana and adopted a Burn and Mint Equilibrium model. That migration also raised the token's own supply cap from 536 million to roughly 644 million to fund the new emissions system (Messari). Helium adjusted emission weightings and reward allocations within a fixed design. Render replaced the design itself, including the chain it ran on.
Three more protocols made public, governance driven changes to their tokenomics in 2025. Jupiter cut total supply by 30% and moved future community emissions under token holder governance. Wormhole replaced annual cliff unlocks with biweekly releases and extended vesting by six months. Solana proposed doubling its disinflation rate to reach a 1.5% terminal inflation faster (Tokenomist). None of these changes added a burn mechanism. Each adjusted supply, vesting, or emissions in direct response to how the network behaved after launch.
Each change responded to a problem the original design did not anticipate. A tokenomics model built at TGE reflects the best information available at that moment. Network behavior over the following years routinely exceeds that information.
Founders should establish a governance process for tokenomics changes before launch. Define who can propose an adjustment, what data threshold triggers a review, and how a change moves from proposal to implementation. Publish burn, mint, and revenue figures on a fixed cadence so the scenarios modeled in step seven can be checked against real data as it arrives. A tokenomics audit tests the model against that data, whether the check happens before launch or after the network has been running for a year. A model tested against real data on a schedule the team controls beats one tested by the market during a crisis.
The Sequence Matters
Each of these steps constrains the ones that follow. A demand mechanism defined in step one sets the terms for the break even calculation in step five. A float decided in step two determines how much room the vesting schedule in step three has to work with. A governance process set in step eight determines whether the network can act on what steps one through seven revealed once real usage data arrives.
Founders who work through this sequence in order enter their token generation event with a structure the market can evaluate on its fundamentals. The 118 tokens in Memento's 2025 cohort mostly did not, and a median drawdown near 71% is what a market does to a token it cannot evaluate.
