There's a new narrative among projects. "TGE soon. We are launching this token. Here is our Tokenomics. No VC, No Insider, just the community, and so on." --- Why Is This Pitch Working? Projects learned a hard lesson in 2023 and 2024 when many early-stage tokens cratered the moment insider cliffs expired. @HyperliquidX flipped this. It shipped a working perp DEX first, skipped pre-sale allocations, and airdropped 28% of the supply straight to users. Within two months, the airdrop’s paper value topped $7B and daily volume hit $1.39B, forcing funds that sat out to buy on-market instead of at a discount. The case proved that a genuine product plus a fair launch can manufacture demand without venture backing. --- Are There Upsides To “Community-Only” Launches? Yes, they are: • Revenue Funds liquidity: Hyperliquid routes trading fees to a buy-back wallet, creating constant bid support. • Clear Utility: The token is used to scale demand with usage. • Transparent Ownership: No VC overhang that depresses early trading. When those three pieces click, the token becomes the cash flow pipe for the protocol. --- I See A Problem In The Narrative. Why? Too many teams copied the slogan without copying the substance. In the AI-agent boom, most agent tokens survived barely 17 days on average, and the failure mode is simple: • No sticky product → no external cash flows. • Token utility limited to “number go up” → demand collapses once hype fades. • Supply still inflates on schedule → price is on the way down --- Misaligned Economics Can Also Wreck Real Products What am I talking about? A functioning app is not enough if the distribution is skewed. Oversized team or advisor slices, infinity-inflation emissions, or no burn offset eliminate trust and squeeze long-term holders. 90% of tokens launched since 2020 now trade below listing price, and this is traced mainly to poor incentive design. This is why I have a number of things I consider before I trust any project selling the NO VC narrative. --- Checklist Before You Salute A “No-VC” Launch 1. Revenue Engine: Can the protocol earn fees in a market large enough to matter? 2. Token Sink: Do users need the token to access that revenue or service? 3. Supply Cadence: Is issuance matched to projected activity, with clear caps and transparent unlocks? 4. Post-launch Liquidity Plan: Fees, buy-backs, or sinks that recycle value into the float. 5. Adaptive governance: Mechanisms to tune parameters once the market reveals flaws. If any one of these boxes is empty, the absence of a VC is a warning that retail is being asked to provide exit liquidity. --- Finally, community-first launches can democratize ownership and even pressure funds to pay fair market prices, but only when backed by real product traction and disciplined token engineering. Copy-paste slogans will not fix a weak business model, and misaligned emission schedules can gut even strong projects. Treat every new “TGE soon” thread as a pitch deck, follow the cash flows, read the cap table, and remember that code without economics is not a market, but just software. Thanks for reading! If you learned something, kindly share and follow me @RubiksWeb3hub for more insights.