Author: Stacy Muur
Compiled by: TechFlow TechFlow
In 2026, token sale analysis became one of the key pillars of my work. Last year, I launched Muur Score —a framework for evaluating protocols in the pre-Token Generation Event (TGE) phase—and published in-depth analyses of some of the biggest sales of 2025, including Flying Tulip , YieldBasis , Almanak , Lombard , Falcon , and others.
By mid-October 2025, the trend of token sales was already very clear. Offerings on @buidlpad , @echodotxyz , @legiondotcc , @MetaDAOProject , @BinanceWallet , @CoinList , and @MEXC_Official continued to perform strongly in terms of both participation and post-TGE return on investment (ROI). While attention has returned to the retail market, it is more associated with "gamblers" than "investors."
In this report, I combine my firsthand research with predictions from the teams @legiondotcc , @CoinList , @Chain_GPT , and @impossiblefi . The goal is clear: to describe the actual direction of the 2026 token sale, rather than pretending that everything will only "continue to rise."
2026 Token Sale Forecast
1. Continuing Liquidation Auctions ( CCA ) are moving from a niche market to the mainstream.
Uniswap v4's Continuous Clearing Auctions (CCA), which garnered significant attention through Aztec's $2.8 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV) public sale, demonstrated that a transparent, non-custodial on-chain price discovery mechanism can operate at scale. It is anticipated that 15-20 other major projects will adopt similar mechanisms.
CCA directly solves the following problems:
A recurring cycle of accusations regarding "manipulated allocation";
Black-box operations of offline order books;
Reputational issues such as FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that arose during Monad's sale on Coinbase.
The larger theme is that price discovery will shift from centralized exchanges to public infrastructure.
2. Exchange-integrated launch platform consolidates market share.
Kraken's partnership with Legion and Coinbase's $375 million acquisition of Echo indicate the direction the market is heading. Binance, OKX, and Bybit are almost certain to be the next players.
Expected:
60%-70% of top sales will be conducted simultaneously on both the exchange's native platform and a standalone launch platform;
This will create a two-tier system:
Tier A : Backed by exchanges, high liquidity, institutionally allocated;
Tier B : Independent platform, pursuing community-driven sales.
This trend benefits distribution, but is not friendly to those who want to run a small startup platform in their own garage.
"Recent M&A activity shows a clear direction: more platforms are integrating token sales as part of a broader user acquisition channel."
We will see an increase in the number of vertically integrated 'islands,' but a more interesting development will be the rise of global distribution networks. Imagine a cross-regional ecosystem encompassing exchanges, partners, and channels.
For example, Legion + Kraken + our upcoming Asian centralized exchange (CEX) partner—providing a chain-agnostic, platform-neutral global-scale token distribution model—will become the norm.
— @matty_ , Legion founder @legiondotcc
3. Allocation based on ability instead of first-come, first-served.
The First-Come, First-Served (FCFS) model is practically "dead" because the robot army has completely destroyed its fairness.
Legion's competency-based scoring system (engagement, reputation, and value alignment) is becoming an industry benchmark. Other platforms will also introduce similar mechanisms:
On-chain history;
Long-term involvement with data;
Social graph score.
While this reduces the Sybil attack problem to some extent, it also introduces new risks: a system similar to "crypto credit scoring" will reward early adopters while putting newcomers at a disadvantage.
It's fairer, but absolutely unequal.
"By 2026, the token sale market will be polarized around two dominant models: fully compliant professional launch platforms and permissionless 'meme' launch platforms. Medium-sized platforms with ambiguous positioning will struggle, as distribution capabilities will become a key competitive advantage—project teams will choose platforms that can reliably bring in real users, liquidity, and secondary market support."
— @0xr100 , Chief Marketing Officer of Impossible Finance
4. Institutional placement will become the standardized model.
As traditional finance further penetrates the tokenization field, it is expected that institutional allocation mechanisms will be formally introduced into token sale structures, including:
20%-30% of the quota;
Lock-up period of 12-24 months;
A structured bookkeeping and filing process.
This can be viewed as a "lightweight IPO on the blockchain".
Platforms like Legion are already positioning themselves as underwriters for the crypto industry, and 2026 will make this positioning the industry standard.
"We will see a further deepening of the integration between launch platforms and centralized exchanges (CEXs). Specialized launch platforms will evolve into modular infrastructure providers, offering KYC (Know Your Customer) verification, audited sales contracts, and embeddable sales tools for projects to host on their own websites. At the same time, anti-Symania filters based on on-chain and social data will become standard, and lockdrop will continue to receive more attention as a core distribution mechanism."
— @0xr100 , Chief Marketing Officer of Impossible Finance
5. Multi-platform release has become the norm for top-tier projects.
WalletConnect raised $10 million simultaneously on CoinList , Bitget Launch X , and Echo , setting a benchmark for multi-platform launches. For large projects:
Simultaneously releasing on 3-5 platforms will become the standard;
Improved distribution efficiency;
Concentration risk is reduced;
Coordination becomes more difficult (but this is the project team's problem, not yours).
“I believe that project teams will increasingly choose different issuance platforms based on different needs, and will usually cooperate with multiple platforms at the same time. This is definitely not a situation of ‘only Coinbase is acceptable’. The ICO resurgence began long before Coinbase entered the market, which is why they decided to enter this field.”
— @AlexTops1 , Marketing Director at CoinList
Projects that refuse to be distributed across multiple platforms are either underfunded or overly centralized.
"We are moving from isolated, single-off offerings to coordinated, multi-platform financing. Launch platforms and centralized exchanges (CEXs) will collaborate more frequently, and the market will differentiate into two distinct categories:"
Sales to institutional investors involve large sums of money, long lock-up periods, and strict compliance requirements.
Community-prioritized sales, smaller transaction amounts, competency-based access mechanisms, and usage-driven rating systems.
Buyers will also begin demanding standardized safeguards: minimum liquidity and market maker commitments, clearer retail lock-up mechanisms, and even refund or recourse clauses in case of significantly disappointing results. Less 'listing haphazardly and hoping for success', and more structured financing that is reasonable for both project teams and buyers—not just based on gut feeling, but on sound reasoning.
— @CEOGuy , CEO and Founder of Chain_GPT
6. Compliance becomes a competitive barrier
Legion's adoption of a MiCA-compliant structure (the EU's Regulatory Framework for Crypto-Asset Markets) and its ongoing discussions with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mark a shift in the industry:
Compliance is no longer an optional "signal," but a business model.
The following trends are expected:
The "compliance-first" launch platform will emerge;
Comprehensive KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) procedures will become basic requirements;
The exchange will adopt a zero-tolerance attitude towards non-compliant sales;
The demand for identity technologies based on zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) is rising (finally, there are practical use cases that go beyond “anonymous Discord users proving that they are human”).
Projects released on non-compliant platforms will face the risk of being taken down more quickly, as well as reduced institutional demand.
"To date, most crypto funding has been limited to native digital assets—such as fuel tokens, utility tokens, and structures designed to avoid being classified as securities."
With the SEC working group expected to introduce 'innovation exemptions,' 'crypto projects,' and a possible Clarity Act in early 2026, we will see new asset classes attempting on-chain distribution.
This includes early forms of tokenized equity in the startup phase.
— @matty_ , Legion founder @legiondotcc
7. Bear market pressures drive a focus on quality over quantity.
The market performance at the end of 2025 resulted in:
Strong bearish sentiment;
Approximately $4 billion in ETF funds flowed out.
Liquidity for mainstream tokens has decreased.
If this trend continues into 2026, we will see:
The number of tokens issued has been reduced from 500+ to 150-200;
The average financing size increased by 3-5 times;
Low-quality sales driven by "memes" have disappeared;
Infrastructure and projects with real products dominate.
This is a typical cycle of "migration to quality assets"—fewer winners, but on a larger scale.
"Both extremes in 2025 failed."
On the one hand, there are projects with high FDV (fully diluted valuation) and high financing amounts, but their underlying products simply cannot support these valuations—the market immediately corrected them after TGE .
On the other hand, there are low FDV projects, which lack liquidity, have poor market-making capabilities, and weak exchange support—and collapse for the exact opposite reasons.
In 2026, we will shift from extensive offerings to carefully designed offerings. Serious buyers will focus on the fundamentals that truly determine the outcome: FDV matching progress, real user adoption, liquidity depth, market maker quality, and platform reliability. High-quality projects will still be able to raise substantial funds, but will not attempt to drain the entire pool of capital on day one.
Launch platforms and CEXs will compete on downside protection, minimum liquidity standards, clear market-making commitments, and simple security or refund mechanisms—not just on hype.
— @CEOGuy , CEO and Founder of Chain_GPT
8. Dynamic pricing replaces fixed FDV (fully diluted valuation)
The success of Continuing Liquidation Auctions (CCAs) has reignited market interest in fairer pricing. The following is expected:
Dutch auction with a soft reserve price;
Bonding curve with circuit breaker;
Demand pricing driven by machine learning/artificial intelligence systems.
The era of "This is our $4 billion FDV, please applaud" is over.
Fixed valuations will be replaced by price ranges – while this reduces selling pressure after TGE, it also dampens the excitement of retail investors (after all, nobody brags about their auction winnings at a party).
"ICO is no longer just a means of fundraising."
These are ways for projects to attract new users, increase awareness, and achieve network decentralization.
How much value does the Coinbase ICO truly create for the project if the buyers never leave the platform or sell their tokens the next day?
As Aztec’s extremely successful token sale demonstrates, many teams want these users to come to their applications and want their token sale mechanisms and distribution to be done entirely on-chain and decentralized.
The market is shifting towards verifiable on-chain finance, where users hold their own private keys . CoinList is meeting this demand by becoming more crypto-native and user-centric. The cypherpunk ideal is returning. It's time.
— @AlexTops1 , Marketing Director of @CoinList
9. Post-issuance liquidity guarantees become an industry standard.
After Monad's fraudulent transactions triggered a FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) incident, the platform realized that even the best issuance mechanism would be useless if liquidity collapsed after issuance.
The following trends are expected to emerge by 2026:
Mandatory market-making commitment of 6 to 12 months;
The platform provides standardized liquidity service level agreements (SLAs).
New TGE post-stability metrics.
Projects without professional liquidity providers will find it difficult to raise funds.
Today, retail investors are more interested in liquidity guarantees than in token codes (a welcome change).
10. Community lock-up replaces instant unlocking
Coinbase's "early sell → future penalty" model is evolving into:
A 3-6 month lock-up period for retail investors;
Similar to the unlock curve of a team/seed round;
Transferable "lock-up rights" (yes, a brand new secondary market will emerge rapidly).
This model reduces selling pressure, but it also brings the risk of "lock-up fatigue"—a large number of locked-up assets with unclear pricing may appear in the market.
It is projected that by the end of 2026, approximately half of the issuances will adopt the community lock-up model.
Market structure impact
The token sale will split into two major ecosystems:
1. Institutional Sales
Multi-platform issuance, integrated with exchanges;
The funding amount exceeded $50 million;
Highly compliant;
12-24 month lock-up period;
Professional market making services.
2. Community-prioritized sales
Single platform + ability-based scoring;
The funding target is between $5 million and $20 million.
Partially compliant;
Lock-up period of 3-6 months;
Participation mechanisms based on social graphs.
Both models will continue to exist, but they will no longer compete with each other; instead, they will each serve different market needs.
Key risks that need attention
Regulatory action against non-compliant platforms could lead to market fragmentation;
A prolonged bear market could reduce all forecasts by about 50%;
Over-reliance on Coinbase and Kraken could weaken market competition;
Overloading of locked-up shares could lead to chaos in the gray market for locked-up equity.
What do token sale experts say?
Which agreements are most effective at raising funds?
@matty_ , Legion founder @legiondotcc : Revenue-related consumer apps and B2B tokens will continue to outperform.
"We will see the current performance trend amplified further."
Consumer DeFi and applications that users genuinely love—especially those with clear revenue paths or buyback logic, even if they are smaller—will continue to lead the market.
In the institutional sector, B2B-oriented tokens (those that generate real revenue streams for token holders) will remain one of the strongest performing categories.
@CEOGuy , CEO of @Chain_GPT : Fundamentals will become more important.
“Those projects that can effectively raise funds are those that look like a real business model, rather than just a story packaged in tokens.”
This boils down to three points:
Real users and usage scenarios, not just a testnet and a business plan;
Clear product differentiation can significantly outperform existing alternatives;
Consistent token utility with a clear and credible ability to capture value.
Coupled with a sound FDV (Funds-to-Cap) ratio, a clear sales structure, and the founding team's proven track record at large tech companies or previous crypto projects—even in a cold market, funds don't flow in slowly, but rather rush into funding rounds.
@0xr100 , Chief Marketing Officer of Impossible Finance @impossiblefi : High-growth projects and infrastructure solutions will dominate financing.
"It will be the apps with clear growth data (revenue, real users, meaningful TVL) and real distribution capabilities that will stand out—not just the mark of 'top VCs,' but the ecosystem giants that can drive adoption."
Infrastructure will remain a strong funding category, but apps with real users and revenue will increasingly move beyond projects that simply rely on narratives.
The popular combination will be 'popular narrative + infrastructure perspective', covering areas such as prediction markets, artificial intelligence (especially robotics), and RWA (Real-World Assets), typically presented in lockdrop-based and data-driven distribution formats.
