From theblock by Lawrence Lewitinn

he coming year offers a lot of promise for new token launches, according to a panel discussion of crypto industry experts at The Block’s Emergence conference in Prague earlier this month.

“While 2024, as we know, hasn’t been the best year for token launches — a very challenging year for projects — 2025 offers a much brighter outlook,” said Arianne Murphy, chief marketing officer at web3 marketing agency Flight3, who moderated the panel.  

She highlighted the success of HyperLiquid’s token-generating event (TGE), which distributed 31% of tokens to the community on day one and saw its valuation skyrocket to $12 billion within a week.

“Whether the model is sustainable remains to be seen,” she said.

The panel on Dec. 5, titled “Wen and Why Token? The Evolution of Tokenomics,” discussed the evolving role of tokenomics in decentralized finance. It featured Clay Robbins, founder of crypto launchpad Coliseum; Diana Biggs, partner at investment firm 1Kx; and Michael Churchouse, head of research at fund Split Capital. The discussion explored the challenges and opportunities of launching and sustaining tokens in the current market.

Alignments and misalignments

Robbins underscored the importance of planning before launching a token. “You have to start with why, and that is specific to the product you’re building,” he said. He cautioned against the potential distractions that tokens can create, such as internal focus on price speculation and misaligned incentives for employees.

And while “the U.S. election has changed the regulatory landscape, hopefully, Robbins said, “it is worth noting that there is that specter of regulatory oversight that comes with it.”

Churchouse pointed to tokens as a valuable metric for project success but warned about the dangers of misalignment. “The biggest pitfall is misaligning the issuance, supply and programmatic distribution of assets with the wrong rational economic actors in the system,” he said.

In other words, according to Churchouse, directing token flows to speculators harms a project's stability. Instead, founders should focus on creating a durable holder base by ensuring that tokens are distributed to participants who contribute value to the ecosystem rather than allowing them to be quickly sold.

Biggs echoed this, who warned that misalignments can occur unexpectedly and cause irreparable damage.

“It's really, really important to stay close to your backers and your community,” she said.

Biggs also stressed the need for flexibility in token design in an ever-changing environment.

“There is the importance of having the flexibility in there to be able to keep evolving in how your product itself and your community is growing — and how you want to incentivize those behaviors going forward,” she said.

She added that successful projects must balance the technical demands of their product with the strategic role of their token in fostering participation and long-term sustainability.

“People on the cap table matter a lot,” said Robbins. “Founders are increasingly due diligencing venture firms before adding them to their cap tables, ensuring alignment for the long term.”

The panelists agreed that past mistakes, such as raising excessive private capital before a token launch, have provided valuable lessons for the industry.

“Raising too much money in private markets and allowing most of the alpha as it relates to token price and token value accrual to be captured by private markets has been a net negative overall,” Robbins said.

Instead, he advocated for a more measured approach, saying his firm urges projects to launch tokens “in a capital-efficient” manner to ensure long-term growth.

‘Weirdness about to happen’

The discussion shifted to future trends, and the panelists predicted a resurgence of ICOs, shorter vesting periods, and the integration of artificial intelligence in token distribution.

“In the way that LLMs [large language models] can be infinitely derivative, so too will issuance models,” said Churchouse. “That, to me, heading into next year, is one of the treads that we’ll start to see a lot of which, I think will be extremely diffuse in terms of the types of implementation that we’ll see.”

“I’m excited for the weirdness that’s about to happen,” he added.

Biggs agreed. “What could be more fair when even the team doesn’t know because it’s an AI that’s launching the token when they want to.”

She added that we will likely see ICOs and public sales that give their communities more ways to participate.

“I think next year we see ICOs come back,” said Robbins. “I think we see shorter vesting periods. I think we see founders spending more time due diligencing venture folk coming onto their cap table. And I think ultimately, people probably get what they want, because the exchanges actually listen to their community over time.”

“It takes a while, but they listen,” he concluded, “and I think that completely changes how the whole evolution of the token comes to market.”