The fastest way to evaluate a token project isn’t reading the whitepaper. It’s opening the vesting schedule. Supply mechanics tell you what the team actually believes — the whitepaper tells you what they want you to believe.
Five numbers that matter more than the pitch
- Insider share. Team + investors above 40% of supply is a red flag unless lockups are serious. Above 60% and you’re the exit liquidity.
- Cliff dates. Chart the unlocks. If a third of supply hits the market in month 13, price action in month 12 is not a mystery.
- Emission curve. High early emissions buy mercenary liquidity that leaves as fast as it came. Look for emissions tied to usage, not calendar.
- Float at listing. A tiny float makes launch-day price meaningless and manipulable. Ask what percent of supply is genuinely tradable on day one.
- Sink-to-source ratio. What takes tokens out of circulation (burns, staking, fees) versus what pours them in? If sources outrun sinks forever, the chart only has one direction.
The question behind the questions
All five numbers are really asking one thing: does the token have a job? A token that meters access to something people want — blockspace, compute, a service, a community — can survive bad markets. A token whose only job is “go up” cannot. When we run token design engagements, the first week is spent answering that question honestly, and about a third of the time the honest answer is “you don’t need a token.” Those are our favorite engagements: we just saved someone eighteen months.
Test yourself: our DeFi & Tokens quiz deck covers vesting cliffs, rug pulls, and utility-vs-security in eight questions.
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