Shibapad: A Community-Governed Launchpad

Original author: Danish Yasin

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Toplist cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche were all once unknown new projects with much to prove. The investors that spotted them early made huge returns. But many missed the gains, and today wish that they had gotten in sooner.

With over 10,000 cryptocurrencies on the market, finding new and low-cap projects with potential is difficult, primarily due to the recent trend of scams and rug pulls. While investing in unproven projects can be rewarding, doing so carries a degree of risk that most investors can’t afford.

Launchpads Explained

To more easily find new projects and to offset the risk of investing in them, investors have begun turning to a relatively new phenomenon in the crypto space – launchpads. Launchpads are platforms that enable new projects to raise funds through early token sales to community members.

Launchpads bring new projects to investors while also providing the selected few with a chance to get in before the tokens are listed for public trading.

This way, the incubated projects receive considerable marketing and PR buzz, raise a particular amount of money, and provide retailers with access to early-stage funding, which is usually reserved for the bigger investors.

Popular Launchpads

A lot of successful crypto projects originated on launchpads. For example, Polygon, formerly known as Matic (layer 2 scalability solution for Ethereum), The Sandbox (a leading metaverse ecosystem), and Axie Infinity (top blockchain game) all launched from the Binance Launchpad.

Polkastarter, a launchpad on the Polkadot Network, has been involved in several popular launches as well. Thetan Arena (popular MOBA-style P2E game), Orion Money (a cross-chain stablecoin bank), and Wilder World (an immersive 5D metaverse) are all common names within the crypto community that had their start on Polkastarter.

A new launchpad that’s generating buzz is Shibapad. It’s a community-oriented launchpad with plans to completely hand over its operations to its members through a DAO. DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, a type of organization that is democratically managed by community members.

Community members submit proposals and use their tokens to vote on them. Proposals can be for anything – hiring developers, protocol changes, launchpad token listings, and more. Passing proposals are automatically enforced using smart contracts. So, DAOs enable community members to manage projects with confidence.

On Shibapad, each of their native SBP tokens counts as one vote. Early investors that purchase their token will enjoy the benefit of greater voting rights, giving them a greater say on future Shibapad changes and launchpad token listings.

Recognizing the viral potential of community-driven or “meme” tokens, Shibapad welcomes them with open arms. The platform also says that it vets every project for legitimacy.