When issuing tokens becomes a production line

Written by: Liam｜Deep Tide TechFlow

In 2025, the productivity revolution in the crypto market is not AI, but token issuance.

Dune data shows that in March 2021, there were about 350,000 tokens across the network; a year later, it rose to 4 million; by the spring of 2025, this number had surpassed 40 million.

In four years, it expanded a hundredfold, with tens of thousands of new tokens being created, launched, and going to zero almost every day.

Although the myth that issuing tokens can make money has been shattered, it cannot withstand the determination of project teams to issue tokens. This token issuance assembly line has also supported a large number of agencies, exchanges, market makers, KOLs, media, and others who provide services. Perhaps it is becoming increasingly difficult for project teams to make money, but every gear in the factory has found its own profit model.

So, how does this "token issuance factory" operate? And who is truly profiting from it?

Half-Year Token Issuance

"The biggest change in this cycle compared to the previous one is that the token issuance cycle has been drastically compressed; from project initiation to TGE, it may only take half a year," said Crypto Fearless, a KOL in the crypto space with 200,000 followers who has long focused on project issuance, during an interview.

In the previous cycle, the standard path for project teams was to spend a year refining the product, then use another six months to build the community and promote the market, only qualifying to initiate TGE after forming a certain scale of users and revenue data.

But by 2025, this logic has completely reversed. Even for star projects listed on top exchanges or teams at the infrastructure level, the cycle from concept initiation to launch can be compressed to within a year or even half a year.

Why?

The answer lies in an open secret of the industry: the importance of products and technology has significantly decreased; data can be fabricated, and narratives can be packaged.

"It doesn't matter if there are no users; just create a few million active addresses on the testnet, or go to a niche market and inflate the download numbers and user counts on the App Store, then find an agency to package it, no need to stubbornly focus on products and technology," Crypto Fearless bluntly stated.

As for Memecoins, they have pushed "speed" to the extreme.

Launching a token in the morning could see its market cap break tens of millions of dollars by the afternoon; no one cares about their use cases, only whether they can ignite emotions within a minute.

The project's cost structure has also changed drastically.

In the last cycle, most costs for a project from initiation to token issuance were spent on research and development and operations.

In this cycle, the costs for project teams have suddenly changed dramatically.

The core costs are the listing fees and market-making related costs, including various intermediaries' interests; next are the marketing expenses for KOLs, agencies, and media, with the actual money spent on products and technology possibly accounting for less than 20% of the total costs.

Token issuance has transformed from a long-term entrepreneurial endeavor into a rapidly replicable industrial assembly line process.

From shouting "Mass Adoption" to "Attention is King," what has happened in the crypto space in just a few years?

Collective Disenchantment

If one word could summarize the last crypto cycle, it would be "disenchantment."

During the last bull market, everyone believed that L2, ZK, and privacy computing would reshape the world, and that "GameFi and SocialFi" could bring blockchain into the mainstream.

But two years later, those once highly anticipated technological narratives and product narratives have fallen one after another; L2 is unused, blockchain games are still burning money, and social platforms are still struggling to attract new users. Their common feature is that there are no real users.

In their place, however, has emerged the most ironic protagonist: Memecoins. They have no products and no technology, yet they have become the most effective narrative.

Retail investors have become disenchanted, and project teams have also understood the rules of the game.

In the last cycle, the worst off were not the project teams that "did nothing," but rather those who worked hard.

For example, a certain blockchain game project raised tens of millions of dollars, and the team invested all the money into game development, hiring top game designers, purchasing AAA art resources, and building server clusters. Two years later, the game finally launched, but the market no longer cared; the token price plummeted by 90%, the team ran out of money, and announced dissolution.

In stark contrast is another project that also raised tens of millions of dollars, but the team only hired a few people and let an outsourced team develop a demo, using the remaining funds to buy Bitcoin. Two years later, the demo is still a demo, but the asset balance has tripled.

The project team not only survived but also had money to continue "telling stories."

The tech-focused teams died in the long development cycles, the product-focused teams died the moment their funding chains broke, while the speculators saw the truth and found "certainty" in a simpler way: creating chips, capturing attention, and exiting liquidity.

After being harvested by projects that "did real work" time and again, retail investors have long lost their patience and no longer care about so-called fundamentals.

Project teams know that users don't care, exchanges know it all, and the interest structure has quietly been reshaped.

Winner Takes All

Regardless of how cycles change, exchanges and market makers remain at the top of the food chain.

Exchanges do not care about the rise and fall of token prices; they care more about trading volume. The profit model in the crypto space has never been about token prices, but about capturing volatility.

If we were to select the most iconic product innovation of this cycle, Binance Alpha is undoubtedly the watershed.

In the view of practitioner Mike, it is a "brilliant design," even comparable to Binance's second business model revolution.

"It kills three birds with one stone, completely revolutionizing the model of spot listings," Mike commented. First, Binance achieved a curve-over-take of OKX Wallet through Alpha, incorporating on-chain asset issuance into its ecosystem; second, it activated the entire BSC chain, even making leading public chains like Solana feel threatened; finally, Alpha delivered a dimensional blow to second- and third-tier exchanges, causing their token listing businesses to plummet.

The most ingenious part is that all Alpha projects are essentially nutrients for BNB; the popularity of each Alpha project translates into demand for BNB. In 2025, the price of BNB continues to break new highs, which is not a coincidence.

But Mike also pointed out the side effects: Binance Alpha has completely industrialized and streamlined the token listing process, with many participants not caring about what the project is about, merely focusing on accumulating points, claiming airdrops, and selling.

Mike understands Binance's motivation; Binance once attempted to list game and social products claiming to have millions of users, but the tokens not only performed poorly but were also ridiculed. "So we might as well create a standardized token listing model using Binance Alpha + Perp, benefiting BNB holders, BSC, and exchange users."

The only cost is that this market has gradually abandoned the pursuit of "value" and has fully shifted to the competition for "traffic and liquidity."

Fundamentals are unimportant; the price itself has become the new fundamental, making market makers who work alongside K-lines increasingly important.

In the past, what people referred to as market makers were more "passive market makers," providing buy and sell quotes on the exchange's order book to maintain market liquidity and earn the bid-ask spread.

But in 2025, more and more active market makers are starting to become the main characters behind the scenes.

They do not wait for market trends; instead, they create market trends. The spot market is a tool, while the contract market is their main battlefield.

Market makers accumulate positions at low levels while opening long positions in the contract market, then continuously pump the spot market to attract retail investors to chase the rise. After the long positions in the contract market take profits, they suddenly crash the market, trapping retail investors in spot positions and causing contract liquidations. Market makers then use short positions to harvest, and when the price drops to the bottom, they accumulate positions again, starting the next cycle.

This model, which feeds on volatility, has spawned many "meme coins" during the bear market, from MYX to the recently popular COAI and AIA; each "myth" is a precise double kill of longs and shorts.

But pumping requires capital, so off-exchange financing has become a new big business in this cycle.

This type of financing is different from traditional leveraged trading; it specifically targets "pump financing" for market makers and project teams, where fund providers offer cash, market makers provide operational capabilities, and project teams provide token chips, sharing profits accordingly.

KOL Involvement

Pumping is often the best marketing, but it also requires someone to take over.

Especially when the token issuance cycle shortens, project teams need to gain heat, traffic, and consensus in a short time. Under this logic, KOLs and agencies that can gather and manage KOLs become increasingly important; they are the "traffic valves" on this token issuance assembly line.

Project teams usually collaborate with KOLs through agencies. Crypto Fearless states that the token issuance assembly line in the crypto space is filled with various agencies that can help project teams generate heat, build markets, attract users, promote, and create consensus.

In his view, "In the current market environment, earning intermediary fees is much easier than doing projects. Doing projects may not necessarily be profitable, but the money spent on token issuance is essential. There are agencies in the market that come from exchanges, VCs, and those that have transitioned from KOLs and media…"

The reason project teams are willing to pay intermediary fees instead of directly seeking KOLs is for efficiency and to mitigate risks.

Within agencies, there are three types of traffic grading for KOLs.

First is brand traffic. This refers to the different pricing for top KOLs compared to ordinary KOLs, as top KOLs have already established their personal brands, naturally commanding higher prices.

Second is exposure traffic. This refers to the number of people covered by the content, primarily determined by the KOL's follower count and the reading volume generated by posts.

Third is buying traffic. This refers to the number of transactions or conversions completed by the content. Typically, project teams calculate the weight of these three types of traffic grading based on their needs; spending more money does not necessarily yield better results.

Additionally, to form a strong bond with KOLs, project teams have also established KOL rounds early on, offering KOLs a certain amount of chips at a lower price to help them better complete "shilling."

This token issuance assembly line has become the "new infrastructure" of the crypto industry.

From the listing review of exchanges to the control tactics of market makers, from off-exchange financing support to the attention capture of agencies, KOLs, and media, every link has been standardized and streamlined.

Ironically, the efficiency of making money in this system far exceeds the traditional path of making products, accumulating users, and creating value.

Will the crypto market continue like this?

Perhaps not. Each cycle has its own main storyline, and the next cycle may be vastly different.

But while the form may change, the essence will not.

Because from the very beginning, this market has been competing for two things: liquidity and attention.

And for everyone involved, the more pressing question is:

Do you want to be the one creating liquidity, or the one providing liquidity?