4 Crypto Fundraising Platforms: Launchpad Vs. Polkastarter Vs. DAO Maker Vs. DuckStarter

In the last few months, the cryptocurrency industry has exploded with innovation, fueled by increasing institutional investment, rising community sentiment, and the advent of more than a few powerful new platforms for building more powerful blockchain-based solutions. 

We’ve also seen a dramatic resurgence of early-stage fundraising, with several major platforms working to channel the launch of many of this year’s most sought-after projects.

Here, we take a look at four fundraising platforms running the hottest token sales right now. 

DuckSTARTER

DuckDAO looks to democratize the early-stage investment space by sourcing and securing potentially lucrative investment opportunities for its expansive community; colloquially known Ducks. 

As far as crypto fundraising platforms go, DuckDAO is a unique case — there’s really nothing else like it. You can think of it as a decentralized VC investment platform, where the only qualification necessary to gain access to vetted, highly sought-after projects is holding a specific token — known as DuckDaoDime (DDIM). 

By holding fixed amounts of DDIM, users gain access to the DuckDAO inner communities, where they can access propitious, often exclusive deals before anyone else. 

As a community-powered crypto incubator, DuckDAO allows practically anybody to both invest in promising early-stage crypto startups and also share a hand in its success by assisting with user-acquisition and marketing. This model has proven to be extraordinarily effective, with its incubation projects — including the likes of Bondly and Base Protocol — generating massive returns for investors. 

Besides its community-powered incubator, DuckDAO also operates a public token sale launchpad known DuckSTARTER. Through DuckSTARTER, holders of DUCK DLP ($DUCK) tokens can participate in the final token sale round before projects launch on public exchanges. 

DuckDAO is committed to ensuring DuckSTARTER works on a first-come-first-served (FCFS) basis, ensuring all participants have an equal chance of success in obtaining an investment allocation. Unveiled last month, DuckSTARTER was met with immediate success, and all projects launched through the platform have generated incredible returns; with Shadows ($DOWS) alone generating a maximum return of 42.9x for participants. 

DAO Maker

DAO Maker is an old hand in the cryptocurrency fundraising space, and has been helping promising projects raise funds from its dedicated community of investors since early 2019. 

In this time, DAO Maker has hosted token sales for several highly anticipated projects, including the likes of Elrond Network, Orion Protocol, and My Neighbor Alice — all of which generated incredible returns for participants. 

DAO Maker is known for pioneering several new token sale models, including the Dynamic Coin Offering (DYCO) which gives investors the opportunity to refund their tokens should they be unhappy with its performance. It also created the Strong Holder Offering (SHO), which looks to reward long-term token holders with allocations to sold-out projects. 

DAO Maker is unique in that it also provides its technology to other businesses through its software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. 

Like all of the other options on this list, you will need to hold specific tokens to stand the best chance of participating in DAO Maker launches; in this case, the DAO Maker ($DAO) token is needed. 

Binance Launchpad

Last but not least is the Binance Launchpad. As its name suggests, this is the token sale launchpad of Binance — currently by far the most popular cryptocurrency spot exchange by trading volume.

Unlike some of the other options on this list, Binance Launchpad doesn’t host regular launches, averaging around one per month for the last three years. 

However, given the accessibility of Binance and the ease of its solution, it is still one of the most popular fundraising platforms for both projects and investors. 

Since 2017, Binance has launched several massive projects through its Launchpad platform, including the likes of Band Protocol, Polygon (formerly Matic Network), BitTorrent, and Kava. 

Exactly how one participates in these launches has varied throughout the years, but has almost always required holding Binance Coins (BNB) to increase the odds of winning an allocation. But given that some of these launches have generated upwards of 30x returns for investors, we’d say it’s a fair shake. 

Polkastarter

Launched in December 2020, Polkastarter is by far the newest entry on this list, but don’t let that fool you — it’s a capable platform that has attracted the attention of well over 200,000 budding investors. 

The platform is designed to allow projects to easily launch their own interoperable token pools, which can be either fixed-price or dynamic price swaps. This makes it a useful platform for raising funds, since it offers a trustless way for investors to gain access to new tokens and contribute at the same time.

Right now, Polkastarter isn't much more than a simple project launchpad. Most of its main features are still in development and are due for release sometime in 2021 — or after it has migrated to the Polkadot blockchain.

Nonetheless, despite being behind on its roadmap, Polkastarter has been a remarkable success and has hosted the initial DEX offering (IDO) of several of this year’s hottest projects; including Blockchain Cuties, Ethernity, and Convergence.

Polkastarter IDOs are generally open to anybody, but you’ll need to hold at least 3,000 POLS to participate in the exclusive POLS-holders pools.