Most launchpad relationships end at TGE. The project launches, the launchpad collects its fee, and both parties go their separate ways. This is the standard model — and it's a significant part of why so many launched projects fail within six months of going live.
The 90 days after TGE are the most operationally demanding period most crypto projects ever face. Community expectations are at their highest point, token price is being established in real markets for the first time, post-TGE smart contracts need to execute correctly, and the team is typically exhausted from the launch process itself. It's exactly the wrong time to lose your primary operational partner.
This post explains what Tonstarter's post-launch incubation track covers, why it's mandatory (not optional), and what projects can expect during the 90 days after their token goes live.
Why Incubation Is Built Into Every Launch Agreement
We made the 90-day incubation track mandatory for a pragmatic reason: it protects our participants as much as it protects the projects. When we launch a project, 210,000 community members are potentially watching. Projects that collapse in the first quarter reflect on Tonstarter directly — in the form of lost participant trust, reputation damage, and ultimately, fewer good projects wanting to launch with us.
Our incentive alignment is direct: the better our launched projects perform post-TGE, the better our participant experience, the stronger the TOS staking incentive, and the more quality projects apply to launch on our platform. Abandoning projects after TGE would be economically self-defeating even if we didn't believe in post-launch support as a principle.
The incubation track is part of the Launch Agreement. Project teams know what to expect before they sign. There's no opt-out.
The 90-Day Timeline
Week 1-2: TGE Stabilization
The immediate post-TGE period is the highest-risk window. Our team is on active monitoring throughout:
- Liquidity tracking: LP positions are monitored for anomalies. If something looks wrong with the pool mechanics, we know before participants do.
- Vesting verification: We confirm that vesting contract releases are executing correctly on schedule.
- Community monitoring: Our team watches community channels for emerging concerns, misinformation, or technical questions that need immediate response.
- Market maker coordination: We maintain direct communication with any market makers involved in the launch to ensure trading support is functioning as agreed.
For most launches, this period is uneventful. But "uneventful" is the goal. When it isn't uneventful — and occasionally it isn't — having a team actively watching matters enormously.
Weeks 3-6: Roadmap Execution Support
Most projects enter TGE with a post-launch roadmap. The gap between roadmap and execution is where many projects first start to struggle. At weeks 3-6, our team begins bi-weekly check-ins with project leadership to review:
- Development progress against stated milestones
- Team bandwidth and capacity constraints
- Technical obstacles and whether they need outside resource connections
- Community engagement quality — are post-launch participants staying engaged or drifting?
These aren't oversight calls — they're support calls. If a project team is behind on a milestone because of a technical problem, we can often connect them with developers in the TON ecosystem who've solved the same problem. If community engagement is dropping, our Head of Ecosystem Growth can provide specific tactical guidance.
Weeks 7-12: Exchange and Integration Introductions
Being listed on the Tonstarter launchpad provides access to our network of exchange relationships. At the 6-8 week mark, projects that have hit their initial roadmap commitments receive introductions to centralized exchange listing contacts and integration opportunities in the TON ecosystem.
These introductions aren't guarantees — exchange listings depend on many factors outside our control. But the warm introduction from a known launchpad accelerates the process significantly compared to cold outreach. Several of our launched projects have used this network to move from DEX-only trading to CEX listings within 60-90 days of TGE.
Weeks 10-14: Liquidity Review and Market Making Strategy
At the 10-12 week point, we conduct a formal liquidity review with each project. The LP lock is still active — but we look ahead to what the liquidity picture will look like as the lock approaches expiry. Does the project have a plan for maintaining DEX depth after the initial lock ends? Have they built enough organic trading volume to sustain the pool without the locked LP?
Projects that haven't developed a clear liquidity strategy get specific guidance on options: extending the lock voluntarily, engaging a professional market maker, or building protocol-owned liquidity through treasury deployment. This isn't a crisis — it's normal planning. But teams that don't plan for it often face an unnecessary shock when the lock expires.
What We Don't Do
The incubation track is operational support, not management. We don't make product decisions. We don't manage the team's communications on their behalf. We don't intervene in governance. If a project team is making decisions we disagree with, we say so — and then respect that it's their project.
We also don't provide incubation to teams that have fundamentally misrepresented their situation. If a post-TGE review reveals that commitments made in the Launch Agreement were not genuine, the incubation relationship ends and our legal team gets involved. This is rare. When it's happened, we've been transparent about it with our community.
The Incubation Track for Participants
If you're a participant rather than a project team, the incubation track benefits you differently. You're not on the check-in calls. But the 90-day support structure means the project has active accountability beyond TGE, and you have a direct line to Tonstarter if something concerning happens in the first quarter after launch.
We take participant concerns seriously. If something a launched project is doing looks wrong to community members, we want to know about it. Reach us at [email protected].
After 90 Days
The formal incubation track ends at 90 days. But our relationship with launched projects doesn't. Several of our first-cohort launches are ongoing partners — their teams are sources of referrals, their projects use Tonstarter infrastructure for subsequent token events, and their founders have become part of the broader ecosystem network we're building.
The goal of the incubation isn't to produce 90-day survivors. It's to build the foundation for projects that are still running, still growing, and still serving their communities two and three years after launch. That's the standard we're holding ourselves to — and the standard that makes Tonstarter worth applying to.
