The phrase fair launch once sounded like a manifesto — equality of opportunity, no insiders or hidden privileges, openness and honesty before the community. It was an ideal that promised the network would belong to those who built it. But by 2025, this concept has turned more into a marketing label than a principle. The ideas that once stood behind it — equality, transparency, and genuine alignment between users and creators — have dissolved in the flood of tokenomics and fundraising.

Bitcoin: The First, but Not the Perfect One

When Satoshi Nakamoto published the whitepaper in 2008, the promise was simple: a decentralized electronic payment system, free from intermediaries and banks. Fifteen years later, Bitcoin has not become a global currency. It became something else — digital gold, an object of accumulation and speculation.

Bitcoin is often called the only true fair launch: no venture investments, no foundation, no presale. But once you strip away the mythology, the ideal fades. In the early months, Satoshi controlled up to 70% of the network. In essence, it was a hidden premine phase — it’s just that no one at that time saw Bitcoin as a market.

Why then do we still consider it a fair launch? Because Satoshi never sold his coins. His economic model was self-sufficient: every block was a reward for contribution, not for capital. And yet, the very idea of limited supply built inequality into the system. Latecomers were doomed to play catch-up. Each halving only deepened that divide, turning Bitcoin from a currency for everyone into an instrument for the few.

DeFi Summer and the Illusion of Fairness

A decade later, during DeFi Summer 2020, the slogan fair launch made its comeback. Projects like Yearn Finance promised a fair token distribution: anyone could provide liquidity and gain governance rights. But “equal access” turned out to be an illusion. To participate, one already needed capital, experience, and access to infrastructure — traits more typical of professionals than of ordinary users.

Thus came the “vampire forks.” SushiSwap drained liquidity from Uniswap, then PancakeSwap from Sushi. Each “fair” launch became another clone where early insiders won again. Fair launch turned into a euphemism: “we just didn’t do an ICO.” But the absence of an ICO doesn’t make a system fair if its rules are still written in favor of capital.

The Presale Era and the Redistribution of Power

Today, the industry has completely rewritten the standards. Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, Sui — every new project conducted massive token sales long before the network was launched. Millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, were raised under the promise of a “fair start,” which in reality had nothing to do with fairness.

Now even a project with 5% insider tokens is called “fair.” But what’s the difference between 5% and 55% if the essence is lost? Users are not participating in building the network — they are buying out the shares of those who came earlier. That’s not participation; it’s buying entry into an elite club.

What “Fair Launch” Really Means

A true fair launch is not about percentages and allocations. It’s a matter of philosophy.
It’s about whether people are equal before the protocol — today, tomorrow, and ten years from now. In a network, what matters is not who invested capital, but who contributed. The smallest unit of participation — a block, a transaction, a computation, or a verified identity — must be valued equally for everyone.

Fairness is not the absence of a presale, but the absence of privilege at the code level.

The test is simple:

— Can any person become a participant without access to capital?

— Are equal contributions rewarded equally, regardless of time?

— Is there full transparency and no “locked” tokens hidden in the shadows?

No modern project passes this test. Almost all are built on the idea of deferred inflation, where users pay for insiders’ exits.

Value Versus Speculation

A truly fair launch requires that a network have value beyond its token price. A protocol must be useful on its own, without dependence on market hype. Creators can earn, but not through speculation — rather through the ecosystem around it: services, tools, and businesses that grow from the network itself. Only then can the community remain sustainable.

If a project’s life depends on token demand, fairness has already been broken.

In this sense, fair launch is not an economic model but a social contract — a promise that every participant, regardless of when they join, stands on equal ground with the rest.

A Look into the Future

In the coming years, the crypto industry will face an inevitable choice: to remain a playground for speculation or return to the idea of network equality. Fair launch is not a trend but an architectural principle. Without it, no decentralized project can survive its own ICO.

When a network is built for the community — not for the token — it becomes alive. And then no fork can destroy it, because its foundation is TRUST and FAIRNESS, embedded in code.