When token issuance becomes an assembly line
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When token issuance becomes an assembly line
Regardless of market cycles, exchanges and market makers remain at the top of the food chain.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: Liam, TechFlow
In 2025, the productivity revolution in the crypto market is not AI—it's token issuance.
Dune data shows that in March 2021, there were approximately 350,000 tokens across the entire network; a year later, this number rose to 4 million; by spring 2025, it has surpassed 40 million.
A hundredfold expansion in four years—tens of thousands of new tokens are created, listed, and go to zero every single day.
Although the myth that issuing tokens guarantees profits is being debunked, it hasn't stopped project teams from rushing headlong into launching their own tokens. This token-issuance assembly line has sustained an entire ecosystem of service providers—Agencies, exchanges, market makers, KOLs, media outlets—and while projects themselves may find it harder to profit, every cog in this factory has found its own revenue model.
So, how exactly does this "token factory" operate? And who are the real beneficiaries?
Six-Month Token Launch
"Compared to the previous cycle, the biggest change is that the token launch timeline has been drastically compressed—from concept to TGE, it might take only six months," Wu Bu Wei, a crypto KOL with 200,000 followers who focuses on project launches, said in an interview.
In the last cycle, the standard path for project teams was: spend one year refining the product, then half a year building community and marketing, only launching TGE after achieving a certain scale of users and revenue.
But by 2025, this logic has completely reversed. Even star projects listed on top-tier exchanges or foundational infrastructure teams can compress the timeline from concept to launch to within a year—or even less than six months.
Why?
The answer lies in an open industry secret: product and technology matter far less now; data can be faked, narratives can be packaged.
"No users? No problem. Just generate millions of active addresses on a testnet, or inflate download numbers and user counts on some niche app store. Let an Agency handle the rest. There’s no need to obsess over product or tech anymore," Wu Bu Wei said bluntly.
Memecoins take this idea of “speed” to the extreme.
Launch a token in the morning, and by afternoon its market cap could exceed tens of millions of dollars. No one cares about utility—only whether it can trigger emotional spikes within seconds.
The cost structure of projects has fundamentally changed as well.
In the previous cycle, most costs from inception to listing went toward R&D and operations.
This cycle, project costs have shifted dramatically.
The core expenses now are listing fees and costs related to market makers—including various middleman kickbacks. Next come marketing costs involving KOLs, Agencies, and media. From concept to listing, actual spending on product and technology may account for less than 20% of total costs.
Token issuance has transformed from a long-term entrepreneurial endeavor into a fast, replicable, industrialized assembly-line process.
From shouting "Mass Adoption" to treating attention as king—what exactly happened in the crypto space over just a few short years?
Collective Disenchantment
If one word could summarize the previous crypto cycle, it would be "disenchantment."
During the last bull run, people believed L2s, ZK, and privacy computing would reshape the world, and that "GameFi" and "SocialFi" would bring blockchain into the mainstream.
But two years later, one by one, those once-hyped technological and product narratives collapsed. L2s sit empty, blockchain games keep burning cash, social protocols still struggle to acquire users—their common trait? A lack of real human activity.
In their place emerged the most ironic protagonist: Memecoin. It has neither product nor technology, yet became the most effective narrative.
Retail investors became disillusioned, and project teams finally understood the rules of the game.
Last cycle, the biggest losers weren’t the teams that “did nothing”—but rather those who were genuinely trying.
For example, one blockchain gaming project raised tens of millions in funding and poured all capital into development—hiring top game designers, acquiring AAA-grade art assets, building server clusters. Two years later, the game finally launched—but the market had moved on. The token dropped 90% at listing, the team ran out of funds, and disbanded.
In stark contrast, another project also raised tens of millions, but hired only a small team, outsourced a basic demo, and used the rest of the funds to buy Bitcoin. Two years later, the demo remained unchanged, but their asset balance had tripled.
The team didn’t just survive—they had money left to keep “telling stories.”
Technologists died in long development cycles; product-focused teams died when funding dried up; but speculators saw the truth and found “certainty” through simpler means: Create tokens, capture attention, exit liquidity.
After repeatedly getting burned by projects that “actually built something,” retail investors lost patience and stopped caring about fundamentals.
Project teams know users don’t care. Exchanges know it too. The power dynamics have quietly shifted.
Winner-Takes-All
No matter how cycles change, exchanges and market makers remain at the top of the food chain.
Exchanges don’t care about price direction—they care about trading volume. The crypto profit model has never been about token prices, but about capturing volatility.
If we were to name the most emblematic product innovation of this cycle, Binance Alpha would undoubtedly be the turning point.
To industry practitioner Mike, it’s a “genius design,” arguably Binance’s second business model revolution.
"It hits three birds with one stone and completely reinvents spot listing," Mike commented. First, Binance used Alpha to leapfrog OKX Wallet by bringing on-chain asset issuance into its own ecosystem. Second, it revitalized the entire BSC chain, even threatening major chains like Solana. Third, it delivered a devastating blow to mid- and low-tier exchanges, crippling their listing businesses.
The most brilliant part? All Alpha projects essentially feed BNB—every Alpha project’s popularity translates directly into demand for BNB. BNB’s continuous price highs in 2025 are no accident.
Yet Mike also points out the side effects: Binance Alpha has fully industrialized and standardized the listing process. Most participants no longer care what a project does—they simply farm points, claim airdrops, and sell.
Mike understands Binance’s motivation. In the past, Binance tried listing games and social apps claiming millions of users, only to face poor token performance and public ridicule. "So they just streamlined everything—Binance Alpha + Perp creates a standardized listing model where BNB holders, BSC developers, and exchange users all benefit."
The only cost? The market has gradually abandoned the pursuit of “value,” shifting entirely toward competition for “traffic and liquidity.”
Fundamentals no longer matter—price itself becomes the new fundamental. As a result, market makers who trade alongside candlestick charts grow increasingly powerful.
Previously, “market makers” mostly referred to “passive market makers”—those placing bid/ask orders on exchange order books to maintain liquidity and earn spreads.
But in 2025, more and more active market makers are becoming the hidden puppeteers.
They don’t wait for markets—they create them. The spot market is merely a tool; the futures market is their real battlefield.
Market makers accumulate positions at low prices, open longs in the futures market, then drive up prices in the spot market to lure retail buyers. Once the longs are profitable, they close out, suddenly dump the price, trap retail holders in spot, trigger liquidations in futures, then use shorts to harvest profits. When prices hit bottom, they start accumulating again—launching the next cycle.
This volatility-driven model has given rise to numerous legendary altcoins during bear markets—from MYX to the recently hot COAI and AIA. Each “miracle” is a precisely executed long-short double kill.
But pumping requires capital—so off-exchange financing has become a booming business in this cycle.
This type of financing differs from traditional leveraged trading. It’s specialized “pump financing” for market makers and project teams: funders provide cash, market makers provide execution skills, project teams supply tokens—all sharing profits based on agreed terms.
KOL Involvement
Pumps make excellent marketing—but someone must be ready to buy.
Especially as token launch cycles shorten, project teams need rapid heat, traffic, and consensus-building. Under this logic, KOLs—and the Agencies that organize and manage them—have become even more critical. They act as the “traffic valves” on this token-issuance assembly line.
Projects typically partner with KOLs through Agencies. Wu Bu Wei notes that the crypto token pipeline is flooded with Agencies offering services in hype generation, marketing, user acquisition, PR, and consensus-building.
In his view, “In today’s market environment, earning agency fees is much easier than building a project. Projects aren’t guaranteed returns, but the money spent on launching tokens is non-negotiable. Now, Agencies are staffed by people from exchanges, VCs, former KOLs, media professionals…”
Project teams prefer paying Agencies instead of going directly to KOLs—for both efficiency and risk mitigation.
Within Agencies, KOL traffic is tiered into three levels:
First, brand traffic. Top-tier KOLs command higher prices than ordinary ones because they’ve established personal brands.
Second, exposure traffic. This refers to audience reach, determined primarily by a KOL’s follower count and post views.
Third, buying traffic. This measures actual conversions or transactions driven by content. Project teams often calculate weightings across these three tiers—spending more doesn’t always yield better results.
Additionally, to strengthen alignment with KOLs, many projects now offer early “KOL rounds,” allocating token allocations at discounted prices so KOLs have stronger incentives to “shill.”
This token-issuance assembly line has become the “new infrastructure” of the crypto industry.
From exchange listing reviews to market maker manipulation tactics, from off-exchange financing to Agency-, KOL-, and media-driven attention capture—every step has been standardized and systematized.
More ironically, this system generates profits far more efficiently than the traditional path of building products, acquiring users, and creating value.
Will the crypto market continue like this forever?
Probably not. Each cycle has its own theme. The next one may look very different.
But while forms may change, the essence remains.
Since its birth, this market has always competed for two things: liquidity and attention.
And for everyone participating, the key question becomes:
Do you want to be the one creating liquidity, or the one providing it?
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