Crypto needs to rethink incentive structures before the mainstream arrives

Opinion by: Jake Antifaev, CEO of Thrust

Every token launch is a story about belief. Crypto narratives often as visionaries who saw potential when others didn’t. The reality is far less noble.

The bonding curve, currently the dominant mechanism for price discovery in crypto, sets the stage: Price increases with each purchase, rewarding those who arrive early with the best entry point. On the surface, this seems fair.

Early buyers, however, are not early believers. Speed of purchase reveals nothing about conviction or commitment to the project. What the bonding curve rewards is speed. And in crypto, speed is determined by access to tools and insider knowledge.

The loudest advocates for “getting in early” are often the first to exit, using the actual believers who arrive moments later as a means of exit liquidity.

The broken dynamics of bonding curves

The bonding curve has become the standard for most launch platforms. Its purpose is to attract liquidity by rewarding early buyers. The structure is extractive yet straightforward: Prices increase with each purchase, creating a ladder where the position determines profit potential.

True believers — the users who genuinely care about a project’s mission, creators who want to support innovation and fans who see long-term value — typically arrive just moments later. By then, the who get in the moment the contract goes live are ready to exit, dumping their positions onto the very people more likely to hold and participate authentically.

The bonding curve doesn’t only enable this. It effectively programs it into the incentive structure. Participants buy to dump because it’s the game of chicken where everyone understands the rules: Get in early, find the greater fool and get out before the music stops.

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The platforms have little incentive to change this dynamic as long as there’s a flow of new participants willing to test their luck. Activity and, most importantly, fees are being generated, and so it doesn’t matter how many get burned. But over time, the pool of willing participants shrinks as more people learn the hard way that they’re playing a rigged game. What looks sustainable in a bull market falls apart when inflows slow.

This matters as crypto goes mainstream

The current paradigm may be tolerable and even attractive to insiders and crypto natives. Finding the right Telegram group and obtaining the alpha for a specific subset of participants is the game.

This group is a fraction of crypto’s potential user base. As the industry moves toward the mainstream, the tolerance for extraction will dwindle. Mainstream users won’t forgive rug pulls and confusing mechanics.

If crypto wants to shed its reputation as a casino and establish itself as legitimate financial infrastructure, the industry must internalize a fundamental truth: Extraction is not a form of growth. Treating newcomers as marks destroys trust. And without trust, there is no sustainable adoption. Models that reward genuine participation rather than greed aren’t just ethically preferable; they’re necessary for the industry to mature.

Fair alternatives that reward conviction

There are launch mechanisms that better align incentives between projects and their communities.

Presales with flat pricing represent one approach. Everyone pays the same price, regardless of their position, whether they bought in first or forty-first. The incentive to snipe and dump diminishes significantly.

In bonding curve launches, having the token contract address minutes before the public can access it can translate into enormous profits. Sniping tools have created an environment where even being first to a launch page means nothing against someone who’s first onchain. A fair launch mechanism levels the playing field, especially when combined with identity verification.

Vesting is another tested solution. Tokens are locked for a significant period of time. This approach is universally applied in traditional markets, among others: transparency, advance notice and restrictions that allow the market to price in liquidity events in advance.

Trading fees could replace team token allocations entirely. The logic is that the team should deliver continuous value to holders and earn their compensation through sustainable revenue rather than token dumps. After all, if a team sells its allocation, confidence typically collapses.

All these alternatives reward belief rather than speed.

Outgrowing the pump and dump

The bonding curve dominates because it works — not for projects or communities, but for platforms and snipers. The problem isn’t any single platform’s design choices, though. It’s a culture that has normalized short-termism and zero-sum thinking. When industry leaders publicly celebrate sniper gains and treat retail participants as exit liquidity, it sets a precedent.

People internalize it and start assuming that exploitation is simply how the game is played.

For crypto to achieve its potential, the industry must outgrow this culture. The Wild West aesthetic served a purpose in crypto’s early days, but it’s becoming a liability when pursuing legitimacy and scale.

Fairness is the only sustainable mechanic

As the industry scales into the mainstream, fairness becomes a requirement rather than an optional feature. Trust, once destroyed, is nearly impossible to rebuild, and mainstream users have no shortage of alternative places to put their attention and capital.

The future of crypto isn’t about perfecting extraction; it’s about achieving alignment between all participants: builders, investors, traders and users.

Genuine belief, sustainable contribution and long-term participation will outlast extraction.

Opinion by: Jake Antifaev, CEO of Thrust.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.