What is the key to the rise of the encryption fundraising platform Buidlpad, with 4 projects launched all logged in to Binance?

Written by: Chloe, ChainCatcher

Reprinted: White55, Mars Finance

Since the end of last year until this year, the long-dormant ICO market has revived. Driven by the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, the Trump administration's crypto-friendly policies, and a new round of bull markets, public token sale platforms have once again become the focus of attention for project parties, retail investors, and other investors.

In this new cycle, the once leading ICO platform CoinList is gradually fading away in this wave, replaced by emerging platforms like Buidlpad, Echo, and LEGION that are rapidly rising. Taking Buidlpad as an example, it has helped four projects complete public offerings and all have listed on Binance spot within just a year since its launch, with participants achieving nearly 10 times returns at the highest, seemingly completely replacing CoinList's position as the king of the track.

In this article, ChainCatcher conducts a detailed analysis of the development background and rise of Buidlpad, interviewing multiple deep players from public fundraising platforms to interpret from various perspectives why it is specifically Buidlpad.

Fill the gap left by CoinList

@PandaZeng1 As a long-term user participating in multiple Launchpad platforms, he has systematically observed ICO/IDO/IEO platforms. He pointed out that the gameplay of all platforms is actually very similar, and the key lies in the performance of the first few projects. If the first or second project ends in failure, it will bring more follow-up effects to the platform, leading to users being unwilling to participate.

Regarding the decline of CoinList, he believes another major issue is the poor user experience: for users in the Asia region, they need to queue up and deal with the time difference of the US time zone, which means Asian users have to stay up late, and they may not even get a spot in line. Although CoinList later introduced a Karma points system (which requires participating in trading or swapping on the platform to earn points), this has already failed to recover the loss of users.

In contrast, the success of new platforms like Echo and Buidlpad stems from the outstanding performance of previous projects, which successfully built their reputations. For example, Echo's Sonar launched Plasma, creating expectations among users. He emphasized that the crypto market is filled with expectations, being valuation-driven when rational and dream-driven when irrational, ultimately measured by “the dream-to-reality ratio.”

@0xhahahaha has similar insights regarding the decline factors of CoinList, which is the vicious cycle of the failure of wealth creation effects. She has participated in 5 or 6 CoinList presales, and for the decline of CoinList, she pointed out that the core issue is the decrease in the quality of projects launched on the platform, as the projects being launched have started to become average. Some projects with poor popularity cannot make it to major exchanges (Binance, Coinbase), only listing on smaller exchanges, resulting in weaker liquidity, with only sell orders and no buy orders, and the selling conditions are strict, possibly requiring a one-year lock-up period, and even with an immediate TGE, it may not be profitable.

During the public offerings on CoinList from 2023 to 2024, most tokens saw a significant price drop after launch, with a common decline of between 70% and 98%, such as ARCH (-98%), FLIP (-73%), ZKL (-93%), NIBI (-78%), etc. Most FDV is also below 100 million dollars.

The success of Filecoin in 2017 established a “high return” image for CoinList. Just as investors were expecting CoinList to continuously replicate its success, the overall market cycle, regulatory changes, and the evolution of user demand became difficult to sustain.

Currently, due to the platform's unfriendly experience, poor project quality, and unresolved issues such as low returns that are most important to players, community dissatisfaction has been amplified, leading to a loss of users. This has allowed platforms like Echo, LEGION, MetaDAO, and Buidlpad to emerge and fill the market gap left by the decline of CoinList.

Superb performance

Taking the Buidlpad platform as an example, Buidlpad has assisted four major projects: Solayer, Sahara AI, Lombard Finance, and Falcon Finance, in completing public offerings and listing on Binance spot. Looking at the performance of Buidlpad, the first project Solayer was publicly sold at a valuation of $350 million, with a unit cost of $0.35, reaching a peak of $3.43, bringing nearly 9.77 times return on investment for early participants. Sahara AI raised funds at a valuation of $600 million, with a token cost of $0.06, reaching a maximum of $0.15, achieving a 2.68 times return, with an oversubscription of 8.8 times and a total subscription of $75 million.

@0xhahahaha Since Falcon Finance started to engage with Buidlpad, with a mindset similar to that of general players, “wherever there is an opportunity to make money, that's where to go,” she believes that the success of Buidlpad can be attributed to its strict project selection. All projects ultimately succeed in being listed on major exchanges (such as Binance spot, etc.), and this stable wealth creation effect has attracted users to shift from CoinList to Buidlpad.

Regarding the rise of Buidlpad, @PandaZeng1 summarized several key factors. Firstly, the projects selected by Buidlpad tend to have high valuations, and the projects launched are essentially all grand slams, listed on Binance and Upbit. They excel in user acquisition value, with projects generally offering a return potential of 2-10 times, and are relatively less strict compared to Echo, making it easier for retail investors to get started.

It can be said that Buidlpad has its own narrative rhythm and selection criteria in terms of project selection dimensions, quality control, and distribution mechanisms. In addition to conducting comprehensive due diligence and research on each project, assessing the feasibility of its business model and execution capability, Buidlpad has also deployed anti-witch hunting technology to prevent large-scale participation of fake accounts and studios through KYC verification, compliance checks, and security measures, further ensuring the fairness of token distribution.

As of September 2025, the platform has received over $320 million in subscription commitments during its first four events, attracting more than 30,000 verified real users. The latest Momentum Finance project has also launched its public sale on the platform in October, aiming to raise $4.5 million.

In addition, Buidlpad introduces the Squad system, which allows participants to earn additional incentive rewards through content creation based on the existing staking model. This not only assists projects in nurturing communities in the early stages but also encourages participants to contribute more beyond capital contributions.

When it comes to the projects issued by Buidlpad, they have all landed on Binance's spot trading, becoming the best launchpad for project parties to go directly to Binance and other major exchanges. It is worth mentioning the background of the founder, Erick Zhang.

Background of the Mingpai in the Binance system

According to Erick Zhang's LinkedIn information and updates, he holds a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Macau. His early career experiences are not well disclosed, with the earliest work experience being from 2013 to 2015 as a vice president at Citibank. He joined Binance as an executive just a few months after its establishment, demonstrating his sharp professional judgment.

During his tenure at Binance, he served as the head of Binance Research and Binance Launchpad, accumulating rich experience in project research and selection, and participated in or led the establishment of the coin listing system. Under his leadership, Binance Launchpad successfully helped over 20 projects complete ICOs, raising a total of over 100 million dollars, including many industry giants today, such as Polygon and Axie Infinity. The wealth creation effect of Launchpad coins also made Binance Launchpad a benchmark product in the industry for a time. Subsequently, he was appointed as the new CEO of CoinMarketCap, a subsidiary of Binance, upgrading from a vertical business head to the full responsibility of an independent business.

After accumulating extensive experience in data analysis, team management, and industry resources, Erick Zhang left his position in December 2022 to found Nomad Capital. Months later, Binance Labs announced its investment in the crypto venture fund Nomad Capital, maintaining a close relationship with Binance. At the end of last year, Erick launched Buidlpad.

It is worth noting that among the four projects launched by Buidlpad so far, three have received investment from Nomad Capital. After these project tokens are listed on the Binance spot market, Binance Labs, as the main LP of Nomad Capital, will also reap significant benefits.

It is not hard to see that the close relationship formed with the Binance ecosystem is one of the key factors for Buidlpad's current success. Additionally, the market dividend period left by the decline of CoinList and its unique project screening mechanism have also paved the way for Buidlpad.

With Buidlpad's main competitor Echo being acquired by Coinbase a few days ago, the token fundraising platform is becoming a new battleground for primary market pricing power. The decline of CoinList and the rise of Buidlpad and Echo essentially reflect the changes in the ICO structure. As the short-term speculative effects of the platform gradually cool down, public token sales are bridging the gap between user demand and platform mechanisms.

On one hand, it serves as an important channel for projects to acquire early users and initial liquidity; on the other hand, it consolidates the platform's position as the preferred place for investors to mine for opportunities. Even when the market enters a prolonged downturn, such investment opportunities remain quite attractive.