As of August 1, 2025, Gate Launchpad’s third phase project IKA set a record with a total subscription amount of 348 million USD, with the token price peaking at 0.03391 USD and nearly 20,000 users participating. This success not only highlights the market’s enthusiasm for innovative projects but also reveals Gate Launchpad’s strategic shift from a pure token distribution platform to a designer of the crypto economic system. From PFVS’s 450% first-day increase, PUMP’s 306 times oversubscription, to IKA’s dual-track mechanism experiment, Gate Launchpad’s evolutionary trajectory is redefining the competitive logic of exchange ecology.
Mechanism Innovation: From Capital Aggregator to Game Designer
The economic experimental value of the dual-track subscription mechanism is fully reflected in the IKA project: the differentiated design of the USD1 pool (80%) and the GT pool (20%) creates a dynamic game scenario between stablecoin users and platform token holders. Subscription data shows that the input amount of the USD1 pool reached 196 million tokens (approximately 196 million USD), while the GT pool only had 5.13 million tokens (approximately 94.1 million USD), reflecting that investors are more inclined to lock in risk and returns with stablecoins amidst market volatility.
The deeper breakthrough lies in the design of the time value of allocation rules. IKA adopts a "snapshot every hour + proportional allocation" mechanism, allowing early participants, even with smaller amounts of funds, to obtain a higher allocation weight based on time priority. This rule incentivizes users to position themselves in advance, enabling Gate to accumulate a substantial interest-free capital pool before the project starts, significantly enhancing its liquidity management capability.
Platform Token GT: The Core Vehicle for Capturing Ecological Value
The innovative mechanism of Launchpad is empowering the platform token GT in reverse:
Scarcity premium: The ratio of IKA’s GT pool is compressed to 20%, with an average return rate of 220% for winning users (historical data), far higher than the 150% of the stablecoin pool, stimulating the demand for GT holding;
Dynamic pricing arbitrage space: The subscription price of the GT pool is dynamically calculated based on the average price of the previous three days. If GT experiences a short-term decline, investors may gain a cost advantage below USD1 for the pool, creating a price stabilizer effect;
Ecological Coordination: GT, as a unified credential of the Gate ecosystem, has integrated scenarios such as Launchpad, transaction fee deductions, and VIP benefits, forming a closed loop of "participation rights - income rights."
The Rise of Tech Projects: From Meme Narratives to Infrastructure Value
Unlike early Meme-type projects, IKA marks the explosion of technology-driven assets on the Launchpad. Its core value lies in addressing the fundamental pain points of cross-chain interoperability:
Achieve cross-chain operations of native assets (such as BTC / ETH) through dWallet + 2PC-MPC protocol, avoiding the security risks of wrapped assets;
By leveraging Sui’s high-performance chain, signature latency is compressed to sub-second levels, with a throughput of 10,000 TPS, providing underlying support for DeFi and institutional-level applications;
Has attracted more than ten ecological projects such as Full Sail and Aeon, covering scenarios like cross-chain DEX, institutional custody, and Bitcoin financialization.
The launch of such projects upgrades the Launchpad from a "short-term profit platform" to an "ecosystem infrastructure incubator," attracting traditional financial institutions and long-term capital to enter.
Stablecoin Strategy: The Power Struggle for Exchange Liquidity Control
The most notable byproduct of IKA’s subscription is that Gate’s USD1 holdings have risen to the second largest among global exchanges (only behind Binance):
BSC chain holds 170 million USD, Ethereum chain holds 20 million USD, becoming the largest holder of the latter;
USD1 is issued by World Liberty Financial, backed 1:1 by short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and cash, and its compliance attributes synergize with Gate’s global licensing layout (Dubai VASP, Japan license, etc.).
This change reveals the essential evolution of competition among exchanges: the scale of stablecoin reserves has become a core indicator of liquidity control. Massive stablecoin deposits allow Gate to compress trading spreads (the BTC/USD spread has dropped to 0.1%), reduce lending rates, and thus attract higher frequency large transactions.
Future Path: Compliance, Cross-Chain, and Institutionalization
Based on the evolutionary logic of the three-phase project, the strategic direction of Gate Launchpad is clear:
Compliant issuance channel: Relying on the licensing resources of over 10 countries globally, providing fiat deposit and withdrawal support for regulated assets (such as RWA tokens);
Multi-chain asset compatibility: Integrated IKA-like MPC technology, supporting direct subscription of native assets such as BTC / ETH, breaking through the boundaries of the EVM ecosystem;
Institutional-level service module: Combining Gate’s 100% reserve proof and zero-knowledge proof audit to provide white-label Launchpad access for hedge funds.
The ultimate battlefield of exchanges is not in trading depth, but in the discourse power of asset issuance rights—Gate Launchpad quietly reconfigures the underlying rules of crypto value distribution by incorporating project parties, investors, and stablecoin issuers into a symbiotic system through mechanism design.
