Propose an edit: Presale

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Title Category One sentence summary Infobox, one "key: value" per line Article body, markdown, use [[wiki links]] and end with a ## References section

A presale is the sale of token allocations before a token publicly launches. Buyers send funds, usually SOL or stablecoins, to a project address in exchange for a promised share of supply at launch. The structure predates meme coins (initial coin offerings were presales at scale), but on Solana in early 2024 the presale became a distinct trench meta, and then a cautionary tale.

## The 2024 Solana presale meta

After the presale funded launch of [[book of meme]] in March 2024 produced enormous returns, copycat presales spread across [[crypto twitter]]. Users sent SOL to addresses posted in tweets from anonymous accounts, often with no product, contract, or legal identity. Onchain investigator ZachXBT tracked roughly 796,000 SOL, then worth about 149 million dollars, flowing to 33 presale addresses within days, and Decrypt put the wave's total above 150 million dollars while asking what could go wrong. The answer arrived quickly: Cointelegraph reported at least 12 presale coins completely abandoned within a month after raising a combined 26.7 million dollars. The era's defining artifact was [[slerf]], whose developer raised over 10 million dollars and then claimed to have accidentally burned the presale allocation along with the liquidity, instantly converting every presale buyer's position to nothing, though the token itself then traded billions in volume.

## Assessment

Presales concentrate every trench risk into one transaction: buyers hold an unenforceable promise from an anonymous [[dev]], allocations create structural [[insider]] supply that dumps on launch buyers, and exit costs are zero for the operator, making the format a natural [[rug pull]] vehicle. The rise of [[fair launch]] infrastructure like [[pump fun]] was partly a reaction, replacing trust in a presale operator with a transparent [[bonding curve]]. Presales persist regardless, rebranded through each cycle, because the pitch (buy before everyone else can) is the oldest and most effective in speculation.

## References

- https://decrypt.co/222417/solana-meme-coin-presales-150-million-what-could-go-wrong
- https://coingape.com/zachxbt-warns-against-scam-as-solana-meme-coins-raise-122m-in-presale/
- https://cointelegraph.com/news/12-solana-presale-memecoins-abandoned-after-one-month
- https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/03/18/solana-meme-slerf-notches-17b-in-volume-after-developer-loses-all-presale-funds

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