Token pre-launch checklist. Score your TGE readiness before you ship.
Interactive 32-item checklist across smart contract security, tokenomics, liquidity, documentation, community, legal, marketing and AEO. Built from the patterns of 200+ crypto launches TG3 Agency has audited since 2017. Tick what is done, see your launch readiness score, get the action list for what is missing.
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Tick what is done. Score updates live.
32 items across 8 categories. Critical items count double. Bring your unfinished launch and score it honestly.
// Priority action list
The critical items still unchecked, in priority order. Each links to the relevant Crawlux audit module or free tool.
Run a free Crawlux audit of your live domain
The checklist covers pre-TGE prep. Crawlux is our free audit tool — it scans your live domain and gives you a complete report on what users and AI engines actually see today across technical SEO, AI visibility, token schema and 5 more areas. Takes about 4 minutes. No signup, no credit card.
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Three steps. About 4 minutes end to end.
No signup. No data leaves your browser. The checklist saves to local storage as you tick.
Tick what is already done
Walk down the 32 items across 8 categories. Tick each one your project has actually completed. Critical items have a red dot. Standard items count single weight, critical items count double.
See your launch readiness score
The 0 to 100 score updates live. Verdict tiers run from Not Ready (under 50), Significant Prep (50 to 69), Almost Ready (70 to 89) and Launch Ready (90 plus). Use this as a forcing function before TGE.
Work the priority action list
Every unchecked critical item shows up in the action list with a direct link to the Crawlux audit module or free tool that addresses it. Fix the criticals first, then the standards. Re-score, then ship.
8 categories. 32 items. Built from real audits.
The categories are not arbitrary. They mirror what crypto VCs, exchanges, audit firms and Crypto Twitter scrutinize before, during and after a TGE.
Smart contract security
The category that decides whether your launch survives the first 72 hours. Audit firm tier, multisig configuration, timelocks on admin functions, bug bounty programs and on-chain honeypot detection. The Token Schema audit module picks up some of this from the marketing site. The contracts themselves need the audit firms.
Tokenomics
Hard-cap total supply, team allocation under 25%, 12-month minimum vesting cliff, linear vesting schedules and actually-implemented burn or buyback mechanisms. The Tokenomics Designer simulates sell pressure across 60 months so you can stress-test vesting before locking it into the contract.
Pre-launch liquidity
DEX listing planned and tested, LP tokens locked for 12+ months or community-owned, sufficient initial depth (typically $500k+), and CEX listing relationships in motion. Thin launch liquidity creates bot-sniping problems and immediate price collapses.
Documentation
Whitepaper v1 hosted on your own domain (not Notion), technical docs site live, concrete roadmap milestones and tokenomics visualizations. Run your whitepaper through the Whitepaper AEO Scorer before publishing to verify it is structured for AI engine citation.
Community
Twitter/X with daily cadence and 1000+ organic followers, Telegram with active moderation, Discord with role structure, cross-platform organic following. Bot followers are detected by every serious analyst and discounted in valuation discussions.
Legal and compliance
Registered legal entity (LLC, UAB, Foundation), privacy policy and terms on the project domain, securities lawyer opinion on token classification, geographic restrictions implemented where required. The YMYL audit module validates the compliance signals from the marketing site side.
Marketing and PR
Launch PR plan with embargoed press releases to CoinDesk, Decrypt, The Block and Cointelegraph. KOL and influencer relationships warmed at least 4 weeks pre-launch. Launch date announced 4+ weeks in advance to build anticipation.
SEO and AEO
FinancialProduct JSON-LD on the token page (generate it with the Crypto Schema Generator), robots.txt that allows GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and GeminiBot (validate with the Web3 robots.txt checker), and sameAs URLs on homepage schema for entity verification. The AI Visibility audit module measures your AEO posture end to end.
Common questions about token pre-launch readiness
Patterns that come up across crypto Twitter, founder DMs and TG3 client onboarding calls.
How many items should I have ticked before launching a token?
Aim for 90 percent or higher on the score, with all 8 critical items checked. Critical items include the smart contract audit, multisig deployer wallet, 12-month team vesting cliff, hard-capped total supply, registered legal entity, published whitepaper, DEX listing plan and LP token lock. Below 70 percent score signals significant pre-launch prep is still needed. Plenty of launches ship at 75 percent and crater publicly. The score is a forcing function, not vanity.
Do I really need a tier-1 audit firm or are cheaper audits fine?
Tier-2 audits are acceptable for low-TVL or early-stage protocols, but tier-1 firms like Trail of Bits, Spearbit, OpenZeppelin and Halborn carry real weight with VCs and exchanges. CertiK has variable quality reputation. Multiple audits from different firms is the strongest signal. The Token Schema audit verifies the marketing site mentions audit firms by name in schema markup, which AI engines pick up on.
What counts as a reasonable team allocation?
15 to 22 percent is the median band across credible 2024 to 2026 launches. Above 25 percent needs strong narrative justification, either by funding stage or by team size and tenure. VCs discount valuations on high team allocations. Below 10 percent can signal undercapitalization of operations. Use the Tokenomics Designer to model sell pressure against your allocation and vesting schedule before committing to numbers on chain.
Should I list on CEXs before or after TGE?
For most teams, DEX-first then CEX 2 to 8 weeks later. CEX listings at TGE require pre-existing relationships and usually paid listing fees in the $100k to $500k range for tier-2 exchanges. The exception is partnership-driven launches where a single CEX is the launch partner. Tier-1 exchanges (Binance, Coinbase, Kraken) almost never list at TGE without prior business relationships.
How long should the team vesting cliff be?
12 months is the minimum market expectation. 18 to 24 months signals long-term alignment. Below 12 months gets called out publicly on Crypto Twitter and read as extraction intent. The cliff is followed by linear vesting over 24 to 48 months. Cliff-and-dump schedules (everything unlocks at the cliff) destroy price discovery on the unlock dates.
What is AEO and why is it on a token launch checklist?
AEO is Answer Engine Optimization. Crypto users now check ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude before they search Google. If your project schema markup is missing or your robots.txt blocks AI bots, you simply do not get cited in AI answers. That is a structural disadvantage versus the projects that did configure it. The AI Visibility audit module runs your domain through real prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude and scores citation frequency, the wording AI uses about you and the gaps between you and the sites that get cited.
Do I need both a Discord and a Telegram?
Most launches run both. Telegram for transient announcements and price chat. Discord for structured community with roles for token holders, governance discussion and developer channels. Smaller teams sometimes pick one and run it well, which beats running both poorly. Whatever you pick, anti-bot moderation is non-negotiable in 2026, the scam-DM problem is industrial.
Should I geo-block US users?
Depends entirely on token classification. If you have a securities lawyer opinion that your token is a utility, you may not need to. If unclear or your token has any investment-contract characteristics, US geo-blocking is the safer position. Get a lawyer opinion, not a podcast opinion. The cost of a securities classification review is $5k to $20k. The cost of getting it wrong is enforcement action.
What separates a token launch that compounds from one that goes to zero
Most token launch failures are not technical. The contracts work. The supply mints correctly. The DEX pool opens. The first transactions clear. Then six weeks pass and the chart is at minus 78 percent, holder count is collapsing, and the Discord is a ghost town.
The launches that compound look different in the same six weeks. They were not necessarily better products at TGE. They were better prepared. Every item on this checklist is a vector that early traders, analysts and exchange listing teams check.
Smart contract security is table stakes, not differentiation
An audit no longer impresses anyone. The absence of an audit eliminates you. Multiple audits from named firms (Trail of Bits, Spearbit, OpenZeppelin, Halborn) is the new baseline. Multisig deployment with timelock on owner privileges is expected. Bug bounties on Immunefi are expected. The Token Schema audit module validates your site declares these signals in machine-readable JSON-LD. Most projects pass the audits but fail to surface them in their marketing site schema, which is a free win.
Tokenomics is read in 60 seconds
The first thing any serious researcher does is open your tokenomics page and count: team percentage, investor percentage, cliff length, vesting schedule. If team plus investors plus advisors exceeds 45 percent, with cliffs under 12 months, the project is read as extraction-oriented regardless of what the whitepaper says. The math is mechanical. Sell pressure from insider unlocks must be matched by organic demand or the price discovers a new floor. Run the Tokenomics Designer to see your unlock schedule rendered as 60 months of sell pressure before you commit numbers on chain.
Liquidity decides the first 72 hours
Thin launch liquidity gets sniped by MEV bots in the first three blocks, creates a 40 to 80 percent immediate price collapse, and reads as inexperience. The fix is mechanical: $500k minimum paired liquidity, locked LP tokens, DEX configuration tested on testnet first. CEX listing 2 to 8 weeks after TGE for additional depth. The launches that hold their initial price are the ones that did this work in private weeks before TGE.
Documentation is read by AI engines now, not just humans
This is the part that changed in 2025. Crypto users now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude about projects before they do their own research. AI engines cite the projects whose documentation is structured, definition-dense, entity-rich and FAQ-shaped. Projects whose docs are screenshots of design files or PDFs locked behind authentication get zero AI citations. Run your whitepaper through the Whitepaper AEO Scorer to see how AI-readable your document is. Generate FinancialProduct and Organization JSON-LD for your homepage and token page. Verify your robots.txt allows GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot.
Community is a leading indicator, not a launch-day vanity metric
Cross-platform organic following at launch correlates with first-month price stability. Not the absolute number, the organic quality. Twitter follower counts can be bought. Telegram member counts can be bot-padded. What matters is the engagement-to-follower ratio, the proportion of named accounts versus anon NPC accounts, and the regularity of community-generated content. VCs read the engagement quality, not the raw numbers.
Legal compliance is no longer optional
The SEC, FCA, MAS and similar bodies have been enforcement-active throughout 2024 to 2026. Securities lawyer opinions on token classification are $5k to $20k. The cost of getting it wrong has been examples in the millions. Registered legal entity, jurisdiction-aware geo-blocking, privacy policy and terms on your own domain (not boilerplate from a generator) are the floor. The YMYL audit module validates these signals from the marketing site.
Marketing and PR is leverage, not noise
Press hits at CoinDesk, Decrypt, The Block and Cointelegraph in the launch window create the price-discovery pump that lets early holders distribute to organic demand. KOL relationships and Crypto Twitter momentum at launch carry through the first six weeks. None of this can be cold-pitched at TGE. It is built 4 to 8 weeks in advance. The launches that look like overnight successes spent two months on outreach behind the scenes.
AEO and SEO is the underweighted category
Most token launch checklists do not include SEO and AEO. They should. In 2026, organic discovery for crypto projects has shifted dramatically toward AI-engine-mediated answers. The AI Visibility audit shows the citation frequency gap between projects that configured their schema, sameAs URLs, robots.txt and FAQ structure versus those that did not. The gap is measurable, persistent and compounds month over month as more crypto users use AI as their primary research interface.
The compounding launches did each of these 32 items intentionally. The ones that go to zero shipped a contract and hoped. The checklist is a free way to find out which side of that line you are on before it is too late to fix.
Score the checklist here. Audit your live domain with Crawlux.
Pre-launch is one half. Crawlux is our free audit tool that scans your live domain and gives you a complete report on the other half — what users and AI engines see today across 8 audit areas. Takes about 4 minutes. No signup, no credit card.