Web3 Growth Playbook: How to Drive Viral Spread and Explosive Growth

From late 2024 to 2025, the crypto primary market welcomed a new leader. As CoinList gradually lost relevance due to declining project quality, poor user experience, and weak returns, Buidlpad achieved a stunning turnaround in just one year. It successfully supported multiple high profile projects, including Solayer (@solayer_labs), Sahara AI (@SaharaAI), Lombard (@Lombard_Finance), Falcon (@falconfinance), and Momentum (@MMTFinance), in completing their public sales. All projects landed on Binance Spot. The first four rounds accumulated over $320 million in committed subscriptions, attracted more than 30,000 verified KYC users, achieved an average oversubscription of 14.1x, with some projects delivering up to 1,557% first day returns and peak ATH returns close to 10x.

Dissecting growth strategies of 100+ Web3 projects is a long term series that will be updated irregularly. We focus on analysing and breaking down the marketing and growth tactics of successful projects in the market, delivering practical, actionable insights for project teams and industry practitioners.

In this first edition, we take a deep look at @buidlpad. This review examines Buidlpad's own growth strategies and how other projects leveraged the platform for efficient distribution and marketing. We break down its flywheel logic: founder's Binance background, rigorous screening, compliant and fair allocation, and community incentives, creating a powerful virtuous cycle of "high quality projects → high oversubscription → high ROI → more projects and users".

I. Platform background and founder credibility: the core moat behind its rise

Platform positioning

Buidlpad positions itself as a "community first compliant public sale platform". It precisely filled the gap left by CoinList's decline, offering a fair, retail user oriented launchpad. The platform strongly emphasises anti-VC dumping and anti-sybil protection, using stablecoin public sales combined with strict KYC to ensure real retail users receive priority allocation.

Founder background

Founder Erick Zhang's Binance experience is Buidlpad's strongest competitive advantage. He previously served as Head of Binance Research and a core member of the Binance Launchpad team, leading over 20 ICOs (including Polygon and Axie Infinity) and raising more than $100 million. After leaving Binance, he founded Nomad Capital (backed by Binance Labs) and launched Buidlpad at the end of 2024. Three early Nomad investments later benefited from Binance Labs' support.

This strong "Binance ecosystem" connection gave Buidlpad direct access to top tier projects and listing channels. The first four projects all listed directly on Binance Spot, making Buidlpad the preferred launchpad for many project teams.

Team and mechanisms

The platform uses strict KYC and multi layered anti-sybil verification, open only to compliant users from non restricted regions. The Squad system builds on staking to reward users for content creation (posts, articles, videos), cultivating a highly engaged community from the early days. Project selection focuses exclusively on "grand slams". The team conducts thorough due diligence on business models, execution ability, and team strength, selecting only high valuation projects with solid fundamentals and major exchange potential.

Results

Every project offered 2 to 10x upside potential and achieved rapid liquidity. This stood in sharp contrast to CoinList's later stage performance and successfully attracted users away from the older platform.

The growth flywheel delivered impressive results. Solayer's debut returned 9.77x, which triggered market FOMO. Sahara AI then achieved 8.8x oversubscription. Falcon Finance hit a record 28.2x oversubscription. More premium projects came proactively, and the user base grew exponentially (over 30,000 real KYC users). By September 2025, the platform had completed six projects with approximately $34.85 million in total raised (actual committed subscriptions significantly higher).

II. Project listing process and distribution mechanism

Projects join Buidlpad through a structured path of application, rigorous due diligence, and community public sale, with a strong focus on maximising the community round.

Typical process

Project teams submit applications. Buidlpad's team performs in depth due diligence, with heavy emphasis on potential for Binance or other major listings. Once approved, the platform launches a Community Offering or Public Sale. Users complete KYC and subscribe with stablecoins. In case of oversubscription, allocation is distributed on a pro rata basis. TGE follows quickly, with most projects listing on Binance Spot.

Case studies

• Sahara AI (June 2025). Raised $75 million with 8.8x oversubscription. 30% of the allocation was reserved exclusively for loyal ecosystem users (active contributors and content creators) who applied in advance. The contribution window was even extended by 12 hours based on community feedback, a clear demonstration of "community first" principles.
• Falcon Finance. Achieved a record 28.2x oversubscription and a staggering 1,557.1% first day return. It used a standard public sale plus staking mechanism, creating strong scarcity by requiring users to lock assets within 24 hours.
• Momentum Finance (October 2025). Target raise of $4.5 million. Users participated by completing real product usage tasks, directly helping the project acquire tens of thousands of genuine retail users.

The general model reserves portions for ecosystem and contributor users, employs "subscription plus pro rata allocation", and uses the Squad system to reward participation and content creation, forming a dual incentive loop of "holding plus creating". This distribution method enables efficient fundraising for projects while ensuring fair allocation for real users, avoiding the bot farming chaos typical of traditional launchpads.

III. Marketing tactics: platform endorsement, UGC campaigns, and exchange listing

Project teams treat Buidlpad as a powerful user acquisition and brand amplification engine.

Platform endorsement as the strongest lever

Buidlpad's official website, X account (@buidlpad), and Discord provide direct exposure. Project teams only need to coordinate the release of the "Community Round Open" announcement to reach over 30,000 high net worth KYC users. Past success stories (e.g. Solayer's 9.77x) serve as powerful social proof, making users instantly FOMO when they see the "Next Binance listing + High return" label.

Ecosystem tasks and UGC campaigns drive authentic growth

This is standard practice in 2025. Buidlpad requires project teams to co-create UGC campaigns with the Squad team, typically lasting several days to one week, as a prerequisite for priority allocation or extra rewards. Main mechanics include:

• Content creation and submission. Users post themed content on X (project breakdowns, usage experiences, memes, etc.), must tag @buidlpad and the project's official account, and use project specific hashtags (e.g. $MMT, $FF).
• Profile customisation. Many users temporarily added project themed emojis to their X display names (e.g. Ⓜ️Ⓜ️T for Momentum), creating widespread visibility, viral spread, and a sense of identity.
• Squad challenge submission. Users submit post links and screenshots through the platform. Rewards and extra allocation are granted based on quality and influence. Projects like Sahara AI, Falcon Finance, and Momentum all adopted this model, with some reserving 30% of allocation for top creators.
• Product usage requirement. Projects such as Momentum required users to actively use the product, helping teams acquire real, engaged users.

These UGC activities served as free KOL marketing and community pre heating, turning subscription into a profitable participation loop. In Momentum's case, the tasks directly brought in tens of thousands of authentic retail users.

TGE plus Binance listing as the ultimate amplifier

After the public sale comes rapid TGE, then Binance Spot listing. The listing delivers instant liquidity and price discovery, often resulting in explosive first day gains (Falcon at 1,557%). Project teams only needed to announce "Now listed on Binance" to trigger massive coverage. Ultimately, teams not only raised capital but also completed the full chain of "user acquisition → brand exposure → secondary market wealth creation" in a single cycle.

Performance data

Participation routinely exceeded 100,000 users, oversubscription became standard, average first day TGE return reached 563.3%, and overall average return stood at 286.7% (heavily influenced by Falcon's performance).

IV. Growth flywheel: core logic, potential risks, and practical insights

The core flywheel operates as follows: high quality projects (rigorous screening) → fair high returns (compliance plus KYC) → community word of mouth (Squad incentives) → Binance listing endorsement → more high quality projects and users.

Key takeaways for other projects

To get listed, prepare strong due diligence materials early, highlight community contribution mechanisms (e.g. reserving ecosystem allocations), and incorporate product usage tasks. This can significantly improve approval chances and participation rates.

In marketing, don't just post announcements. Transform Buidlpad activities into full "user growth campaigns", encouraging users to engage with the product and create content while subscribing, and actively promoting UGC (name changes, posting, tagging officials).

For allocation, prioritise "real contributors" and leverage Squad style incentives to amplify organic reach rather than relying solely on monetary drivers.

Risks

The model relies heavily on the Binance ecosystem. Any policy shifts or decline in project quality could slow the flywheel. High valuations also mean greater post listing volatility.

Summary

Buidlpad's success stems from the perfect synergy of founder credibility, compliance tools, community flywheel, and exchange closed loop. For project teams, participating in Buidlpad has long gone beyond simple fundraising. It has become a platform powered leap from 0 to 1 in both user base and brand building.

This was one of the most standout platform marketing cases of 2025, delivering substantial benefits to early participants and project teams. In the second half of the year, as market sentiment cooled and high quality projects became scarcer, Buidlpad also reduced its launch frequency. Although its current visibility has diminished, it remains a highly successful growth case worthy of deep study and reference by project teams and practitioners.

Its core logic of founder endorsement, strict compliant screening, community UGC incentives, and exchange closed loop holds strong reference value in any market condition. Especially in bear markets, how to sustain project vitality through genuine user operations and fair mechanisms is particularly worth continued reflection and exploration.

Welcome to share your thoughts and discussions. Follow this series. We will continue to release irregular updates as we explore and dissect more practical growth strategies from Web3 projects together.