In May 2025, the long-silent Gate Launchpad will restart with a brand new look. Within just three months, this platform will successively launch three projects: Puffverse (PFVS), PUMP, and Ika (IKA).
From the first phase of PFVS setting a myth of a 450% first-day increase and a subscription amount of 656 million USD, to the 196 million USD capital migration triggered by the third phase IKA, its mechanism evolution and ecological influence have quietly reshaped the competitive logic of the industry.
A Successful First Battle, Puffverse’s Small Scale High Explosive Experiment
On May 27, 2025, the first project Puffverse (PFVS) officially launched after the restart of Gate Launchpad.
The project is positioned as a "Disney-like 3D metaverse," with a development team from companies like Alibaba and Xiaomi, and has received investments from top institutions such as Animoca Brands and HashKey.
Its core data validates the feasibility of the "retail-friendly model":
- The total token supply is only 10 million pieces, with a subscription price of 0.07 USDT.
- Attracting 35,553 participants, with a total investment of 650 million USDT (oversubscribed by 938 times)
- The subscription amount exceeded 20 million USDT just 5 hours after going live.
- The increase on the first day of launch reached 450%.
The success of PFVS proves the high explosive potential of small-scale projects and lays the first cornerstone for subsequent mechanism innovations.
Path switching, high throughput persistence verification of PUMP
Two months later, Gate Launchpad Phase II project PUMP will switch strategy path.
This project explores market boundaries with a distinctly different design:
- The total supply of tokens has expanded to 2.5 billion, with the unit price dropping to 0.004 USDT.
- Create an industry record of 306 times oversubscription.
- After going live, the daily trading volume stabilized at 120 million USDT.
Unlike PFVS’s "high volatility", the core value of PUMP lies in verifying the sustainability and market depth of high circulation projects. Its stable trading performance shows that Launchpad projects can pursue explosive growth while also building a long-term liquidity foundation.
Mechanism transformation, IKA’s dual-track system and stablecoin strategy upgrade.
The real evolution will occur in the third phase of the IKA project in July 2025.
Gate has introduced a dual-track subscription mechanism for USD1 and GT for the first time:
- 80% quota allocation stablecoin USD1 pool (fixed price: 1 IKA = 0.025 USD1)
- 20% of the quota is reserved for the platform currency GT pool (dynamic pricing)
The market reaction reveals a profound risk aversion preference:
- The total number of participants is nearly 20,000, with a total subscription amount exceeding 348 million USDT.
- USD1 pool dominates 228 million, GT pool only 5.13 million GT
- The capital ratio is close to 4:1
The deeper impact lies in the shift of the logic behind the exchange’s capital pool war: after IKA launched the subscription, 170 million USD1 flooded into Gate through the BSC chain within 72 hours, propelling its total USD1 holdings to the second highest among centralized exchanges globally, second only to Binance.
These deposited funds become the exchange’s "zero-cost fund pool," which can enhance spot liquidity or support lending operations.
Revolution of the capital pool, strategic value reassessment of stablecoins
The biggest unexpected gain from the IKA project is that Gate’s USD1 position has jumped to the second place among global exchanges.
This event marks a fundamental shift in the exchange’s understanding of stablecoins. In traditional models, stablecoins were merely a unit of account for trading pairs or a temporary hedging tool. However, when Gate raised nearly 200 million USD1 in a single instance through the Launchpad mechanism, stablecoins upgraded to become a core strategic asset for the exchange.
In the world of exchanges, the role of stablecoins is undergoing a silent revolution. Once, they were merely a pricing unit for trading pairs or a temporary hedging tool, but now they play a central role in the liquidity strategies of exchanges.
Distribution revolution, the game of time dimension and institutional strategy
Another breakthrough of IKA is the "Hourly Snapshot + Proportional Allocation" rule. The system calculates the proportion of tokens distributed based on the average locked amount of users per hour, emphasizing that "the earlier you subscribe, the higher the returns."
This design brings a dual effect:
- Small capital retail investors: If they enter during the early cold start phase, they may obtain a high proportion of allocation at a lower cost.
- Large capital institutions: The influx in the later stage will dilute the early proportion, but limited by the individual 1.6 million IKA cap, it is necessary to use a multi-account strategy to "break it down into smaller parts".
This mechanism gives financial value to time, driving the distribution rules to tilt towards genuine early participants and forcing institutions to adjust their strategies.
Ecological synergy, the flywheel effect of Launchpad
The success of the Launchpad directly drives the growth of the entire Gate ecosystem:
- Gate Alpha: Launched nearly a thousand on-chain assets, attracting hundreds of thousands of trading users.
- P2P business: covering 80 countries with 50+ fiat currencies, over 450 payment channels, and a month-on-month conversion rate increase of 5.7%.
- Institutional business: The number of users increased by 27% month-on-month, and the contract trading volume rose by 33.59%.
Asset-side synchronization expansion, the number of new coins launched on the platform increased by 65% month-on-month. From PFVS’s 3D metaverse to IKA’s "fastest parallel MPC network" (providing second-level cross-chain signatures for $20 trillion in assets in the Sui ecosystem), diversified assets continue to enrich the exchange’s shelf.
As of August 11, 2025, the number of users on Gate exchange has surpassed 34 million, with a market share rising to second globally, and total reserves valued at $10.453 billion (excess reserve ratio of 23.09%).
Future vision, threefold evolution direction
Based on the accumulation of the three-phase project, the evolution trajectory of Gate Launchpad has become clear:
- Refinement of the mechanism: A dual-track system may become the standard configuration, and time-weighted rules will more accurately balance the interests of large and small investors.
- Stablecoin Ecologicalization: USD1 will expand from a subscription tool to a trading pair benchmark and collateral for lending, forming a closed-loop financial ecosystem.
- Global Compliance Deepening: Relying on the compliance network of over 10 countries, including the Dubai VASP license, with a focus on expanding the incremental markets in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The competition among exchanges has shifted from trading volume to the scale of capital pools. As platforms like Binance scale back their Launchpad operations, Gate has transformed a regular token issuance into a capital migration of $196 million through its dual-track system, propelling its USD1 holdings to the second largest globally.
As the number of users surpasses 34 million, reserves exceed 10 billion USD, and compliance networks cover more than 10 countries, this exchange, once regarded as a second-tier player, has quietly built a true moat. In the evolution prism of Launchpad, what is reflected is the historical process of the crypto economy transitioning from chaotic frenzy to mechanized operation.
