What does an 8-week token launch checklist look like?
An 8-week token launch checklist breaks the process into seven stages run in sequence: locking the sale thesis and tokenomics, finalizing contracts and booking an audit, configuring the sale, fixing audit findings, opening the whitelist and marketing, running the sale itself, then executing TGE with claim, vesting and staking. The table below is the full sequence at a glance.
| Week | Phase | Key deliverables |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Thesis and tokenomics | Sale thesis, total supply, allocation splits, vesting model, target raise |
| 3 | Contracts and audit booking | Contracts finalized, audit slot booked, chain and platform chosen |
| 4 | Sale configuration | Price, caps and limits set; KYC provider and allowlist wired up |
| 5 | Audit and fixes | Audit report received, findings fixed, contracts re-verified and frozen |
| 6 | Marketing and whitelist | Whitelist open, community campaign live, partner announcements out |
| 7 | Sale | Sale opens, contributions collected, oversubscription resolved, sale closes |
| 8 | TGE and post-TGE | Token generation event, claim portal live, vesting starts, staking pools open |
Each phase depends on the one before it, which is why this is a timeline and not a menu you can reorder. Skipping ahead, configuring a sale before tokenomics are locked, or opening a whitelist before the audit is booked, is the most common way an 8-week plan turns into a 14-week one.
Weeks 1-2: how do you lock the sale thesis and tokenomics?
You lock the sale thesis and tokenomics by fixing, in writing, what you are raising for, how many tokens exist, who gets what share, and when each share unlocks. Tokenomics is the allocation table and unlock schedule for a token's total supply: team, investors, treasury, community, liquidity and sale participants each get a percentage and a vesting rule. Nothing downstream should move these numbers, because contracts, sale configuration and marketing copy all reference them directly.
This is also when you set the vesting model for each allocation. A 4-year schedule with a 1-year cliff is the standard structure for team and investor allocations: no tokens unlock in year one, then the remainder releases linearly or monthly over the following three years. Sale participants and community allocations usually get shorter, separate schedules, decided here, not improvised at TGE.
Looking at comparable raises on trackers like CryptoRank can help sanity-check your target raise size and allocation split against launches similar to yours. Treat weeks 1 and 2 as the only phase where changing your mind is cheap; every later week gets more expensive to unwind.
Week 3: when do you finalize contracts and book the audit?
You finalize contracts and book the audit in week 3, as soon as tokenomics are locked, because audit slots are booked in advance and a late booking is the single most common reason a launch date slips. Finalizing contracts means the token contract, and the sale, vesting and staking contracts if you are using them, reflect the exact supply, allocation and schedule decided in weeks 1 and 2, with no placeholder values left in.
This is also when you choose your chain and platform. If you are building contracts from scratch, week 3 is where the real development timeline diverges from a self-serve one: a custom build still has months of contract development ahead of it, while a self-serve platform like Saleium starts from contracts already audited on the same infrastructure behind ChainGPT Pad, which has settled 50 IDOs and $12.7M raised. Booking the audit early is what keeps week 5 from becoming week 9. For what contracts, audits and the rest of a launch commonly cost, see the full token launch cost breakdown.
Week 4: how do you configure the sale, KYC and allowlist?
You configure the sale by setting its commercial parameters, price, hard and soft caps, per-wallet contribution limits, and its compliance layer, KYC provider and allowlist, while the audit from week 3 is still running. Doing this in parallel with the audit, rather than after it, is what keeps an 8-week timeline realistic instead of aspirational.
KYC and an allowlist exist to make sure only eligible wallets can contribute; the allowlist should sync between your front end and the contract, so an ineligible wallet is rejected on-chain, not just hidden behind a greyed-out button. Decide here whether the sale uses fixed allocation or weighted, pro-rata allocation for oversubscription, since that choice shapes how contributions are capped per wallet.
Week 5: what happens during the audit and fixes window?
Week 5 is when the audit report comes back and the findings get fixed. Audits take real lead time, which is why the slot was booked in week 3: the review itself, plus a round of fixes and re-verification, routinely fills a full week even for a straightforward contract set. Treat any finding above low severity as blocking; do not schedule marketing around a report you have not yet received.
Once fixes are applied, the contracts should be re-verified against the audit and then frozen. Freezing means no further logic changes go in after this point, only configuration values that were always meant to be set at deploy. An auditor such as CertiK documents its own review methodology if you want to see what a real audit process checks beyond a surface read of the code.
Week 6: how do you build the whitelist and run pre-launch marketing?
You build the whitelist and run marketing in week 6, now that contracts are frozen and there is a fixed set of facts to market: the sale date, the price, the caps, and the chain. Opening the whitelist starts the countdown publicly and gives your compliance and allowlist systems a real-world test before sale week, with actual wallets connecting instead of a staging list.
Marketing in week 6 should point at one destination and one date. Community updates, partner announcements and any influencer or exchange coordination all funnel toward the sale opening in week 7. This is also the last week to catch a configuration mistake cheaply, since changing a live, whitelisted parameter after this point is far more disruptive than fixing it now.
Week 7: what happens during sale week itself?
Sale week is when the sale opens, collects contributions and closes, and it is deliberately the shortest, least flexible phase in the whole timeline. Every earlier week exists to make this one uneventful: the contracts are audited and frozen, KYC and the allowlist are tested, and the whitelist has already been open for a week. There should be nothing left to decide during sale week, only things to monitor.
The one variable you cannot fully plan for is demand. If the sale is oversubscribed, resolution depends on the allocation model chosen back in week 4; see how to handle an oversubscribed sale with pro-rata allocation if your caps get hit early. And if you are weighing whether to run a sale without a launchpad at all, this is the week that shows what you would otherwise be building and monitoring yourself.
Week 8: what does TGE and post-TGE actually cover?
TGE, the token generation event, is when the token is minted or activated on-chain, and post-TGE is everything that follows: the claim portal opening, vesting starting, staking pools going live, and the first days of secondary trading. TGE is a milestone inside week 8, not the end of the launch, which is why treating it as the finish line is the most common post-launch mistake.
Claim and vesting go live together for most launches: sale participants and any allocation with a cliff, like the team and investor 4-year schedule locked back in weeks 1 and 2, start claiming what has unlocked so far and return for the rest as it vests. If staking is part of the launch, pools typically open the same week so holders have somewhere to put tokens immediately after claiming them.
Why does sequence matter more than a feature list?
Sequence matters because having every feature a launch needs, audited contracts, a sale engine, a claim portal, vesting, staking, does not tell you when to build or configure each one, and getting the order wrong is what turns 8 weeks into 14. A feature checklist and a timeline checklist answer different questions: one tells you what your platform must have, the other tells you when each piece has to be ready.
This post is the timeline. Pair it with the feature-by-feature launchpad checklist to confirm what your platform needs to have, not just when you need it ready. The timing difference is also the practical core of the build vs buy decision: a custom build repeats weeks 1 through 5 of this timeline as months of contract development and a first-time audit, while a self-serve platform starts week 1 with the hard infrastructure already built and audited.
What's the full 8-week token launch checklist?
Run this in order; each item maps to the week it belongs to above.
- Weeks 1-2: Define the sale thesis, what you are raising for and why.
- Weeks 1-2: Set total supply, allocation splits and target raise.
- Weeks 1-2: Lock the vesting model, cliff and unlock schedule for each allocation.
- Week 3: Finalize the token, sale and any vesting or staking contracts.
- Week 3: Book your audit slot.
- Week 3: Choose your chain and platform.
- Week 4: Configure sale parameters: price, caps, per-wallet limits.
- Week 4: Set up KYC and an allowlist that fails closed on-chain.
- Week 5: Receive the audit report and fix every blocking finding.
- Week 5: Re-verify fixes and freeze the contracts.
- Week 6: Open the whitelist and start the public countdown.
- Week 6: Run community and partner marketing toward the sale date.
- Week 7: Open the sale and monitor contributions.
- Week 7: Close the sale and resolve any oversubscription.
- Week 8: Execute TGE and open the claim portal.
- Week 8: Start vesting for team, investor and sale allocations.
- Week 8: Open staking pools if the launch includes one.
- Week 8: Monitor claim activity and early secondary trading.
For token basics that sit underneath this timeline, the ERC-20 token standard is what most of these contracts build on. Get the sequence right and the self-serve token sale becomes the easy part of the launch, not the hard one.