How a number gets into the database
Launch costs are opaque by design: listing fees are unpublished, market-maker terms sit under NDA, audit quotes vary by an order of magnitude. The value of this database is not that it has numbers. It is that every number says where it came from, when it was checked, and how much to trust it.
A record is a claim, not a fact
Every figure is stored as a claim made by one source on one date. When two sources disagree, they become two records, shown side by side. We never average them: averaging a contradiction produces a number that describes nobody, and it hides the most useful thing a buyer can know, which is that the market has no agreed price.
The clearest example on the front page: three sources price OpenZeppelin at $25k per engineer-week, $20k to $100k per engagement and $200k to $500k per engagement. All three stay in the database.
No record can be published without a source, a verification date and a confidence grade.
Confidence grades
The grade describes the source, not how plausible the number looks. On the collection pages the grade is shown as rarity.
What we use, and what we refuse
We use
- Court filings, regulator releases and securities filings.
- Public governance forums and on-chain votes.
- Exchange and provider documentation and price pages.
- Reporting by established crypto and financial press.
- Term sheets submitted by the teams that received them, verified as described below.
We refuse
- Scraping private chats, or anything behind a login we were not given.
- Buying leaks. A leaked document enters the database only after a publication with an editorial standard has reported on it.
- Money from the firms we write about. No paid profiles, no placement, no affiliate links, no sponsored records. A provider can always ask for a correction, and it is always free.
Disputed claims
Some of the most important records are allegations: a lawsuit that has not been decided, press reporting that the named party denies. We publish them because a founder deciding whom to sign with deserves to know they exist, and we label them as disputed everywhere they appear. A disputed claim is never presented as a finding of fact, and the named party's public response is recorded next to it when one exists.
What the Decoder computes
The Decoder evaluates the desk's payoff from a call option on the loaned tokens at a set of exit prices: the number of tokens multiplied by the amount the exit price exceeds the strike, or zero when it does not. It compares that with a monthly retainer over the same term.
This is intrinsic value at exit, not an option premium. It assumes the desk exercises whenever the price clears the strike, and it ignores volatility, the desk's own trading in the token, profit-sharing clauses and anything else a real agreement adds. It is a way to see the size of what is being signed, not a valuation and not advice.
Corrections
If you represent a firm named in the database and believe a record is wrong, write to hello@tgeindex.com with the record, what you believe is wrong, and evidence. It costs nothing and it does not require a lawyer.
What happens next. We acknowledge the request and review the evidence. The outcome is one of four, and we tell you which:
- Corrected, when the evidence shows the record is wrong.
- Removed, when the source no longer supports it.
- Annotated, when both the record and your statement stand; your response is shown next to the claim.
- Kept, with the reason, when the source is a primary document the evidence does not contradict.
Every change is logged with its date. A correction never changes the grade of a source to make a record look stronger or weaker than the source is.
Contribute a term sheet
The database grows fastest from the teams who received the offers. Send the terms you were given, anonymously, and receive three months of Full access at no cost once they are verified.
What to send
How it is handled
- Send it to hello@tgeindex.com from any address. A fresh address is fine.
- Redact names freely. The numbers are what matter.
- We check it for internal consistency and against the records we hold, and may ask you to confirm one detail.
- We never publish the document. Only the terms enter the database, and they are not attributed to your project unless the deal is already public.
- Access is granted the same day the terms are verified.
Freshness
Every record shows the date it was last verified. Launch costs move with the market: a listing fee from a bull quarter is not a quote for a bear one. Read the date before you read the number.
Changelog
Every change to a published record, including our own mistakes. Nothing is edited silently.
- FractureLabs v. Jump Trading updated. We described the case as a live dispute. The court dismissed it on 4 June 2025 for lack of jurisdiction, without deciding the merits. The record now links to the court docket and says so.
- GSR × Stargate regraded from 5 to 4. The original governance post could not be located; the terms are recorded from a deal tracker that reproduces it.
- TGE catalog: 58 projects. Added Ritual (RITUAL), which launched its mainnet and token on 26 October 2026 with a first listing on Coinbase, then Gate and KuCoin. It scores 6 of 8: full allocation, unlock schedule and launch float are published; no market maker is named and no audit report is published.
- Axis Robotics is live; GenLayer moves to Arbitrum. Axis Robotics started trading on 22 October on 13 venues at once, including Coinbase, Upbit, Bitget, KuCoin, Bitvavo and Binance Alpha, after LBank announced a world premiere listing on 21 October. Our profile still showed it as pre-TGE until today: a week late, now corrected (score 2 to 3). The first version of this entry dated the launch 21 October and named only three venues; corrected the same day from the project's own day-one post. GenLayer said its token and public network will run on Arbitrum, closed airdrop registration on 26 October and reopened it on 27 October for a few more days; still no TGE date.
- Project pages extended. Every TGE profile now opens with key facts (ticker, chain, TGE date or window, status, score), answers the common questions (when, where it trades, tokenomics, float, market maker, audit, incidents) from the sourced checks, keeps a dated history of what changed, and lists similar launches. GenLayer: the planned admission to trading on 19 October passed without a launch; the project announced a pre-TGE AMA for 23 October.
- Score display corrected, calendar added. Projects with exactly one passed check were shown as 3 of 8 on their pages and in the catalog table since 16 October: Payy, Catapult, Curvance, Jumper, Brownian and PERPTools. The data was right, the page generator miscounted; all six now show 1 of 8. New: a TGE calendar by month, with dates from official sources only, and a note on how few launches disclose their market maker.
- TGE catalog: 57 projects. Added Saturn, PERPTools, Voice, Orbinum, Autheo, Quantus and IPX. Autheo names Enflux as its market maker, so Enflux now has a page. Autheo's incident check is open: the project halted its mainnet on 12 October 2026 after an unauthorised creation of THEO.
- TGE catalog: 50 projects, six statuses updated. Added KiiChain and Brownian. AlloX and Gotchi Labs finished their community sales; infiniFi published its token allocation, so its tokenomics check now passes; City Protocol's MiCA white paper set admission to trading from 30 September 2026, and no launch has followed yet.
- Every figure is now open. Listing fees and market-maker deal terms were shown behind a lock; they come from public sources we already linked, so they are now free on every page. New pages for 21 exchanges and data sites and 18 market makers. Added three market makers named by Cluster Protocol in its own disclosure (Davinci, Lhava, Blockchain.com). Corrected CLS Global: it pleaded guilty in January 2025 and was sentenced in April 2025; we still described it as charged.
- Kaskad profile updated after the project replied. Kaskad named its market maker and said its float at TGE was published on its pre-sale page and in its SAFT. Neither is on a public page yet, so both checks stay unclear, and the profile now records what the project told us.
- TGE catalog expanded to 48 projects. 21 launches added, most from project-authored MiCA white papers, Blockworks Token Transparency filings and exchange listing notices. Where two official sources from the same project disagree, the profile shows both figures instead of picking one.
- TGE catalog opened. 27 upcoming and recent token launches, each checked against eight disclosures on official sources, at /tge/. Two new market-making deals added from a project-authored disclosure: Ethos Network lent 100,000 WHUF each to GSR (18 months) and Tophash (12 months) with call options.
- All 20 venues re-checked. HTX is now under UK sanctions (26 May 2026) and an EU transaction ban (from 23 August 2026). Binance has not served the EU since 1 July 2026; Bitget and MEXC do not serve it either. KuCoin is permanently barred from US customers (30 March 2026). Hyperliquid ticker auctions are priced in HYPE, so dollar costs are now derived on the day. Correction: we wrote that CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap do not sell listings. Standard listing is still free on both, but both now sell optional paid fast-track reviews; the note published earlier today has been corrected.
- BitMart marked closed. BitMart announced an orderly wind-down on 26 July 2026 and ended all trading on 26 August 2026; withdrawals are restricted. Our table still listed it as a tier 3 venue with a reported fee range, and we quoted that range in a few outreach messages in September. The row now shows the closure; the old range is kept in the database only as a historical record.
- Audit price chart corrected. The OpenZeppelin row showed $30k to $200k from quillaudits. That range belongs to Trail of Bits and CertiK; the same source gives OpenZeppelin as $25k per engineer-week. The 25x spread between the other two sources is unchanged.
- Binance × Blockstack extended. Re-read against the SEC filing: added the returnable deposit of $500,000 and 2,500,000 STX, and removed a dollar figure the filing does not state.
- Gotbit, ZM Quant, CLS Global and MyTrade relinked. Criminal outcomes now link to the Department of Justice; civil charges to the SEC. Gotbit's founder was sentenced in June 2025; MyTrade's founder pleaded guilty in October 2024.
- Decoder example corrected. An example on this site said the desk keeps $4,000,000 at 3x on default terms. The correct figure is $3,000,000: 20 million tokens times ($0.30 minus $0.15).