Presale capital does not transfer to the team on day one. It sits in a project-specific escrow contract under the One-Claim Ledger. The team receives access to tranches only as milestones complete and attestors co-sign delivery evidence. Team token vesting is aligned to milestone completion, not to a calendar cliff. The mechanism reuses the milestone-gated settlement primitive the Global Trade Marketplace uses for trade-finance capital.
100% escrowedCapital held in protocol escrow at admission
Tranche releaseGated by attestor-signed milestones
Milestone vestingTeam tokens unlock with delivery, not the calendar
Why upfront capital release is the structural failure
The post-launch failure rate documented on the upfront capital page (84.7% of 2025 institutional TGEs trading below TGE, 0% success rate at $1B-plus starting FDV) is not a quality problem. It is the predictable output of a default fundraising design where presale capital releases to the team as an upfront lump sum and team token vesting unlocks on calendar cliffs regardless of operating delivery. The Memento Research dataset shows the failure is universal at the institutional end of the market, not concentrated in low-quality projects.
The structural fix is the same primitive the EDMA Global Trade Marketplace uses to release trade-finance capital. A trade-finance receivable is held in escrow under a milestone schedule; the financier releases capital as the trade progresses and PoV-verified delivery events trigger tranche releases (the six milestone gates documented in the Settlement section). The Launchpad applies the same mechanism to presale fundraising: presale capital is structurally equivalent to trade-finance capital with a delivery schedule, and it should release the same way.
ESCROW-TO-TRANCHES FLOW, SIX STAGESPresale capital does not transfer to the team on day one. It sits in a project-specific escrow contract under the One-Claim Ledger. The team receives access to tranches only as milestones complete and attestors co-sign delivery evidence. The protocol mirrors the milestone-gated settlement mechanism the Global Trade Marketplace uses, applied to fundraising.
E01ESCROW OPEN
Presale opens, capital flows to project-specific escrowteam has no transfer authority
What happensCapital from presale participants is held in a project-specific escrow contract under the One-Claim Ledger. The escrow contract is non-custodial from the team's perspective: the team cannot withdraw, transfer, or move the capital. Multi-sig keys for the escrow contract are held by the protocol governance, not by the team.
E02SCHEDULE
Tranche schedule is on-chain, declared at admissionimmutable post-admission, transparent to participants
What happensThe dossier (B5) specifies how the escrowed capital releases as a function of milestone completion. A common schedule: 20% on TGE for operating capital, 20% on M1 (product shipped), 20% on M2 (revenue threshold), 20% on M3, 20% on M4. The schedule is anchored at admission and cannot be unilaterally modified by the team.
E03DECLARATION
Team declares milestone completion with evidencedeclaration paired with the operating receipt
What happensThe team posts evidence that the milestone has been reached: product deployment, audit completion, revenue audit, throughput data, regulatory approval, asset commissioning. The declaration is a transaction on the EDMA chain; the evidence packet hash is recorded.
E04ATTESTATION
Designated attestor signs the milestone evidencesame quorum spec as admission
What happensThe attestor designated in B5 reviews the evidence and signs the completion attestation. The standard quorum applies: 2 or more attestors, AUDITOR required for material milestones, at least 2 distinct roles. If the attestor refuses or remains silent past the milestone deadline, the tranche is not released; the project enters revocation review (see Governance).
E05RELEASE
Escrow contract releases the tranchepermissionless once quorum is met
What happensOnce the attestor signature quorum is reached on the milestone evidence, the escrow contract automatically releases the corresponding tranche from escrow to the team's declared treasury address. No Launchpad operator approval is required; the release is enforced at the contract level and is observable on-chain to any participant.
E06NEXT
Team works on the next milestonemissed milestones trigger tranche freeze
What happensThe team works on the next milestone in B5. If a milestone is missed (deadline passes without attestor sign-off), the corresponding escrow tranche remains locked and the project enters revocation review. The Governance framework describes the remediation pathway and the consequences if remediation fails.
Six stages of the escrow-to-tranches flow. The team has no transfer authority over the escrowed capital; tranches release permissionlessly once the attestor signature quorum is met on each milestone. The Launchpad operator does not approve or block tranche releases.
Standard milestone types
Milestones declared in Block B5 of the dossier draw from five standard categories. Each milestone has an objective measurement, a deadline, and a designated Attestor Registry party that will verify completion. The team composes a milestone schedule from any combination of the five categories; a typical schedule combines two or three categories with a TGE allocation for operating capital.
The constraint on milestone composition is that each milestone must be ex-post-verifiable by an Attestor Registry party with the appropriate role. A team cannot declare a milestone that is observationally vague (e.g., 'community growth') without specifying the measurement methodology and the attestor who will sign. The protocol enforces the measurement-attestor pairing at admission; vague milestones cannot route past S03 of the admission flow.
STANDARD MILESTONE TYPES, FIVE CATEGORIESThe milestone types in B5 of the dossier draw from five categories. Each milestone has an objective measurement, a deadline, and a designated attestor. The team can compose a milestone schedule from any combination; the constraint is that each milestone must be ex-post-verifiable by an Attestor Registry party.
MeasurementDeployed contract addresses verified on-chain; audit reports for the deployed code published and referenced to specific commits; working product accessible at a public endpoint or via a deployed contract; the audit firm is on the Attestor Registry.
Typical attestorAUDITOR (the audit firm) plus PROTOCOL_REVIEWER (an independent technical reviewer). The audit cannot be self-published by the team.
M2REVENUE
Revenue threshold reached, audit-verifiedapplies to operational projects
MeasurementAnnualised revenue at a declared threshold, verified by audit attestation. The revenue must be from the operating business the dossier describes, not from token sale proceeds or related-party transactions.
Typical attestorAUDITOR (financial audit firm with active Attestor Registry credentials), plus optionally CUSTODIAN for treasury verification.
M3THROUGHPUT
User or throughput threshold reachedmeasurable, on-chain or off-chain verifiable
MeasurementActive users, transactions processed, kWh delivered, tonnes settled, container shipments completed, or other route-specific measurable. The measurement methodology is locked in B5 at admission; the threshold and the measurement window are explicit.
Typical attestorRoute-specific. METER_OP for energy throughput, AUDITOR for transaction or revenue throughput, INSPECTOR for physical-asset throughput.
M4REGULATORY
Regulatory approval or registration securedjurisdiction-specific milestone
MeasurementSecurities registration completed (where applicable), license approved by the relevant authority, jurisdiction-specific compliance reached, public regulatory filing posted. The milestone evidence is the regulator's published artefact (registration confirmation, license certificate, filing acknowledgement).
Typical attestorAUDITOR (legal opinion) plus REGULATORY_LIAISON (counsel of record), both on the Attestor Registry. The protocol does not certify regulatory compliance itself; it certifies that the declared authority has confirmed the milestone.
MeasurementInstallation commissioned and producing (for energy projects), off-take agreement signed and operational (for energy and trade), contracted capacity online, custody confirmed (for RWA), inventory verified (for trade-finance receivables). The asset-class context determines the specific evidence.
Typical attestorRoute-specific: METER_OP, INSTALLER, INSPECTOR, CUSTODIAN as appropriate. The asset milestone is the most route-coupled of the five categories.
Five standard milestone categories with their measurement methodology and typical attestor role. The categories are not mutually exclusive; a single milestone can draw from multiple categories (e.g., a revenue milestone that also requires regulatory registration). The dossier declares the specific measurement and the attestor designation.
Vesting aligned to delivery, not the calendar
Team and investor token vesting in the dossier (Block B4) is linked to milestone completion in Block B5, not to unconditional calendar dates. A team that fails to deliver M2 cannot vest the M2 tranche of team tokens, even if twelve months have passed since TGE. The calendar-cliff dump pattern that produced the 71.1% median FDV decline across the 2025 Memento Research dataset is structurally blocked because the unlock condition is delivery, not date.
The mechanism is the same one the protocol uses for the escrow tranche release. When the team declares M2 complete and the designated attestor signs the completion attestation, two things happen simultaneously: the escrow contract releases the M2 capital tranche to the team treasury, and the team token vesting contract releases the M2-linked allocation to team wallets. Both releases are gated by the same attestor signature; both are permissionless once the quorum is met.
The Public unlock-tracker dashboards (Token Unlocks, CryptoRank, Messari) that track calendar-based vesting cliffs across the industry would show, for a Launchpad listing, milestone-linked unlocks with the corresponding milestone evidence. Participants observing the chain see not only when an unlock might occur but also whether the delivery condition for the unlock has been met. The pre-unlock sell pressure that drives the cliff-dump dynamic does not have the same coordination point because the unlocks are conditional, not scheduled.
Continue the For Issuers series
This page covered what happens to capital after participants commit it. The final page in this series covers what happens for the lifetime of the listing after admission: governance. Quarterly KPI re-attestation, material-change disclosure, annual audit refresh, and the revocation framework when obligations are not met.
