Introduction
Discovering and identifying projects when they are at an early stage is very difficult. It is even more difficult for African projects to get recognized at the early stages. This is why there are only a few African-based Blockchain projects, and a majority of them are only focused on remittances (i.e. sending money from other continents to Africa), leaving the hard work of building core infrastructure for Blockchain applications undone- Xend Finance
That’s the opening statement of Xend Finance when it launched its Xend Launchpad in October 2021. Indeed, discovering early-stage projects—the good ones—is a tough job. African projects also struggle to gain global recognition or scale. Xend Finance believes that this problem can be fixed if there was a springboard for projects that want to launch and have access to investors who need early access to projects that would have been “only available to top venture capitalists”. Xend Launchpad was born.
What is Xend Launchpad about?
Xend Launchpad is a product portfolio of Xend Finance which serves as a springboard for African blockchain projects to launch and access the global crypto community or for non-African blockchain projects that want access to African users.
According to Xend, projects can launch through sales of tokens (Initial Offering), sales of digital assets like NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), sales of physical devices, and others.
What inspired Xend Launchpad or why was Xend Launchpad created?
Xend Finance CEO, Ugochukwu Aronu, spoke to CAB about the inspiration behind Xend Launchpad. “Xend Launchpad was born out of the challenges Xend Finance faced finding a platform to launch publicly”, he said. “As the first DeFi project out of Africa, we wanted to make it easier for African projects to go public, raise funds publicly, acquire users and build its community, and also access the global crypto community. It also serves as a great platform for projects trying to access the African crypto market to launch and finally for the average African crypto investor to access the global crypto market by investing early in great projects launching on Xend Launchpad.”
Beyond African projects, Xend Launchpad also targets global projects and small investors.
Xend Launchpad targets African projects, global projects, and small investors.
First African, we target African crypto projects trying to launch publicly, raise funds, and build its community.
Second, global crypto projects that are trying to access users from Africa.
And third, small crypto investors trying to invest early in quality projects.
Why Xend Launchpad is beyond project listing
There are a number of launchpads out there with various offers and promises, although quite rare in the African crypto market. What are the benefits, you might wonder, of being listed on Xend Launchpad?
According to Xend Finance, apart from raising funds through the Xend Launchpad, projects also enjoy other benefits. These benefits include marketing support, community building, and growth. Also, introduction to exchanges for listing and introduction to other partners.
How is Xend Launchpad ensuring that the projects it lists are good and safe enough for investments?
The crypto space has been described as the “Wild Wild West”. Projects, such as Luna for example crashing from the moon to ground zero (and minus) over night, is not fiction. Therefore, considering the (relatively high) risks involved in investing in crypto projects, what has Xend Launchpad put in place to ensure that the projects that are listed on Xend Launchpad do not pack up the next day or crash out of the market?
Xend Finance says it understands and appreciates these risks and has taken steps to help address them as much as it can. There is a team dedicated to screen projects that apply to launch on Xend Launchpad in order to make sure they meet certain standards. Few of the criteria considered when screening are team experience, project impact and scalability, product-market fit. With these, Ugo says Xend Finance is able to answer questions like “Does the team working on the project have the right skills needed? How much impact does the project have on society and how can it be scaled for mass adoption? Are there use cases for the product/services. Is there a market need?”
Although Ugo believes there is still need for more due diligence, the current selection process helps Xend Finance ensure that investors that put their money in projects that launch on Xend Launchpad are sure of investing early in quality projects.
How to get your project on Xend Launchpad for investment opportunities
For projects looking to launch on Xend Launchpad, the details about your project will be required. They include:
- Project metrics
- The team behind it
- Tokenomics
- Overview and use-cases
- Roadmap, updates, and business development
- Updated development progress
- Activity and a community overview
- Community and social channels
If you have a good project and you are looking to launch on Xend Launchpad, visit Xend Launchpad website to apply: https://launchpad.xend.finance/. Simply click on ‘Launch your project’ button and complete the form. Gamic and Lazerpay are one of the projects that have successfully raised on Xend Launchpad.
As earlier pointed out by Xend Finance, Xend Launchpad is not for projects alone. Small investors looking to leverage African and global startups building blockchain and crypto projects, are also able to join the springboard. You don’t have to be a Venture capitalist to participate! At Xend Launchpad, there is a pad for everyone.
“Great projects from the African blockchain ecosystem have been limited in accessing global investments”, Ugochukwu Aronu said. “We have taken it upon ourselves to leverage our community and investors through the Xend Launchpad to ensure that these projects get the right exposure.”
