the incentive structure in coined projects pits the average "community member" against the ultimate success of the project. 

why? real investors will buy early and typically forget for months. but the loudest members in the first few weeks are incentivised to see the coin pump in the shortest time frame possible. thus, any new project will see the most vocal of the community members suggest: narrative, marketing, shilling, partnerships, paying DEX, getting on exchanges, and so on - anything other than building actual value into the product. 

it requires a lot of resolve not to lean into this as a founder. and most will lean in, even just to compromise with a substantial chunk of their early community. 

this is why we end up with a distinct brand of hollow "vaporware" in crypto - flashy websites, complex terminology, chapters of whitepapers, social media interns hiding barely functional, barely useful, barely interesting products.

if I were to coin a project again, here's how I would do it to avoid creating bad incentives:

1. build a product first, without a coin. 
2. iterate to reach PMF without anyone suspecting there to be an airdrop. people are only using the product because the product is useful to them.
3. do a community fundraise with an ICO

I believe that anything else is going to make PMF harder to reach - just as it is harder to see the bottom of the sea in murky water, so is the right product shape amidst a user base of speculators.