Why, in 2026, Crypto Still Doesn't Have Good ICOs: Uneasy Money

Despite the maturation of the cryptocurrency space leading into 2026, the industry is still grappling with fundamental issues regarding token launches, social incentives, and user security. On this episode of Uneasy Money, Kane Warwick joins co-hosts Taylor (MetaMask) and Luca (Pudgy Penguins) to dissect the chaotic launch of the Trove token, the sudden implosion of "InfoFi" on X, and the evolving philosophy behind blockchain immutability.

From the persistent failures of ICO models to the sophisticated rise of address poisoning attacks, the conversation highlights a critical tension: while the technology is advancing, the human and economic behaviors driving the market remain as volatile as ever.

Key Takeaways

• ICO models remain broken: Despite years of iteration, high-profile launches like Trove demonstrate that the industry still struggles to execute fair and functional token distributions without immediate capitulation.
• The death of InfoFi: X (formerly Twitter) has aggressively purged "InfoFi" accounts, reinforcing the lesson that attaching direct financial incentives to social posting inevitably leads to spam rather than value.
• Address poisoning sophistication: Scammers are now willing to spend significant capital to "poison" wallet histories, making standard test transactions a potential vulnerability rather than a safety measure.
• Pragmatism over dogma: The "Code is Law" philosophy is fading as builders increasingly agree that if a project can fix a catastrophic error (like a database migration failure), they have a moral obligation to do so.

The Trove Debacle: Why Can't We Fix ICOs?

The episode opens with a dissection of the Trove token sale, a highly anticipated launch that raised $11.5 million before quickly unraveling. Trove, originally pitched as a marketplace for perpetual futures tied to collectibles (like Pokemon cards), faced a chaotic Token Generation Event (TGE). Issues ranged from partial refunds to a sudden, last-minute pivot to Solana, leaving investors confused and the token price plummeting immediately upon launch.

The Lack of Guardrails

The panelists noted that in traditional finance, intermediaries like JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs provide a layer of "bullshit filtering" and structural assurance during a public offering. In crypto, founders are often left to their own devices, or worse, surrounded by sycophants.

"It's completely insane. Like, how is it that we can't figure out a [expletive] way to sell tokens to people and not have it just blow up immediately? We did this before twice. We did ICOs, then we did IDOs, and now we're running back ICOs... and we still cannot get this right."

The discussion highlighted a troubling trend where projects engage Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) to generate hype without proper disclosure. When the hype cycle breaks—as it did with Trove—the retail participants are often the ones left holding the bag, while the project and its insiders navigate the fallout with varying degrees of transparency.

Complexity in Derivatives

Beyond the launch mechanics, the product itself—perpetuals for illiquid real-world assets—poses significant challenges. Creating a futures market for fragmented assets like collectible cards requires robust oracles and liquidity. Without these, the market becomes highly susceptible to manipulation, where a single actor can artificially pump the floor price of the underlying asset to liquidate positions in the derivatives market.

InfoFi, Spam, and the "Yapper" Purge

A major topic of discussion was the recent crackdown by X on "InfoFi" sectors—ecosystems where users farm engagement for tokens. The platform "nuked" entire communities, including the "Yapper" community which boasted nearly 160,000 accounts. This move effectively killed the business model of monetizing low-quality social replies.

The Economic Failure of Paid Engagement

The hosts argued that this outcome was inevitable. History suggests that adding direct financial incentives to communication channels (similar to proposals to charge for email to stop spam) often creates perverse outcomes. Instead of filtering for quality, it filters for those who can monetize the noise—namely, spammers and scammers.

"The idea that you just write three random words under every tweet and hope that that works is kind of wild. Stop incentivizing people to be bots on the internet."

While the purge is a blow to those farming these ecosystems, the panelists viewed X’s intervention as bullish for the platform itself. It signals that X is actively monitoring the crypto-subculture and cares enough about the user experience to remove extractive elements that make genuine conversation impossible.

Security Evolution: Address Poisoning

As on-chain activity spikes, so do sophisticated attacks. The group discussed "address poisoning," a technique where scammers send small amounts of crypto (or zero-value token transfers) to a user's wallet from an address that looks nearly identical to one the user frequently interacts with. The goal is to trick the user into copying the scammer's address from their transaction history during a future transfer.

The Danger of Test Transactions

Counter-intuitively, the hosts warned that the standard advice of sending a "test transaction" can sometimes backfire in this specific threat environment. Sophisticated bots monitor the mempool for test transactions and immediately "poison" the sender's wallet, hoping the user will copy the wrong address for the subsequent large transfer.

To mitigate this, users are advised to:

• Use address books and whitelisting features within wallets.
• Utilize ENS (Ethereum Name Service) names where possible.
• Never copy-paste addresses blindly from transaction history (block explorers or wallet logs).
• Verify the address on a secondary trusted source or "scratch pad" rather than relying on recent activity logs.

The Shift from "Code is Law" to Pragmatism

The conversation concluded with a philosophical shift regarding the immutability of blockchains. Citing the recent rollback by Paradex following a botched database migration, the hosts noted that the industry's stance on "Code is Law" has softened significantly.

Moral Obligation to Fix

In the early days of crypto, immutability was treated as a religious tenet. However, as the industry matures, a more pragmatic approach is taking hold. If a project is centralized enough to perform a rollback or a fix that saves users from a catastrophic loss—and they choose not to do so under the guise of "decentralization theater"—it is increasingly viewed as a failure of leadership rather than a commitment to principles.

"If you can fix a mistake that impacts everyone and you don't attempt to fix it, then I will never use this thing again... If you do all these mental gymnastics to morally justify not taking an obviously good action, you're not good at building."

The consensus is that while true decentralization is the goal, the interim reality involves varying degrees of centralized control (like admin keys or upgradeable contracts). In this transitional phase, protecting user funds and ensuring functional products must take precedence over dogmatic adherence to immutability.

Conclusion

As we look toward the rest of 2026, the crypto landscape remains a mix of high-speed innovation and recurring pitfalls. Whether it is the struggle to conduct a clean token launch or the battle against engagement farming on social media, the market is still learning painful lessons. However, the willingness of major platforms to curate quality and the shift among builders toward pragmatic security measures suggests a slow but steady march toward a more mature ecosystem.