2025 TGE Annual Report: Over 80% of 118 projects fell below their issue price; the higher the FDV, the more severe the decline.

Author: Memento Research

Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News

Data as of December 20, 2025. Metric: Percentage change since TGE's inception, calculated as Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) + Market Capitalization (MC).

summary

We tracked 118 token issuances in 2025, and the results were appalling:

• 84.7% (100 out of 118 projects) of the tokens were priced below their initial coin offering (TGE) valuation, meaning that about four-fifths of the projects were operating at a loss.
• Median performance: Since its inception, the fully diluted valuation (FDV) has fallen by 71.1%, and the market capitalization (MC) has fallen by 66.8%.
• The “average” masks the grim truth: while the equally weighted portfolio (calculated by FDV) fell by about 33.3%, the portfolio weighted by FDV fell by as much as 61.5%, which is even worse (meaning that those large, hyped projects performed even worse).
• Of the 118 projects, only 18 (15.3%) saw price increases (marked in "green"): the median increase for rising tokens was 109.7% (approximately 2.1 times), while the remaining 100 projects all saw price decreases (marked in "red"), with the median decrease for falling tokens being 76.8%.

Distribution of Declines in Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV)

Current situation summary:

• Only 15% of tokens are still priced above their initial coin offering (TGE) valuation;
• Up to 65% of token issuance projects saw their prices fall by more than 50% compared to the TGE issuance price, with 51% of these projects experiencing a drop of over 70%.

Projects and their relative performance by category in 2025

In 2025, token issuance projects will primarily focus on two major areas—Infra and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will account for 60% of all new token issuances. However, the average and median returns for each category differ significantly, which warrants attention.

Data Interpretation:

• The main theme of the industry in 2025 was the rise of perpetual contract decentralized exchanges (Perp DEX), represented by Hyperliquid, with Aster also successfully launching in the fourth quarter. Although the sample size of this category is small and the median is still negative, perpetual contract decentralized exchanges (average increase of 213%) can be considered "a class of winners".
• The sample size for gaming projects is too small to draw meaningful conclusions, and they are significantly affected by a single outlier—resulting in an average increase but a median decrease of 86%.
• Decentralized finance (DeFi) is the sector with the highest "hit rate" (32% of projects rose), and this sector is more about "survival of the fittest" than the emergence of "blockbuster projects";
• The infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors are crowded with projects, highly competitive, and performing poorly, with median declines of 72% and 82% respectively.

Relevance of Initial Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) to Project Performance

The clearest conclusion from the data:

• There are 28 token offerings with an initial fully diluted valuation (FDV) of ≥1 billion USD;
• Currently, the prices of all these projects have fallen (the increase rate is 0%), with a median drop of approximately 81%.
• This also explains why the FDV-weighted index (down 61.5%) performed far worse than the equally weighted index (down 33.3%) – the lackluster performance of major launches dragged down the market throughout the year.

Key points:

The project's initial valuation was set too high, far exceeding its fair value, which led to its poor long-term performance and even greater decline.

2025 Retrospect and Outlook

The following conclusions can be drawn from the above data:

• For most tokens, token generation events (TGEs) tend to be "worse entry points," with a median price performance of "around 70% decline."
• Token Generation Events (TGE) are no longer an "early entry window." For projects that are overhyped but have weak fundamentals, TGE may even represent the "top" of the price.
• Projects launched with high initial FDV did not "grow to a level that matches their valuations"; instead, their pricing was significantly reduced.
• History repeats itself in surprising ways: most TGE projects are concentrated in the infrastructure sector (and there are also many artificial intelligence projects due to the current AI bubble), but these sectors are precisely the hardest hit by losses.
• If you plan to participate in TGE investments, you are essentially "betting that you can find rare outlier projects," because, based on basic probability, most projects perform very poorly.

If we divide the 2025 market according to the quartiles of initial FDV, the pattern becomes very clear: token issuance projects with the lowest initial FDV and the cheapest pricing are the only category with a considerable survival rate (40% of projects rose), and their median decline was also relatively mild (about -26%); while all projects with initial FDV above the median level were basically repriced to the bottom, with a median decline between -70% and -83%, and almost no projects achieved an increase.

Therefore, a key lesson can be learned from this dataset: the token generation activity (TGE) in 2025 is a "valuation reset period" - most token prices continue to fall, with only a very few outlier projects achieving an increase; and the higher the FDV at the time of the initial offering, the greater the final drop.