To be prepared for investing and participating in project launches, there is a lot of research to do — thankfully– we are in the golden age of information.

This document deepdives, but if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, make sure to check out:

• Project tokenomics, team, investors, product roadmap, community and Social channels
• Watch videos, listen to podcasts, subscribe to Newsletters, learn everything you can and Google anything you don’t know
• Ask questions in project communities.
• Don’t be a Degen.
• Don’t trust anyone else’s research but your own.

This is the holy grail of Do Your Own Research ( DYOR).

Follow this and you will immediately be armed with the information you need to make better investment decisions.

Of course, not all of this is applicable, but it’s good to take note and understand what you should be looking for and why, when investing in projects.

This guide can be applied to all; assets, NFTs, DeFi products, staking, and even investment products on exchanges.

NB: There will always be meme coins — there is no amount of DYOR in this list that you can do that will prepare you for the potential price volatility of them, but hey, it’s all about the meme right?

How to thoroughly DYOR

1, Ask yourself - does the project you want to invest in add value? Here’s how to find out:

• Read the whitepaper and technical documentation front to back
• Look for points that show value for the community and users, is the token useful? If so, why?
• Don’t get something? Join their community and ask! A great opportunity to see how supportive and knowledgeable their admins are.
• Understand the Tokenomics- when you buy the token, will it be locked then paid out over a period of time? This is important to determine from day 1.

2. Project already live? Get on to places like CMC or CoinGecko and start checking metrics. Search for other similar projects or tokens to understand how their token metrics are different to and/or better.

3. Are they open source? If so, make sure to check the amount of times they are making changes to their code. With open source the benefit is that there is always room for improvement.

4. Is the project literally just a project token with no current product and an over promising roadmap? If so, speak to their community and developers to understand what is done yet and if you can try it out in Test Net.

5. Who is backing the project? Look for the investors and advisors. Google them! If they’re backing them, that usually means they have also done their own due diligence and think they’re worth investing their money and time in!

6. Research the project team. Check their Linkedin to to see their background, other projects they have worked in and their working experience. You can also see who wrote references about them.

7. Analyze everything.

• If what you are investing in is a cryptocurrency, look at the current supply.
• Understand the tokenomics and burn or vesting schedule if applicable.
• Find out the allocations and what they’re for, and understand if they have things like staking as an option post unlock.
• Utilize their Whitepaper and technical documentation for this information. At this stage, you can look at the current and future market cap and compare it to other projects. If it’s too high, the value will ultimately fall.
• Pay a lot of attention to the project roadmap, does it make sense and how far along are they? This is a good indicator of the team and their ability to meet deadlines.
• Check any old roadmaps to see if they achieved their goals and if not why?
• Scour through their social media channels and affiliated community groups, plus any non-official groups that are community-created. This will help you to understand the strategies used by the members and the sentiment.

8. Check a Block Explorer for more info. You could search for addresses that have the highest amount of transactions/ volume and you can ask the team about it. The reason for this is to understand what would happen to the token price if the team decided to raise money and cash out their holdings- no one wants a panic sell on their hands.

9. Looking to invest in a token whose sole purpose is governance (to vote on proposals)? Here’s what to focus on:

• Compare Market cap and TVL with competitor governance tokens. The higher the TVL ratio is, you could assume that it’s held mainly by Degens and speculators who are not necessarily going to utilize it for voting rights ( i.e will cash out when the token price is high enough for them).
• With Governance tokens, you want utility to be the value driver, not the price. The same applies to most project tokens too.

10. Is the project or product audited? If so, which third-party audited them?

11. Has there been any attempted or successful attacks or hacks? If so, how did the project react and survive afterward?

• Look for good examples like; increased audits, compensating user losses, filling attack gaps immediately, and pushing product and code updates.

12. If you have to lock or stake your token, check the withdrawal fees and see if you can hedge against it in any way.

13. When investing in a token, check to see which centralized exchanges you can buy and withdraw from. Most centralized exchanges do a ton of due diligence for listing ad want to protect users. Plus you want to be able to get out into fiat if you ever need to.

Now we have covered the main points, let’s focus on the absolute Do’s and Don’ts when doing your own research.

DON’TS:

1. NEVER invest in a cryptocurrency because your mate who made loads of money on a meme coin told you to. Always double or triple-check everything, and take every opinion with a pinch of salt.
2. YouTube KOL’s and Twitter influencers believe it or not are PAID to shill pointless tokens. Don’t believe any of them who obviously shill random projects with captions like “INSANE TOKEN 🚀 1000X IN 2 DAYS 😲”. Some of them even buy up heavy bags of low market cap tokens, shill them then dump them when their followers have bought them up. Again and again. Don’t believe the hype.
3. Do not, and we repeat, do not fall for organized ‘Pump and Dump’s’. These schemes usually involve heavy shilling on social channels with their list of tokens that will ‘go to the moon‘, create FOMO and then dump on their followers. Basically the same as the YouTubers but on a bigger, more organized scale.
4. Fail to ignore the calculations behind cryptocurrencies, prepare for disappointment. In DeFi, we see many newbies come along, lured in by a low price token with speculations about reaching the moon at 1000 x. In reality, crypto prices just don’t work that way. Use sites like this to help you calculate and better understand the ‘market cap potential’ of new tokens instead.

DO’s

1. To really be in line with a chance of becoming a crypto investor or trader, it’s very important to understand the basic terminology and lingo used in the industry first. This includes:

What is a Blockchain?

What is DeFi?

What’s staking?

What’s a liquidity pool?

What is a smart contract?

If you don’t know the answers to these, then start researching and make sure you understand the industry first. Also, we suggest reading The Bitcoin Whitepaper before you move forward.

2. Once you know which crypto, asset, or protocol you want to research, start looking at their competitor (for example, if you are researching Polygon, you could look at other chains like Binance Smart Chain, Solana, Avalanche and start by comparing their crypto’s and protocol with the one you are looking to invest in.

3. Look at what’s wrong with the crypto or token you’re looking to invest in, what are it’s weaknesses and why?.

• Does it lack utility or adoption? Is there any indication of how long that will take? What are the blockers?
• If it’s a protocol token, what’s the plan- what version are they at, and if they haven’t fulfilled the roadmap, why?
• Is it too centralized? If so, is there a plan to make it decentralized? When will that plan be complete and how will it become so?
• Is there enough capital to keep developers building? If not, developers may abandon the project.

4. Our favorite tip, always Google “[insert coin name] scam” and team members and investors whilst you’re at it. If something comes up, try to find out what the real deal is.

5. Do a full deep dive on the Developer team. Are they Anon? Are they even real people with a social footprint?

We hope this guide is useful for your investment journey. If so, please share with your community, friends, family, and anyone who happens to come to you asking ‘should I invest in [enter memecoin] or not?’

Stay safe guys.