A certain industry heavyweight recently made another shocking statement, directly laying out the hidden rules of the game: “Truly outstanding projects never have to pull strings to get listed; it’s actually the exchanges scrambling to approach them.”

This sounds great, but it’s also a harsh truth. Just look at how many projects nowadays haven’t even built a product demo or have zero users, yet throw huge sums just to buy a listing spot. And what happens? On launch day, trading volume is artificially high, but three days later it drops to zero, turning into a complete ghost town.

So where’s the problem?

Many project teams complain that “listing fees are too expensive,” but to be honest—it’s not about the cost, it’s that your project itself isn’t presentable. For those projects with real potential, exchanges are actually afraid of moving too slowly and letting other platforms list first, losing out on all the traffic. That’s how real the market is.

The core logic is actually simple: Stop focusing on exchanges all the time—get users on your side first.

In a decentralized world, you make your own rules. Think centralized exchanges charge too much? Go to a DEX—nobody’s stopping you. Take a top DEX for example: they never charge listing fees, yet their trading volume still takes off—because users care about value, not how much you spent to buy your ticket in.

When it comes to exchange listings, there are basically three models:
First: Fully open. Any coin can list, but scam projects flood in, and users get burned hard.
Second: Highly selective. Paid reviews—using money as a filter to weed out at least the worst actors.
Third: Hybrid models. Deposits, tiered listings, Web3 zones… plenty of variations, but at the core, it’s all about balancing safety and profit.

So stop fixating on listing fees.

What should project teams do? Focus on perfecting your product, building your ecosystem, and gaining real users.
What should exchanges do? Carefully vet projects, protect retail investors, and don’t let bad coins drive out the good.

Listing fees are just a business tactic—not the key to survival. What really determines success or failure is whether your project makes exchanges feel: “If we don’t list your coin, we’ll miss the next big wave.”

That’s the brutal truth: strong projects generate their own buzz; weak projects can beg all they want and still get nowhere.

What do you think? Have you seen any cases where projects bought their way onto exchanges only to end up dead in the water?