How to Participate in a Polkastarter IDO

First things first. In order to participate in an IDO or Private Sale on Polkastarter you need to get allowlisted. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to get allowlisted.

Tip: Got +50k POLS Power? You're automatically allowlisted if you apply and pass the KYC. Get your $POLS here.

Step 1: Learn about upcoming sales

Since launching Polkastarter in 2021, the absolute easiest way to learn about upcoming sales (IDOs and Private Sales) is on our website. Just keep an eye out for new “Upcoming IDOs” on polkastarter.com and follow their status right there.

The new Project Pages on our website include everything you need to know about our current Polkastars and upcoming projects. You can dive into the product, the team, the roadmap, understand their business models better and a lot more in between, making your discovery process easier than ever.

Another great way to learn about upcoming Polkastarter sales is on our socials. Keep up with our X and Telegram for announcements, and check in regularly to our blog for more information.

Step 2: Find a project and apply to allowlist

Once you’ve found an upcoming IDO or Private Sale you’d like to participate in, the next step is for you to get allowlisted, meaning your address will be eligible to participate in the sale. Each project will have a bucket of addresses from which they will choose at random a smaller group of addresses to become allowlisted.

You will be able to do everything having to do with allowlisting (discovery, info, application) directly on our website.

There are three ways to become eligible for allowlisting:

Hold POLS in your wallet for a minimum of 7 days; or
Hold POLS liquidity provider tokens from Uniswap or PancakeSwap for a minimum of 7 days; or
Stake POLS on our dashboard. This grants access to allowlist eligibility on the same day but locks your tokens for 7 days instead.

POLS Power

The metric to determine your chances of getting drafted is called POLS Power. Any source ($POLS in wallet, staked $POLS, or LP tokens) counts towards your POLS Power. You need to have at least 1,000 POLS Power to qualify for allowlisting. For every 250 POLS Power you collect, you have one lottery entry in every allowlist you apply for.

So, if you have, for example, 3,000 POLS Power, you will have 12 tickets to your name when you submit your address to be allowlisted. Because projects choose allowlisted addresses at random, the more tickets you have, the greater your chance of being selected.

POLS Power can be combined from your funds on both Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Need more POLS Power? Get to know how to buy $POLS here.

⚠️ NOTE: You’re not exchanging $POLS for tickets; the number of $POLS you own simply represents “tickets” for the allowlisting process. You can only win once in every lottery, and more tickets equals a higher chance of winning.

POLS Tiers

To further incentivize holding and staking the $POLS token, not only do you receive tickets for every 250 POLS Power you accumulate, but the more tickets you have, the more they are worth. We have 5 different POLS Power tiers as outlined below.

1,000+ POLS Power = Every ticket is worth 1.1 tickets
3,000+ POLS Power = Every ticket is worth 1.15 tickets
10,000+ POLS Power = Every ticket is worth 1.20 tickets
30,000+ POLS Power = Every ticket is worth 1.25 tickets & No Cooldown
50,000+ POLS Power = Guaranteed Allowlist Spot & No Cooldown. Get to know more here!

⚠️ NOTE: All $POLS, held in your wallet or staked, as well as LP tokens, are combined from both, Ethereum and BNB Chain, into one POLS Power balance.

No Cooldown means you can get selected for as many sales as you’d like, whenever you’d like.

Providing Liquidity

If you provide liquidity to the ETH-POLS pool on Uniswap or on BNB-POLS on PancakeSwap, your LP tokens will also be counted towards your overall POLS Power. Each ETH-POLS LP token is the equivalent of 100 POLS. Each BNB-POLS LP token is the equivalent of 20 POLS. Therefore, the 1,000 POLS required for a ticket is equal to 10 LP tokens and 50 LP tokens respectively (subject to change).

➡️ Can I hold LPs and $POLS for combined POLS Power? Yes! As long as your $POLS and your LP tokens are in the same wallet (even across chains), they will each generate tickets to increase your chances of successful allowlisting.

Do I have to allowlist for each separate project? Is there a universal Polkastarter allowlist? Yes, you have to get allowlisted for each separate project’s sales. But since early 2024, you only have to complete the KYC once.

If I want to participate with a BSC wallet but have my $POLS on Ethereum, is that possible? Yes, you can hold $POLS on either your Ethereum or BSC wallet and participate in any sale on Polkastarter (if you are allowlisted).

Two more important things to note about $POLS, tickets, and allowlists:

1) You’re not exchanging $POLS for tickets; the amount of POLS Power you own just represents “tickets” for the allowlisting process.
2) Each address can only be selected once for a project allowlist (i.e. you can’t get double your allocation if your address is drawn twice, the duplicate just won’t count)

Staking

Our new staking feature is available on Ethereum and BSC and enables holders to stake their tokens on-chain, instead of keeping them in their wallets, bringing about a number of benefits:

Clarity if you are eligible to participate in a sale or not
Eligible on the same day after staking your $POLS (up to 6h update time)
Instead of waiting for 7 days until you're eligible, your $POLS will be locked for 7 days instead
After that, withdraw any time if you'd like

Step 3: Submit KYC and Participate in the sale

Once you’ve submitted your allowlist application, you will need to wait for the allowlist window to close and for the team to process all the requests. After all applications have been processed, the project team will provide the eligible and fully verified applicants list (who have passed KYC) to Polkastarter. Polkastarter then conducts a final allowlist lottery based on everybody’s POLS Power.

Since February 2024, we introduced one-time KYC, so you don't have to repeat the verification again after passing the KYC - learn more here.

Since March 2024, we advanced to a guaranteed allocation sale system, under which you can be selected for one of the 2 pools: Guaranteed or FCFS. Learn more here.

Once KYC is completed and you're allowlisted to join a sale, you can prepare following the steps described in this blog.

The Cooldown Period

If you successfully participate in a sale, the wallet you used to purchase the tokens will be placed on a cooldown period of 7 days. During those 7 days, you will not be selected in the lottery for another sale. This is to ensure fairness across the ecosystem. Remember that $POLS need to be held for a minimum of 7 days, or staked, to become eligible. This is to avoid gamification of our system. All details on Cooldown can be found here.

The cooldown period only applies to members who successfully participate in an IDO - i.e. exchange funds for the project’s token. If a participant is successfully allowlisted but for one reason or another does not participate successfully in the sale, no cooldown period is implemented, and they can immediately reapply for an allowlist spot in another project.

And that’s it!

If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ll know the allowlisting rules were different a few weeks ago. If you’re interested in learning more about that switch, see here.

About Polkastarter
Polkastarter is the leading early-stage fundraising protocol enabling web3’s most innovative projects to kick-start their journey and grow their communities. Polkastarter allows its users to make research-based decisions to participate in high-potential public sales.