How Not to Launch a Blockchain
Introduction: lessons from the frontlines of Blockchain infrastructure
At HighTower, we’ve been living and breathing blockchain infrastructure since the early days — long before “validator” became a buzzword.
Our journey began with running a personal Ethereum miner back in the early GPU days. Then came our own Ethereum mining pool — a project that taught us the hard way about uptime, consensus bugs, and community coordination. From there, we gradually shifted to supporting the earliest Proof-of-Stake networks, often validating testnets before the word “staking” had even gone mainstream.
We’ve been in the room — virtually and literally — for some of the biggest moments in blockchain history:
- We watched Ethereum Classic emerge from the DAO fork and helped users switch networks in real time.
- We saw Chinese ASIC manufacturers flood the market with hardware that redefined mining economics overnight.
- We’ve experienced Slashing penalties firsthand — and rebuilt our monitoring stack from the ground up as a result.
- We’ve joined chaotic Genesis ceremonies, raced to synchronize nodes under pressure, debugged broken Tendermint setups, and stood by as otherwise-promising networks collapsed from a simple misconfiguration.
- We’ve helped projects survive node centralization attacks, chain halts, and even governance coups.
- We’ve participated in the early launch waves of Cosmos, Polkadot, Avalanche, Solana, Sui, and many more — from both the testnet and mainnet trenches.
After nearly a decade of running infrastructure, we’ve seen it all: from flawless, well-planned launches to absolute trainwrecks that could have been avoided with just a few more days of prep.
Today, we’re distilling some of that experience — especially around network launches — into practical, honest insight. No fluff, no hype. Just the real issues we’ve encountered and the lessons we believe every protocol team should internalize before going live.
Mistakes by Polygon, Mina, Secret, and Evmos — Lessons from Sui and Osmosis
Launching a blockchain isn’t just a technical milestone — it’s a moment of truth. The decisions made in the days, weeks, and even minutes before mainnet can determine whether a project takes off or collapses under its own complexity. From broken documentation to poor validator onboarding, we’ve seen even well-funded and visionary projects stumble at the start.
This article breaks down common pitfalls from real blockchain launches — and showcases two projects that did it right.
❌ What Went Wrong: Real Mistakes from Real Projects
🔶 Polygon (Ethereum sidechain)
- Fragmented Documentation: Key setup instructions were split across GitHub READMEs, outdated blog posts on Medium, and scattered wiki pages.
- No Architectural Overview: New validators couldn’t understand how Heimdall and Bor interacted — or why it mattered.
- Unclear Node Types: Terms like “sentry,” “validator,” and “archive node” were used without clear definitions or setup guides.
- Conflict Between Commands: Step-by-step instructions often contradicted each other or were deprecated.
Many early validators failed to get their nodes online, and relied on informal Discord threads for help.
🔶 Secret Network (Cosmos SDK + SGX)
- SGX Left Undocumented: The network’s signature feature — hardware-based privacy via Intel SGX — had little to no guidance.
- Debugging Was a Black Box: If your node failed, you were on your own. Logs were cryptic, and troubleshooting guides were nonexistent.
- No Internal Testing of Docs: The team hadn’t tested the full validator setup from scratch using their own docs.
Result: Potential contributors gave up, and network health suffered in the early stages.
🔶 Mina Protocol
- Overly Academic Docs: Most documentation read like a cryptography paper — great for researchers, useless for node operators.
- No “Quick Start” Path: There was no 5-minute setup guide. You had to install OCaml, compile custom binaries, and navigate CLI hell.
- No Automation: Everything was manual, with no Docker support or even shell scripts.
Result: Even seasoned engineers struggled to set up a node, discouraging validator participation.
🔶Evmos
- Moving Targets: Commands changed constantly, but docs lagged behind.
- Deprecated Guides: Old tutorials remained online and were indexed by Google, leading newcomers astray.
- No Migration Help: Configuration changes between testnet versions weren’t explained or documented.
- EVM Confusion: Integration of Ethereum-compatible tooling wasn’t well explained or tested.
Result: Frustrated validators and a fragmented community, with many abandoning the setup midway.
✅ Who Did It Right: Lessons from Sui and Osmosis
🔷 Sui (Mysten Labs)
- Role-Based Documentation: Clear separation for different audiences — validator, developer, staker, community.
- Unified Configs: A single
validator.yamlcontrolled all settings. No guesswork required. - Automated Setup: Scripts like
sui-deployer.shhandled everything from key generation to launching services. - DevOps Integration: Full support for Docker, Ansible, systemd, Prometheus, and Grafana out of the box.
- Internal Testing: Every guide was tested from scratch before publishing.
Result: Validators could launch nodes in under 30 minutes, even without prior Cosmos or Rust experience.
🔷 Osmosis (Cosmos SDK)
- Minimal Friction: Quick start guides with exact versions, file names, and copy-paste commands.
- Active Community: Fast support via Discord and GitHub Issues, often directly from core contributors.
- Well-Maintained Repos: Genesis files, snapshots, and config templates were easily accessible and verified.
- Tooling Support: Third-party scripts for health checks, syncing, and monitoring were promoted by the core team.
Result: Osmosis grew a healthy validator community with minimal churn and consistent network uptime from day one.
🚨 The Common Denominators of a Bad Launch
Based on these case studies, here are the patterns we consistently see in failed or painful blockchain launches:
🧠 How to Launch Right: A Checklist
Before you announce your mainnet date, ask yourself:
✅ Is every validator step tested from scratch on a clean VM?
✅ Is all configuration managed via a single template file?
✅ Are your instructions role-based and version-locked?
✅ Is there a script to go from zero to online in one command?
✅ Do you have monitoring and health-check tools bundled?
✅ Do you have 24/7 coordination during the launch window?
✅ Is your community ready to answer questions better than your devs?
📌 Bonus Tip: Run a Dry Launch
A private dry-run with 5–10 friendly validators one week before mainnet can surface 80% of the issues. Use it to:
- Simulate real-world setup conditions
- Time each setup step
- Test resilience (node failure recovery, resyncing, etc.)
- Collect feedback on documentation clarity
- Stress-test the Genesis ceremony and initial staking logic
Final Thoughts
The blockchain space has no shortage of brilliant engineers — but poor launch execution kills projects faster than any technical limitation.
I’ve seen $100M+ protocols falter at genesis because validators couldn’t follow broken docs. Networks that took years to build crashed within hours of launch due to simple configuration issues.
Your codebase might be revolutionary, but if validators can’t run it reliably, none of that matters. The truth is harsh but clear: how you launch determines whether your chain survives its first 48 hours.
Learn from Sui and Osmosis: automate the tedious parts, document with real examples, and never assume operators know what you know.
The most successful protocols aren’t just technically sound — they’re operationally bulletproof.
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