The claim process — checklist for the morning of TGE

The morning of Token Generation Event (TGE) is the highest-risk moment in the entire presale lifecycle for retail. More money is lost to phishing on TGE day than to bad presales themselves.

Use this checklist.

Day before TGE

1. Find the official claim URL. From the project’s original domain — the one you’ve been using since the presale. Bookmark it in your browser. Verify the URL character by character.

2. Set up a fresh claim wallet. A brand-new MetaMask or Phantom wallet, never used before. Fund it with only enough native token for gas. Don’t connect this wallet to any other site.

3. Practice the connect flow. Visit the bookmarked URL, connect the empty wallet, walk through the UI. Don’t sign anything. Familiarize yourself with what the legitimate flow looks like.

4. Disable email notifications. TGE morning is when fake “claim is live” emails flood your inbox. Disabling notifications prevents you from clicking on autopilot.

TGE morning

5. Open the bookmarked URL only. Not from email. Not from Telegram. Not from X. The bookmark you saved yesterday from the original domain.

6. Verify the URL one more time in the browser address bar. Phishing clones often use lookalike domains (e.g. claim.project-finance.com vs claim.project.finance).

7. Connect your fresh claim wallet (not your main holdings wallet).

8. Read the transaction the wallet asks you to sign.

   What a legitimate claim transaction looks like:

   • Method: typically claim() or redeem() or similar with no parameters, or with the proof of your allocation as a parameter.
   • Contract: matches the address published by the project.
   • Token approvals: NONE. A claim should not require any token approvals — you’re receiving, not sending.

   Walk away if:

   • The transaction asks for setApprovalForAll on any token.
   • The transaction asks for approve on a token to a contract address you don’t recognize.
   • The transaction asks you to send (not just receive) any tokens.
   • The signed message contains permit for your other holdings.

9. Sign with your hardware wallet. Read the transaction on the device’s screen, not the computer’s screen. Confirm only if the on-device display matches what you expect.

10. Confirm the tokens arrived in the claim wallet. Check on the chain explorer (Etherscan, Solscan).

Post-claim

11. Don’t celebrate. Don’t post about the claim on social media. Don’t tell people your address. The next 48 hours have a lot of fake “support” DMs.

12. Move tokens to your real holdings wallet via an explicit transfer transaction. Send a small test amount first.

13. Revoke any approvals the claim contract may have left. Use revoke.cash. Even legitimate claims sometimes leave dangling approvals.

14. Bookmark and disconnect. Save the chain explorer link to your claim transaction; disconnect the claim wallet from the project’s site.

What to do if something goes wrong

If a transaction looks suspicious, don’t sign. Walk away from the desk for 10 minutes. Phishing pressure relies on TGE-morning urgency. There is no penalty for claiming an hour later. There is a 100% penalty for signing a malicious transaction.

If you’re unsure, post a screenshot of the transaction details (without signing) to a trusted community channel and ask. Better to look like a beginner than to be a victim.

If you’ve already signed something you shouldn’t have:

1. Move every other token in that wallet to a different wallet immediately.
2. Use revoke.cash to see what approvals exist; revoke them.
3. Document timestamps and transaction hashes.
4. Report to the chain’s anti-fraud channels — sometimes attackers’ funds get frozen at exchanges.
5. Don’t engage with anyone who DMs offering to “recover” your funds. They’re a second-stage scam.

The dedicated claim wallet — why this single discipline matters

Almost every retail loss on TGE day shares a structural feature: the user claimed using a wallet that already held other valuable tokens. The phished transaction then drained those other tokens.

A dedicated claim wallet — empty except for gas — converts a catastrophic phishing event into a near-zero-loss event. The phisher takes the gas. You learn a lesson. Your portfolio survives.

It feels like extra friction. It is. The friction is the entire point.

The honest summary

TGE morning is high-stakes and time-pressured. Use a fresh wallet. Use a bookmarked URL. Read every transaction on a hardware-wallet screen. Move tokens to your real wallet via explicit transfer. Revoke any approvals.

Do this every time and the worst plausible outcome on TGE day is “I lost the gas in the dedicated wallet”. That’s a survivable mistake. A drained main wallet is not.