Status spent seven years building a killer product, now with over a million users. They bootstrapped it with funds raised from an ICO in 2017, selling a token called $SNT. Unlike many projects, Status is still alive and thriving. It’s ranked in GitHub’s top 10, shipping a solid product, even though the token itself had a slow fade. Now, imagine this happening with other promising projects. They ship crazy products, capture massive traction, but the token dies out. Why? Because they didn’t treat the token as a separate product. That’s the nuance—and it’s a critical detail many miss.