Presale
In short A presale is a round where a project sells its tokens to early buyers, usually at a fixed price, before they trade publicly on any exchange.
A presale is a sale of tokens before they are listed on any exchange. Buyers send funds such as ETH, BNB, SOL, or stablecoins, and receive the tokens later, either at launch or according to a vesting schedule. The project uses the money for development, marketing, and often to seed the liquidity pool.
Presales run in a few ways. Some happen through a launchpad that holds the raised funds in a contract, enforces a soft cap and hard cap, and automatically adds part of the proceeds as liquidity when the sale ends. Others are run from the project's own website, where you send funds to a contract or simply to a wallet and trust the team to deliver tokens. Prices may be fixed or rise in stages, and access is sometimes limited to a whitelist.
Presales appeal because buyers get in before the public, at a price meant to be lower than the listing price. The risks are serious, though. Your money is locked up while the team holds it, the launch can be delayed indefinitely, and some presales are outright scams that never deliver tokens. Even honest ones often list below the presale price because many buyers sell immediately, especially if the raise was large compared with the liquidity added.
Check where the funds go, whether the contract is audited, and whether the team is known in any meaningful way. Read how much of the raise goes into liquidity, whether that liquidity will be locked, and when presale tokens unlock. Be very wary of presales sold through heavy paid ads, influencer pushes, or countdown timers that pressure you to send funds quickly.