Did you manage to run your node? You must publish your public key using the witness_register contract.

To create tokens you must pay with ECH tokens, no STEEM are required to use the sidechain transactions.

Edit: added some more instructions in the readme, you can find more informations about the fees to create tokens, farms, nfts etc here: https://github.com/FutureShockco/echelon/blob/main/src/config.ts#L25
Those values can be changed with a softfork, using the history records and only requiring a restart (if all witnesses decides to do so).