Lightspeed Newsletter: Anatomy of a token launch

by Margarita Armstrong

Hello!

Right this moment’s Lightspeed is a exiguous bit shorter, on legend of the US place of enterprise being closed for Memorial Day.

Confidently you’re soaking in a exiguous little bit of sun this present day. And if any recent or extinct contributors of the militia occur to be finding out this, thank you for your provider!


High FDV, low drift, no dice

Whereas you must to per chance indulge in to kick a crypto founder or VC into fight or flight mode, quiz him about his low drift, high utterly diluted valuation (FDV) token delivery.

The on-line fragment of the crypto world has been blaming these styles of token launches — the assign aside the amount of before all the pieces on hand tokens is exiguous, and the total offer is plentiful — on lackluster returns that purportedly revenue insiders for some newly-circulating cash. Boiled down, some allege that inflated FDVs are making it complex for retail traders to capture any upside.

One chart has been making the rounds exhibiting a plentiful majority of most in trend Binance listings seeing worth declines in recent months.

The prodigious crypto poster cobie opined on the topic at size, concluding that original token launches are “uninvestable” attributable to “the privatization of worth discovery and unhealthy inflated valuations from VC markets that ignore offer and quiz.”

In the VC nook, Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi argued that original token prices are in actuality down because unhealthy resources became most incessantly much less beautiful when instability flared up in the Heart East.

In Solana land, the assign aside token launches had been a immense driver of DeFi negate in recent months, it’s unclear how mighty of an scenario this all is. Jito and Jupiter’s tokens were among the many rare few to worship in worth following their Binance checklist no subject having FDVs in the billions, per CoinGecko. Serene, the Solana ecosystem token PYTH declined put up its early February checklist, per the aforementioned chart.

I spoke with David Lu, core contributor at Drift Labs, about the perpetuals DEX’s airdrop from final week. DRIFT launched with 17% of its whole offer circulating, Lu mentioned, including that many tokens delivery with nearer to 10% in circulation.

Lu mentioned this build Drift’s community on a more degree playing field with insiders.

“The high FDV correct advantages VCs and insiders and in truth hurts of us because your right customers can no longer rob half. And I judge at some level the tune stops, and as soon as your community leaves, that’s it for your project,” Lu mentioned.

DRIFT’s worth has climbed over the final week, even though its substitute listings were a exiguous little bit of staggered, and I gained’t yelp to know causally why the fee is up.

However perchance there’s no silver bullet to warding off most tokens dumping after delivery. If making the token worth straggle up was as soon as as easy as punching numbers in in yet any other plot, wouldn’t every person be doing it?

— Jack Kubinec

One honest DM

A message from David Lu, core contributor at Drift Labs:

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