megaETH is a disguised ICO, why is there so much controversy in the community? – PANews

Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author: Golem

megaETH, a real-time blockchain focused on improving Ethereum performance, announced today that it will soon launch a new NFT series: The Fluffle. The total number of this NFT series is 10,000, the whitelist price is 1ETH, and it is a non-tradable and non-transferable SBT (Soul Bound Token). The rights and interests of NFT holders include a future 5% token distribution, 50% can be unlocked on the TGE day, and the rest will be unlocked linearly within 6 months. The whitelist details have not yet been announced, but users can currently check whether they are eligible for the whitelist on the official website .

megaETH is one of the popular Ethereum expansion solutions in this round. On June 27, 2024, it completed a $20 million seed round of financing, and received financial support from institutions and celebrities such as Dragonfly, Robot Ventures, Folius Ventures and Vitalik Buterin. In December 2024, it conducted a community round of financing on the Echo platform, completing the $10 million financing target within 3 minutes, and its valuation has exceeded $200 million.

However, the NFT sale launched by megaETH has caused heated controversy in the community. On the one hand, some players believe that the odds of this fundraising are extremely high and actively accept whitelists off-site. On the other hand, some players question whether megaETH is a disguised ICO and is harvesting the community in advance before the bull market ends. So who is more reasonable? Odaily Planet Daily will sort out the views of both parties in this article for readers’ reference, and it is not intended as any investment advice.

Proponent: The valuation is reasonable and worth participating in

There is no doubt that the highlight of megaETH’s The Fluffle series of NFTs lies in the future 5% token airdrop allocation. Therefore, the community generally regards it as a “shell coin sale” activity. The project party that successfully sells the tokens will receive 10,000 ETH, which is approximately US$27 million at this stage (if ETH does not fall). If the FDV of the tokens is calculated based on the 5% airdrop ratio, it will be US$540 million.

If the previously raised $30 million is added, megaETH’s total financing will reach $57 million. Based on the general token valuation of 20 times the financing amount, megaETH’s FDV is only $1.14 billion.

But whether it is the FDV of $540 million calculated based on NFT pricing or the FDV of $1.14 billion estimated based on the financing amount, community players who support megaETH believe that the valuation is still within a reasonable range and has a potential return of at least 10 times. After all, compared with the FDV of the previous popular Ethereum expansion schemes TEG, such as ZKsync ($4.2 billion), Starknet ($19.5 billion) and Blast ($2.7 billion), megaETH’s current FDV is indeed not high, and is even still lower than Starknet’s current circulating market value of $660 million.

ABCDE Venture co-founder BMAN published an article to support megaETH : “They could have raised more funds, but they rejected the VC’s $1 billion offer and chose to use the retro ICO method to give tokens to more communities. I believe this is an attractive opportunity for liquidity, and it is also the most asymmetric opportunity in recent times. As an investor, I am very happy that Ethereum has returned to the simple, retro ICO era.”

enzoblue, a team member of the NFT project CyberKongz, even made a bold statement : if there are people who don’t want to be on the whitelist, feel free to DM them.

Some community players have also seen through the reason why megaETH is “selling coins through a backdoor listing”. On the one hand, the use of SBT can avoid the speculation of NFT in the secondary market; on the other hand, it clearly defines NFT as a “collectible”, which reasonably avoids legal risks and gives the private placement price, which is almost the same as VC, to the community in the form of NFT. In the face of community doubts, megaETH co-founder Bing Xiong also said frankly ; “We can’t directly give the token ICO to the community. We can only lower the valuation in this way and give it to the community in the form of NFT. Whether people buy it depends on their own valuation of the project.”

Opposition: The main network has not been moved, and the harvest is premature

Of course, in this cryptocurrency world where truth and falsehood are mixed and innocence depends entirely on eloquence, if you want to understand the real thoughts of the project owner, you can’t just look at what he says. Therefore, some community players have questioned megaETH, believing that in the current market environment, the valuation of $540 million is still too high, and the project owner is selling coins before the mainnet is launched in order to reap the profits in advance by taking advantage of the sufficient liquidity in the bull market.

During this cycle, the market is generally filled with the phenomenon that the project party’s coin issuance/listing is the end. A large number of projects even stopped operating directly after issuing coins and making profits, and they only hope that the tokens will be unlocked as soon as possible. With the lessons learned from the past, megaETH’s disguised ICO took place before the main network was launched, and the real product has not yet been launched. After the funds are in hand, will there be motivation to continue the subsequent development? Is the product worthy of the current valuation? These questions are inevitably worrying. After all, in the current situation of imperfect supervision, the highest constraint rule for Web3 project parties is their own moral level. Build first or money first?

Chinese-speaking KOL Feng Mi published a long article questioning megaETH’s NFT sales event. He said that MegaETH does not really care about the community experience. If it really cares, it should distribute tokens through a fair mechanism (such as game contributions, activity rewards, and even NFT staking). The project party seems to be opposed to the “meaningless airdrop points system”, but in fact it is just finding an excuse to justify its direct sale of coins.

KOL Feng Wuxiang also wrote a post expressing his concerns about the subsequent airdrop ratio of MegaETH. After all, since ancient times, hard-working players have never been able to beat the big spenders. He also said that compared to Monad, which is still engaged in ecological construction and attaches importance to ecological activities, MegaETH obtains funds through ICO and does not even need CEX to provide liquidity for exit. Such a new paradigm may not be a good thing for the industry.