Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Golem ( @web3_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 1 ETH, 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 allocation, 50% can be unlocked on the same day by TEG, 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 that 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 megaETHs The Fluffle series of NFTs lies in the future 5% token airdrop allocation, so the community generally regards it as a shell coin sale activity. The project party that successfully sells the token will receive 10,000 ETH, which is approximately US$27 million at this stage (if ETH does not fall). If the FDV of the token is calculated based on the 5% airdrop ratio, it is US$540 million.
If the previously raised $30 million is added, megaETH’s total financing amount reaches $57 million. Calculated based on the general token estimate that it is 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 VCs $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 also saw through the reason why megaETH sold coins through a backdoor listing. On the one hand, the use of SBT can avoid NFT speculation 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 . We cannot directly give tokens to the community through ICO. We can only lower the valuation and give it to the community in the form of NFT. Whether people buy it or not 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 issues coins/lists coins as the end. A large number of projects even stop operating directly after issuing coins and making profits, and they just hope that the tokens will be unlocked as soon as possible. With the lessons learned from the past, megaETHs 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 Fengmi published a long article questioning megaETHs 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, the 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.
