Editor's Note: This article comes from31QU（ID：blockchain31）Editor's Note: This article comes from
, author Guofeng, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Since 2019, with the popularity of IEOs on exchanges, incidents such as "the tokens of the project party have been snatched up" have begun to appear frequently.
Behind the grabbing of tokens, there are also complicated interest disputes involved. Through this method, many small exchanges either "scrambled" to get traffic, and made publicity for the project party. condemn.
So, what kind of substantive impact will this rushing phenomenon have on the project party? What benefits can the exchange gain? Are these tokens circulating on the exchange real tokens that can be withdrawn?
secondary title
grab tokens
The earliest relatively well-known "grabbing" case in the currency circle can be traced back to last year.
In June 2018, when Binance did not take the initiative to apply, the FCoin Innovation Zone opened the BNB/USDT trading pair. At the same time, Zhang Jian, the founder of FCoin, said in the circle of friends: "I personally admire Changpeng Zhao and Binance. FCoin launched BNB trading today."
Grabbing tokens refers to the act of preemptively listing the tokens of the project party without the consent of the project party and the designated exchange has not listed the tokens.
This became the case of the most influential exchange "grabbing" tokens at that time.
In August 2018, a similar incident happened again. At that time, the news that Tianya TYT points were listed on the exchange broke out, and the industry was in an uproar, and they all exclaimed that "big companies are finally going to issue coins and list them on the exchange." But later it turned out that Tianya TYT was just another token that was robbed. According to Tianya’s official statement, it did not apply to the exchange for listing, and even authorized any exchange to exchange TYT.
Different from the "encounter" of BNB and TYT, grabbing the IEO tokens of well-known exchanges has become one of the key means for many small and medium-sized exchanges to obtain traffic recently.
Since the beginning of 2019, the enthusiasm of investors has been aroused by the general "opening five times" effect of exchange IEOs. Those projects that are "selected" by the top exchanges can obtain huge traffic and transaction volume, and then attract a large number of currency holders to trade.
This includes Huobi's TOP, NEW, OKEx's Block Cloud and other recent IEO projects that have become more popular.
However, this kind of grabbing phenomenon is often met with joint resistance from project parties and exchanges.
Take Huobi’s first IEO project Top as an example. On March 25th, before Huobi Exchange was still building momentum for the first launch of TOP tokens, TOP tokens had already appeared in the transactions of several small exchanges. list.
Shortly after this situation occurred, the TOP official community urgently issued a risk warning statement, saying that early users, community members and private equity investors in the TOP community only reached cooperation with Huobi Global, and all circulating TOP tokens will be listed on Prime. Other organizations and individuals claiming to hold circulating TOP are not credible.
At the same time, Qi Ye, CEO of Huobi Global, also gave a special risk warning on the snatching of TOP tokens.
The statement issued by the project party and the exchange almost at the same time is enough to show that the two attach importance to the incident.
And the TOP token wasn’t the only one being snapped up. A similar phenomenon also happened to OKEx's first IEO project and Huobi's second IEO project NEW.
On April 9, 2019, the day before OKEx launched BLOC token trading, Lianxing Exchange snatched up BLOC tokens without the consent of the project party.
This move also led to a joint statement of boycott by the project party and the exchange.
Immediately afterwards, the tokens of BIBOX's IEO project The Force Protocol were also snatched up by four exchanges including Matcha, HOTBIT, Coinail, and Currency Exchange, and the person in charge of the Force Protocol project market reminded investors through different channels risk.
So, why are exchanges such as Matcha, Lianxing, HOTBIT, Coinail, and Currency so aggressively grabbing tokens, and what are the benefits and underlying reasons behind this?
secondary title
Grab the interests behind
"Under normal circumstances, there will be a whole set of exclusive procedures for listing on exchanges."
Wang Xin, a marketer at a cryptocurrency exchange registered in Singapore, said when he talked about the phenomenon of tokens being "snatched up" by exchanges.
According to Wang Xin, the formal process of listing a project on an exchange is as follows. The project party first submits an application for listing to the exchange, and then the exchange evaluates the project according to the internal review mechanism, and the project tokens that meet the evaluation requirements will be released. Approved to be listed on the exchange.
For example, according to public information inquiries, when Huobi launches tokens, it will review the encrypted currency through the SMARTChain model that the exchange is extremely optimistic about, so as to ensure the quality of the encrypted currency.
As far as most unknown projects are concerned, the exchange will definitely charge a listing fee. "After all, this is the exchange's way of making money, and the amount of fees depends on the market."
Some excerpts from Huobi Listing Rules: 1) Project submissions are complete and accurate; 2) No policy risk and meet professional and compliance requirements; 3) Meet SMARTChain blockchain asset rating requirements; 4) Strong team or community maintenance ;5) Projects with actual technical support or practical applications; 6) Project information that can be disclosed in a true and timely manner, including project white papers, regular development and progress reports; 7) Other requirements of the trading platform for online currency transactions.
"However, the exchange will not use this set of currency listing process on the project tokens that are "snatched up"." Wang Xin said, "Because the purpose of the exchange to grab the currency is not at all for the listing fee, it is entirely for Attract popularity and earn handling fees.”
The number of registered and active traders on the exchange is private data within the exchange, and we have no way of knowing, let alone how much traffic the exchange has attracted by grabbing tokens, but we may be able to get a glimpse of this issue through side information.
According to OKEx official data, on April 10, on the day of the IEO of the BLOC project, more than one million people participated in the project’s BLOC token reservation, which is enough to illustrate the popularity of the project.
"In contrast, some small exchanges may not have more than one million visits a year." Wang Xin told 31QU.
Webmaster Tools Statistics: The IP visits of the Matcha Exchange website on the day were 0.06 million
So, has the chain that snatched up the BLOC token "scraped" the traffic?
According to the latest statistics from the webmaster tool, the average daily IP visits to the official website of the exchange chain that grabbed BLOC tokens remained at around 15,000 before April, and after April (occurred before and after the BLOC project) ), the average daily visits have remained above 50,000.
This increased number of users, how much data belongs to the traffic attracted by the BLOC project? Although we have no way of knowing the exact data, it at least shows that "grabbing up" has brought real users and traffic to the chain, and these users have already accumulated and become part of the exchange users.
Webmaster Tool Statistics: The number of IP visits to the website of the Lianxing Exchange website on the day has remained at around 50,000 since April
At the same time, according to the data from the Lianxing website, as soon as BLOC was launched on the exchange on April 9, the transaction volume of more than tens of thousands of BLOC was obtained within 24 hours, and the transaction amount was as high as one million US dollars. Although the trading volume data cannot be compared with the OKEx website, compared with the trading volume of other project tokens on the exchange, it has become one of the tokens with the largest trading volume on the exchange that day.
However, from the perspective of the industry, the exchange’s act of grabbing tokens has been widely questioned by investors.
secondary title
voice of doubt
The most questioned question is the authenticity of tokens.
"The most effective way to verify the authenticity of tokens is to try to withdraw cash. If you can quickly and efficiently withdraw from the exchange, it means that the tokens are real." Wang Xin said.
In this regard, we specifically tried to withdraw BLOC tokens on the chain after the OKEx website opened BLOC transactions. The whole process is no different from the experience of withdrawing other ERC20 tokens.
At the same time, the withdrawal fee is also within the normal range.
But in the token NEW that Matcha grabbed, we encountered the exact opposite situation. After Huobi launched the trading of NEW tokens, when we tried to withdraw NEW on the Matcha Exchange, we encountered withdrawal delays and high handling fees.
"Under normal circumstances, the Ethereum ERC20 token withdrawal requires the Ethereum network to confirm 12 blocks, and it takes about 9 seconds for each block to be generated. The longest time required for such a transfer is no more than 2 minutes, unless the network is serious. Congestion, otherwise it will be an abnormal phenomenon if it exceeds this time." Wang Xin said.
And we tried to withdraw NEW on the Matcha Exchange, and the whole process took more than 2 hours.
Withdrawing 2,000 NEW actually used 1,000 NEW tokens as a handling fee. According to the market value of NEW at that time, it was about 11 US dollars, and the handling fee in other channels was only a few cents under normal circumstances.
"This is actually an obstacle artificially set up by the exchange to limit users' withdrawals," Wang Xin said.
People's doubts about the exchange's grabbing tokens also include the price issue.
In addition, the price of the tokens that have been robbed is often fired to a higher position by the exchange, which eventually leads to users being trapped and causing huge losses.
Take Block Cloud (BLOC), the first IEO project launched on OKEx, as an example. On April 9th, when Lianxing exchange grabbed BLOC tokens, the price of BLOC tokens was only 0.022 US dollars, and it has been in a sideways state at this position. However, after the listing of BLOC on OKEx, the opening price reached US$0.081. This allows users who "grab" chips on the chain before OKEx goes online to make a lot of money.
"The reason why the chain will set the price at 0.022 US dollars is because the price is about 4 times that of BLOC's IEO price on OKEX. As a result, OKEx opened directly to 17 times, which is unexpected by anyone." Wang Wang letter said
For the chain industry, this is a bit like "stealing chickens and losing money".
But the opposite happened when the Matcha Exchange grabbed NEW tokens.
In early April, the news that Huobi’s second IEO project was NEW spread like wildfire. As early as February, Matcha Exchange grabbed NEW. The exchange’s token price rose from around US$0.0025 to around US$0.0045. , and finally skyrocketed to $0.016. However, after the listing of NEW tokens on Huobi, the price of NEW has never reached a high of $0.016.
This is likely to cause huge losses to investors who bought NEW tokens at a high level.
The harm caused to investors in the secondary market may be prevaricated with words such as "the investor's strategy is wrong", but the negative impact on the project community after the currency is listed on the exchange is not so simple.
secondary title
epilogue
epilogue
Tokens are used as proof of the rights and interests of the project party, and their price performance plays a vital role in the success or failure of the project.
The exchange is a key node that represents the conversion of project tokens. For newly issued tokens, factors such as when to go to the exchange, which exchange to go to, and which exchanges to open will all play a role in the price performance of the token. Crucial role.
However, in order to obtain the traffic of popular projects, the exchange does not hesitate to forcibly list the tokens of the project party without the consent of the project party, so as to attract public attention and increase traffic for the exchange. The phenomenon is bound to disrupt the market and adversely affect the industry.
