The Solana blockchain-powered Mango Markets, a decentralized exchange or DEX, recently raised just over $70.5 million in a token sale, which lasted for 24 hours. At a certain level, the contribution of buyers for 500 million tokens was more than $500 million, which hinted at the company’s valuation at the time to be around $10 billion.
U.S. investors, however, were barred from the sale, most likely because the participation of U.S. buyers would have landed Mango Markets in a legal soup with the American authorities taking an increasingly hostile stance towards cryptocurrencies in general. Once the grace interval of 24 hours had elapsed, most funds were eliminated. However, the sale still retained $70.5 million, which made it one of DeFi’s largest seed-funding raises.
The Mango Markets platform offers on-chain selling and buying, along with the trade of spot and futures. It’s a lending platform as well, and it sources liquidity from Serum and its personal swimming pools. The serum is also a Solana-powered trade. The total amount of the raised funds will go to the insurance coverage fund of the decentralized autonomous group. One of the biggest plus points for Mango Markets during the token sale was that the transaction charges were low.
If the average deposit from 527,000 unique wallets was $1,000 during the peak of the Total Value Locked (TVL), the transfer fees amounted to only $100 or three Solana tokens. If you compare that with Ethereum considering gas prices at present, the transfer fees would have been around a whopping $5.27 million.
