Ramp, builder of crypto payment rails, raises $70M

Published

2 years ago

November 9, 2022

The company is building payment rails that could make crypto purchases as ubiquitous as Paypal transactions.

What is a sealed-bid token launch?

Published

6 minutes ago

May 3, 2025

What are the various methods for launching crypto tokens?

Launching a new token is a critical step for any blockchain project. Token launches enable projects to offer their native assets to early users, investors or supporters while securing capital or encouraging community growth.

From initial coin offerings (ICOs) to fair launches and airdrops, each approach carries different levels of transparency, accessibility and risk. Since projects differ in their goals and target communities, several token launch models have evolved over time.

Some focus on decentralization and wide community offering, while others aim for optimized fundraising or targeted allocation. Elements such as market swings, bot interference and regulatory pressures influence how tokens are brought to the market.

The sealed-bid token launch is a growing trend in this crypto fundraising landscape. Unlike public presales or airdrops, where participants see pricing or allocation terms in advance, sealed-bid models keep each bid confidential until the process ends. This approach is increasingly favored for enabling better price discovery, limiting front-running and curbing manipulation, especially for in-demand tokens.

Did you know? Sealed-bid auctions are a crypto twist on traditional finance. They have been used for government bond sales and initial public offerings (IPOs). Now they are redefining token launches by hiding bidder-related information and transparency.

Sealed-bid token launch, explained

A sealed-bid token launch is a method of distributing cryptocurrency tokens where participants submit private bids without knowing what others are offering. This approach, derived from traditional sealed-bid auctions, involves participants offering secret bids, and the highest bidder typically wins.

Auction systems, such as sealed-bid launches, are increasingly built on blockchain platforms like Ethereum, using privacy-enhancing technologies such as Zama’s fhEVM (fully homomorphic Ethereum Virtual Machine) to ensure confidentiality and fairness. Unlike open auctions, where public visibility can escalate prices through bidding wars, sealed-bid formats prevent strategic bidding based on competitors’ actions. In crypto, a sealed-bid token launch leads to fair and transparent token allocation, minimizing price manipulation and front-running.

Systems enforce a single bid per participant by leveraging cryptographic techniques like commitments and smart contract logic to prevent multiple bids and enforce payment obligations. Each participant specifies desired token quantities and prices. After the bidding window closes, bids are revealed and assessed using predefined rules, like clearing prices or allocation tiers. This method often reduces bot interference and promotes equitable access during high-demand launches.

A key feature of a sealed-bid token launch is its “one-shot” bidding process. Bidders cannot revise their offers or view others’ bids beforehand, which sets up a level playing field. However, it also brings in strategic uncertainty, as participants must estimate optimal bids without cues about other bids.

In April 2024, Conor McGregor fundraised for his memecoin REAL using a sealed-bid launch. The mixed martial arts icon introduced the fundraising through a sealed-bid token auction to prevent bots and snipers from manipulating the sale. The project hoped to promote transparency and integrity in a space often plagued by front-running and rug pulls.

While the project didn’t disclose token lock-up details, the sealed-bid format and focus on long-term engagement suggest a strategic attempt to execute a transparent and more community-driven launch.

How do sealed-bid token launches work?

Sealed-bid token launches follow a structured process that minimizes the chances of manipulation and ensures transparency. Here is how the process usually unfolds:

Step 1 (Project announcement): The crypto project typically announces the sealed-bid token sale through its official website, social media channels like X, or platforms like Binance Launchpad. It outlines details such as the number of tokens available, bidding timeline, minimum and maximum bid limits, and the process of token allocation.Step 2 (Private bid submission): Participants submit bids to an auctioneer on the platform by providing secret bids before a deadline. Each bid includes the desired token quantity and the offered price. Participants cannot view other bids, ensuring privacy and reducing strategic manipulation.Step 3 (Bid locking): Once submitted, all bids are locked. This prevents users from changing or withdrawing their bids, reinforcing transparency.Step 4 (Token allocation): Post deadline, the smart contract processes all bids. Tokens are distributed either to the highest bidders or through a pricing model like a clearing price or a tiered allocation. Lower bids may receive a partial allocation or a refund.

In McGregor’s fundraising, participants submitted private bids in USDC (USDC) during a limited 28-hour window without knowing what others were offering. Once the auction closed, bids were ranked, and tokens were allocated to the highest bidders until the supply ran out.

Such auction systems function on a smart contract that ranks all offers, calculates the cutoff price, and allocates tokens to qualifying bidders. Excess funds are refunded automatically. This onchain process eliminates the need for intermediaries, offering immutability and trustless execution.

Advantages of sealed-bid token launches

Sealed-bid token launches offer an alternative to other models of token sales. This format has gained popularity in crypto, thanks to its potential to create more balanced token distribution and pricing.

Transparency: While individual bids remain hidden during the process, all bids and allocations are revealed after the deadline via smart contracts. This ensures onchain verifiability and trust.Reduces gas wars and front-running: Unlike first-come-first-served launches where users race to submit transactions, sealed bids are submitted over a set period. It reduces congestion and the risk of bots exploiting faster access.Encourages fairer price discovery: Since bids are placed without seeing other offers, participants bid based on perceived token value. This mechanism leads to a more organic price that reflects market demand rather than hype or manipulation.Minimizes whale dominance: Sealed bids make it harder for large players to take tokens by simply outbidding small participants in real-time. Prevents manipulation: By removing live price visibility, sealed-bid launches reduce the chances of orchestrated pump-and-dump behavior. It discourages collusion of bidders or biased decisions on the part of the project.Did you know? Sealed-bid launches may evolve with decentralized identity tools. A world might emerge where only verified wallets can bid — combining privacy, fairness and compliance in one go.

Risks and limitations of sealed-bid tokens

Although sealed-bid token launches introduce a range of benefits, they also entail various risks and compromises.

These issues can affect both project teams and participants:

Opacity at the initial stage: Since bids remain confidential until the sale concludes, some users might feel lost, unaware of what other people are bidding.Complexity: Sealed-bid auctions can be complex and less transparent to average investors. This complexity may deter participation, especially from those unfamiliar with such mechanisms.Less suitable for small-cap projects: Small-cap projects generally lack an established community. Moreover, small-cap projects rely on viral marketing and word-of-mouth to gain traction, but the closed environment of sealed-bid auctions can dampen momentum.Blockchain-specific risks: As the whole process is executed onchain by a smart contract, blockchain-specific risks such as malfunctioning code and an attacker breaching the network are always present.Risk of underfunding: If the project doesn’t attract enough competitive bids, which is common with lesser-known tokens, it may fall short of funding goals. McGregor’s REAL could raise only 39% of its target.

The REAL memecoin, backed by McGregor and launched through a sealed-bid auction, failed to meet its fundraising target, securing only $392,315 — approximately 39% of its $1.008 million goal. Several external factors played a significant role in this outcome. Several external factors contributed significantly to this outcome.

Chief among them was the broader downturn in the cryptocurrency market, which coincided with the token’s launch and led to a generally risk-averse investment environment. This was compounded by growing skepticism toward memecoins, as investors became increasingly wary following a series of high-profile scams and failed projects in the space.

The celebrity endorsement, while attention-grabbing, may have also backfired — many investors viewed McGregor’s involvement as superficial and questioned the project’s long-term credibility.

Additionally, the token’s design raised red flags, particularly its 12-hour unlock window, which resembled patterns seen in pump-and-dump schemes. A lack of transparent communication and insufficient community engagement further weakened investor confidence.

While the sealed-bid auction format is designed to ensure fairness and reduce manipulation, its complexity may have posed a barrier to broader participation, particularly among retail investors unfamiliar with the mechanism.

Use cases of sealed-bid tokens in crypto and future potential

Sealed-bid token launches offer a unique approach to fair token distribution. These launches are gaining attention as an alternative to traditional public sales or airdrops. Their design ensures privacy and minimizes manipulation during high-demand token sales.

Here are some prominent use cases of sealed-bid tokens in crypto that reflect their future potential:

DAO fundraising and decentralized launchpads: Sealed bids can enhance transparency in fundraising campaigns by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), thus boosting their credibility. The sealed-bid format reduces front-running and increases trust. Future decentralized launchpads may adopt similar systems to build credibility and avoid hype-driven token launches.KYC and identity integration: As compliance becomes more critical, sealed-bid systems could integrate with Know Your Customer (KYC) or digital identity verification layers. This would allow only verified participants to bid, reducing Sybil attacks and increasing regulatory confidence. Such integration could attract institutional investors and expand access to compliant, fair token sales.Effective for scarce supply tokens: Sealed-bid auctions are most effective when distributing tokens with limited supply. By hiding bid amounts until the auction ends, this method encourages genuine price discovery and prevents bots or whales from dominating the sale.

As the crypto space matures, sealed-bid launches may become a standard for transparent and inclusive fundraising.

Coin Market

Deribit eyes US expansion under crypto-friendly Trump admin: FT

Published

2 hours ago

May 3, 2025

Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange, is weighing an entry into the US market, encouraged by what it sees as a friendlier regulatory climate under President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a recent Financial Times report.

The Dubai-based exchange, which processed $1.3 trillion in notional volume last year, is “actively reassessing potential opportunities” in the United States, CEO Luuk Strijers told the FT.

He cited the “recent shift toward a more favorable regulatory stance on crypto in the US” as a key motivator behind the decision.

Deribit’s potential plan to expand into the US comes amid reports that Coinbase is in advanced negotiations to acquire the platform.

In a March 21 report, Bloomberg said both companies have notified regulators in Dubai, where Deribit is licensed. If the deal is finalized, the license would need to be transferred to Coinbase.

The move comes as competitors like Kraken also pursue growth in the derivatives space, with its recent $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader.

Bitcoin perps on Deribit. Source: Deribit

Report: Deribit options exchange is evaluating buyout offers: Report

Crypto firms target US expansion

Deribit joins a growing list of European and Asian crypto firms exploring US expansion.

The shift comes after a period of regulatory hostility during the Biden administration, following the collapse of FTX in late 2022.

That era saw an aggressive crackdown from the SEC and DOJ, prompting many firms to withdraw from US operations. However, the narrative appears to be shifting under Trump, who has pledged to “make the US the crypto capital of the world.”

Since Trump’s election victory, the SEC has dropped or paused over a dozen enforcement cases against crypto companies.

Additionally, the Department of Justice recently announced the dissolution of its cryptocurrency enforcement unit, signaling a softer approach to the sector.

This hands-on approach appears to be boosting industry confidence.

OKX, for example, has announced plans to establish a US headquarters in San Jose, California, just months after settling a $504 million case with US authorities.

On April 28, Nexo, which left the US at the end of 2022 citing a lack of regulatory clarity, revealed that it is reentering the US market.

Switzerland’s Wintermute and Dubai’s DWF Labs are among other major crypto players that have shown interest in exploring US expansion.

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Coin Market

Over 70 crypto firms join forces to tackle big tech’s AI monopoly

Published

3 hours ago

May 3, 2025

In a move that hopes to challenge Big Tech’s grip on artificial intelligence, AI agent protocol Thinkagents.ai has launched a new open-source framework for building onchain agents that operate autonomously across decentralized networks.

While traditional systems aim to restrict data ownership and platform abilities for their users, Thinkagents.ai is creating an interoperable ecosystem owned and controlled by its users. For Mike Anderson, core contributor at THINK, the Think Agent Standard is the future of AI.

Anderson and his team developed the Think Agent Standard to enable millions of autonomous onchain AI agents to transact and communicate. The protocol now has over 70 companies, like Arbitrum and Yuga Labs, on board to help out.

The platform is now live, allowing developers, enterprises and Web3 communities to experiment with the framework.

“There was always this idea that it’s so much harder to [build AI] and so much more expensive when you have to build a thousand custom ways of doing it,” Anderson said during an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. “By standardizing demand — the way people want to receive AI — you can get the whole market to line up because they want customers, and getting customers in AI is really difficult.”

Following the release of Meta’s Llama 2 a few years ago, Anderson and his team decided that if the future of decentralized AI ever manifested, they needed to ensure that consumers could easily use graphic processing units (GPUs) without spending billions of dollars.

“We watched as this whole ecosystem started to grow, with people saying, ’I’m going to build this part of the stack,’ and others saying they’ll ‘build that part of the stack,” almost as if Amazon Web Services (AWS) showed up with each department, with one saying they’ll do the data and another saying they’ll do the networking,” Anderson said.

We found that the problem isn’t having enough builders, it’s aligning them around an actual use case.Mike Anderson, core contributor at THINK. Source: THINK

Developing the AI standard

The Think Agent Standard was launched by THINK protocol, in partnership with the Independent AI Institute, with the initial use case around Anderson and his team defining an AI agent (a place on a blockchain that has access to a computer and can make decisions), and the AI agents playing the video game Street Fighter 3 against each other. The use case brought nine different companies to work together for an audience of 30,000 viewers last summer.

That validated the idea that we could unite all of these infrastructure companies, provide a better product to customers, and do it in a way where users owned their information, data, keys, and encryption.

Because if owning and controlling AI agents is to remain in the hands of users, the decentralized AI agent platforms need to be simple, user-intuitive, well-designed and deliver on a user experience that could have changed the way we use and understand social media.

“Imagine if we’d had the foresight in 2003 to see social media as a way to organize our lives,” Anderson said. “Instead of having accounts on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, what if we had a standard where your accounts follow you—where all of your data and everything you’d posted in the past is something you’re providing to them. It’s a very different thing if users owned their accounts and data and could have opted into seeing ads where they would benefit from them. That’s what we’re building.”

The future of AI agents

Just as the ERC-20 standard enabled the tokenized economy, the Think Agent Standard introduces a modular, permissionless and composable system that allows AI agents to function as sovereign digital entities: Owning wallets, interacting with smart contracts and transacting seamlessly across every blockchain.

Each Think agent is powered by Non-Fungible Intelligence™ (NFI), a digital identity layer that establishes ownership, memory, and authentication, with the core genome palette residing on The Root Network and subsequent layers deployed to any connected network natively.

The agents are composed of three core elements: The Soul (NFI), which provides a persistent, self-sovereign identity; the Mind, which governs behavior and decision-making; and the Body, which allows interaction across platforms and environments.

The first platform built on the Think Agent Standard is SOULS, a personal AI agent that users can own, train and customize. SOULS connects to thousands of open-source applications and evolves over time by integrating the best available intelligence without compromising user privacy or ownership.

Leading organizations in gaming, infrastructure and generative AI, including Yuga Labs, Futureverse, Alchemy, Render, Venice.ai and Magic Eden, are actively integrating the standard into real-world applications, further validating its potential across use cases.

“AI agents are the new interface to technology,” Anderson said. “What we’ve been able to do successfully is partner with consumer brands — like Bored Ape Yacht Club — to actually have distribution into a consumer’s end point, and we’ve been able to build all the systems so that they can actually access consumers.”

We’re helping people transition to the AI age by owning their intelligence instead of renting it from someone else.

For Anderson, a personal AI agent is like a personal dashboard that acts as an extension of your real self. If the information contained within your AI agent were to leak, the results could be personally catastrophic. That’s why Think is standardizing the system the agent can interact with, backed by cryptography, no matter what chain the agent is on. If a safe and successful standard exists within the user-owned AI agent industry, big tech will have a harder time controlling it.

It’s why users can own their data through their Think agent, eliminating the need for their data to be copied and live on some external third-party server. In this way, Think agents also hope to address the issue around data ownership by putting users in control of who they share their information with.

“When a social company goes out of business, all of that data gets sold to the highest bidder,” Anderson said. “23andMe is the most egregious example of this. They didn’t give you your DNA data and then delete it from their servers, their business model was actually to sell your data to others. Now, who knows who the highest bidder is. Is it an insurance company? The Chinese government? Who is it? Your data exhaust is more valuable than your DNA.”

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