Cetus DEX, a decentralized exchange built on Sui and Aptos, had its initial DEX offering (IDO) fundraising goal of 800,000 Sui (SUI) tokens oversubscribed in less than 30 seconds after going live on May 8. Over 6 million SUI, worth about $6.85 million at the time of writing, were committed to the IDO. The sale, which is set to run until May 10, offers 20 million Cetus tokens (CETUS) out of a total supply of 1 billion CETUS, and users can exchange 1 SUI for 25 CETUS. The public sale rules and token metrics value the Cetus DEX at $45.8 million.
The IDO has a hard cap of 800,000 SUI, and according to the developers, “Each purchaser’s final purchase amount accepted by the Seller will be a portion of their committed amount, calculated proportional to all the respective committed amounts from all purchasers in the IDO” when the total commitment surpasses this amount. While IDOs can surpass their fundraising goals due to popularity, others can also reach their targets on purpose. Investments in IDOs, like initial coin offerings, are considered high-risk and are susceptible to scams or lack of traction afterward.
Sui is a layer-1 blockchain created by former Meta executives. Its mainnet launched on May 3, with listings of its SUI token. Weeks before the launch of the Sui mainnet, the SUI public sale took place at an offering price of 0.1 USDT per SUI token. When SUI was officially listed, its price initially surged to $4.50 per token, resulting in a fully diluted market capitalization of $45 billion. However, the price fell drastically by 75% and was trading at $1.14 per token at the time of writing. Prior to the listing, Binance introduced Sui LaunchPools, which allowed users to stake BNB or TUSD for a limited supply of SUI rewards. The LaunchPools recorded a total value locked of almost $4 billion in just two days.
