Derivatives exchange Aevo is offering pre-market trading for its upcoming token, set to air on March 13.
Aevo, an exchange focused on options and perpetual futures trading, operates on its Layer 2 network on Ethereum. The exchange has seen significant growth in pre-market token trading in recent months and has used this as a way to increase awareness of the platform.
What’s different in this case is that Aevo will offer its token for pre-market trading, which could be a first in the crypto space.
“Pre-launch presentation of $AEVO. Take a position on where AEVO will be when the airdrop takes place by March 13,” the exchange said posted on X.
The offer was received with some skepticism. Parsec Finance founder Will Sheehan questioned whether it was appropriate for an exchange to list pre-market trading for its own token and called the idea unhinged. Others simply said“What?”
Pre-market trading allows traders to speculate on the future price of the token once it goes live, allowing airdrop recipients to lock in prices.
Regarding internal controls, Aevo co-founder Julian Koh said the exchange is prohibiting employees from trading their token on the pre-launch market. He added that the exchange has not shared any information with investors or insiders about the listing price.
Prior to the airdrop, Aevo also offered pre-farming, where traders would receive a larger boost for their airdrop depending on the level of their trading volume.
A small community assignment
The token will be dropped to the community on March 13. Yet its distribution has come under fire for being too limited. While the first crypto airdrops gave away more than 60% of their supply, recent crypto airdrops have reduced that to around 7% – while Aevo is giving away less than 5%.
On the Discord server, Aevo’s community manager – an employee of the Aevo company – fought back against this criticism. They said that while the allocation is small, its effective size depends on the price.
“A weak $AEVO will reduce the airdrop; a strong $AEVO will make the airdrop huge. We are all committed to just raising the price, I think we can agree on this, right?” said the community manager known as Babbala.
They added that the decision to give more tokens to Binance than the community was positive as this exposure would be good for the price of the token.
Aevo declined to comment on the reports.
After the token launch
In addition to the airdrop, the platform plans to open up its Layer 2 network to other applications. It uses an optimistic layer 2 combination created using the Conduit combination platform. It plans to use Celestia for the availability of data, so that transaction costs remain low and space is created for other protocols to build on them.
“Our plan is actually to open this up to others [developers] and build an ecosystem around our exchange.” Julian Koh, co-founder of Ribbon Finance, told The Block in a recent interview.
Aevo also plans to continue offering returns. In the first quarter of this year, it plans to launch return strategies, which will allow the platform’s users to place their crypto in various setups designed to generate returns.
The evolution from Ribbon Finance to Aevo
Originally part of the DeFi project Ribbon Finance, which has its own token, Aevo will allow a 1:1 conversion of Ribbon tokens for Aevo tokens as they become available.
In 2022, Ribbon emerged as a notable DeFi protocol, especially in the decentralized options market. Developed as an extension of Ribbon Finance, Aevo focuses on scaling decentralized options through its own Layer 2 app chain, which initially offered options and later expanded to include perpetuals.
