There was an uproar in the Ethereum community after members noticed on Tuesday that mStable distributed 3.1M MTA to investors who bought the tokens at $0.15 days before they were listed compared with a listing price of $3.5. This would have granted them with instant liquidity that could have given them a 24X return just three days after the initial sale.
The team swiftly responded to the concerns and decided to take the tokens out of circulation for three months.
1/ We apologise sincerely for recent events.
Our community is mStable’s greatest asset and I hope the actions outlined below go some way to show how committed we are to this project and its community over the long-term.
Critics’ main concern was that early investors would immediately start cashing out in MTA, depressing the price. This was fueled by an actual price drop of about 25%.
In reality, though, it appears that sellers were traders reacting to the news that mStable had distributed the tokens to early investors, but weren’t the early investors themselves, according to on-chain data tracked by Dex Blue co-founder Angelo Ming.
Transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain are continuing to rise, making it more expensive to send transactions or use decentralized apps (dapps) on the network. And both critics and supporters of Ethereum have acknowledged the issue.
Transaction fees are measured in Gas and used to pay for operations on the network, such as transactions, smart contracts, decentralized applications and others. Most platforms running on Ethereum use it, so if gas prices rise, they become more costly to use.
Th...
MTA had its initial sale via an auction on the Mesa platform for a total of 2.66 million tokens, on Saturday. Two days after, the token that had been bought by investors for $0.15 was trading at $3.5.
Unclear Distribution
mStable’s team announced that the early investors who received the tokens spontaneously approached them and made a legally binding commitment to lock their tokens for three months. They committed to send the tokens back to the address from where they went sent within 24 hs and were also publicly supportive of mStable.
Even though mStable’s team had publicly announced that 2.8% of tokens would unlock from day one and 11% would unlock at Q3 (which included early investors), it was not clear that a whopping 3.1M would be ready to sell four days after the initial sale.
mStable apology
mStable’s team apologized stating that they hadn’t been transparent enough in communicating that the tokens would be unlocking during Q3, and not in the last month of Q3.
Additionally to locking the early investors’ tokens for three months, mStable’s CEO & cofounder, James Simpson, will start his vesting period within six months instead of three. The new and more granular vesting periods for both investors and the team have also been updated to provide more clarity.
Image source: mStable blog post
mStable committed to being fully transparent going forward and will announce when tokens are released publicly through their different channels.
While deals for early investors and vesting periods that spur fear of whales “dumping on retail” sounds very much like the ICO days one of the key difference with 2017, is that many projects already have products that deliver value and are seeking to distribute it among their communities by expanding the governance of their systems. In this case, there was no on-chain governance, but the community did speak out and the team responded accordingly.
[This story was written and edited by our friends at The Defiant, and also appeared in its daily email. The content platform focuses on decentralized finance and the open economy and is sharing stories we think will interest our readers. You can subscribe to it here.]
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Actor and noted crypto critic Ben McKenzie is set to make his directorial debut at SXSW London with the June premiere of his documentary, “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money,” according to a report by Deadline.
The documentary follows McKenzie—best known for roles on "The O.C." and "Gotham"—as he investigates the cryptocurrency world and interviews key figures, including during a trip to El Salvador to examine President Nayib Bukele's regime, which made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021.
“When I star...
Ethereum just lost one of its long-time institutional backers.
In a Thursday statement, algorithmic trading firm Two Prime announced it is dropping all exposure to Ethereum (ETH) and will exclusively manage and lend against Bitcoin (BTC) going forward, citing Ethereum’s unpredictable behavior, declining market momentum, and eroding institutional appeal.
Why Two Prime is Going BTC Only https://t.co/VtrQAUyGL0 pic.twitter.com/4BWVd8R7HM
— Two Prime (@Two_Prime) May 1, 2025
Two Prime didn’t say h...
Crypto asset manager 21Shares applied for an exchange-traded fund tracking the price of Sui, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
The 21Shares Sui ETF aims to broaden investors’ access to the native token of the layer-1 network designed for high-speed transactions, which has been dubbed by some as a “Solana Killer.”
The filing named Coinbase as a custodian to safeguard investors’ funds, according to the registration statement, but did not specify...