From a $350M pre-market valuation to a "no token" shutdown: StandX falls on the eve of TGE

Original author: Sanqing, Foresight News

On October 15, perpetual contract DEX StandX announced on Twitter that it would not conduct a token issuance, opting instead for a one-time DUSD airdrop to the community, and the platform would gradually cease operations. On October 13, StandX had listed on the Aspecta pre-market, with its implied fully diluted valuation (FDV) briefly approaching $350 million. At the time, many users participating in the points program believed that a token launch was imminent. Following the announcement, the pre-market price of StandX on Aspecta immediately dropped by approximately 98.8%.

CEO AG subsequently posted that, without external capital, StandX's TVL had peaked at $200 million, but still fell short of the expectation to enter the industry's top three; given current fundamentals, the project "could indeed continue to issue a token," but if it cannot deliver long-term value and instead profits through token issuance and short-term speculation, that would be "leaving the cost to users and the community." Co-founder Justin, who had been silent for over eight months, also tweeted, saying "I'm sorry we couldn't make everyone money."

The KOL Round Refunded in Batches, and the Long-Silent Team

StandX initially attracted the market through its team's credentials. Among the three co-founders, current CEO AG once oversaw Binance's entire futures business, Justin served as Binance's head of futures growth, and another came from Goldman Sachs' trading systems team. According to a previous interview with the co-founders, the team joined Binance in March 2019, launched Binance Futures half a year later, and surpassed BitMEX in trading volume in the first half of the following year. With this background, StandX barely needed any promotion when it debuted a year ago.

On the financing side, official documentation states the project was entirely self-funded and did not accept any external investment. However, according to longtime Discord users, StandX held a KOL-only funding round about a year ago.

While the exact amount and valuation of the KOL round remain unknown to outsiders, some insiders revealed certain details: X user @pinkkbuny stated that the protocol had originally agreed to fully refund principal before the TGE, and that they had already received their refund months ago; @Grampe466 said they knew last year that the KOL round was being refunded in batches, and another batch was refunded this year; @QiYib5, who claims to have participated, denied the narrative of "KOLs collectively pressuring the team," attributing it instead to internal team issues.

Meanwhile, the project roadmap was repeatedly pushed back. When DUSD launched in April 2025, Perps trading was originally planned for July, but the Alpha test only opened in October, and the mainnet went live on November 24; the market maker program had promised 5 million StandX tokens per month, but the token has yet to be issued; in May of this year, the team indicated that the TGE might be completed within the year.

Alongside the roadmap delays was the prolonged silence of core members. Prior to this official announcement, Justin's last original tweet was on December 8, 2025, and his last public reply to a user was on February 5, 2026, with no activity since; CEO AG's last tweet was on September 3, and the official Discord announcement was last updated on September 28.

Since mid-September, longtime users had publicly called on the CEO to address tokenomics. After refund rumors intensified, the community repeatedly tagged administrators on Discord demanding an explanation, only to receive the same response: "Please wait for the official announcement," with moderators stating that their work was guided by the same principle. It was not until the October 15 announcement that the two co-founders finally broke their silence.

According to crypto KOL Sea's account of a call with the project team that day, the team believed that the time and opportunity cost of continuing operations was significant, and that "a short pain is better than a prolonged one." He also mentioned that the KOL round principal had been fully refunded in April of this year, and participants would receive a small additional DUSD airdrop based on their contribution level.

Points Halved Twice, 27x High Turnover Fails to Retain Real Positions

Over the past year, StandX's points rules were rewritten several times. During the pre-deposit phase, holding 1 DUSD earned 1 point per day; during the Alpha phase, this was raised to 1.2 points, and during the Thanksgiving period after mainnet launch, it was boosted to 1.5x. On December 10, 2025, trading points went live with retroactive calculation, and on the first day, combined with a 10% points bonus from Binance Wallet, StandX's single-day trading volume exceeded $81 million. In January 2026, the platform introduced Maker Points, where orders placed for more than 3 seconds earned points even without execution, followed by Loser Points based on losses.

After the intensive buildup, points distribution was rapidly tightened. On May 24, emissions for trading, Maker, and position points were simultaneously halved; on August 10, they were halved again, which the official team described as the final adjustment. After two halvings, holding 1 DUSD earned only 0.3 points per day.

As points became increasingly difficult to earn, the core redemption rules were never clearly explained. StandX's official points page only lists current rates and describes the points program as an acceleration period toward the "next major milestone," without disclosing the total points supply, network-wide emissions, campaign deadline, or the proportion of the airdrop relative to total token supply.

These questions ultimately went unanswered. According to the shutdown announcement, StandX will no longer issue a token, and the airdrop will instead be a one-time DUSD distribution with no lock-up period, calculated based on dimensions including pre-deposits, Alpha, mainnet trading, market making, and referrals, subject to sybil and wash trading screening, with abnormal accounts potentially having their allocations adjusted or canceled. Airdrop funds come from the project's surplus on its books and AG's personal contribution, and all DUSD yield ceased as of October 15.

Faced with long-unfulfilled expectations, capital reacted directly. Before the announcement, according to DefiLlama data, StandX's TVL had fallen from a peak of $107 million in January of this year to approximately $22.8 million on October 15, a decline of 79%; after SIP-2 position yield launched in April, open interest (OI) briefly rose to $72.1 million, subsequently declining continuously to $13.6 million.

Unlike the sharp contraction in positions, StandX's trading volume did not shrink proportionally, still reaching $11.17 billion in the past 30 days, with average daily turnover of about 27x. Since points could be earned even without order execution, the cost of wash trading was kept very low, but this high trading volume driven by rules ultimately failed to retain real capital positions.

Peer Competitors All Completed TGEs, StandX Caught in a Bind

Rewinding to late 2025, the projects most frequently discussed alongside StandX were Aster, Lighter, and edgeX. The community generally considered these the projects worth focusing on at the time, and especially liked to compare StandX with Aster, which was also on BNB Chain.

In less than a year, the outcomes of these projects have diverged. Aster completed its TGE on September 17, 2025, Lighter issued its token at the end of 2025, and edgeX also completed its TGE on March 31, 2026. Only StandX remained stuck in the points phase and ultimately abandoned its token issuance.

Those who already issued tokens are now widening the gap through protocol revenue.

According to DefiLlama data, leading Perp DEX Hyperliquid generated approximately $71.6 million in protocol revenue over the past 30 days, with OI of about $7.77 billion; HYPE rose from about $54 in late July to an all-time high of $97.96 on September 23, a gain of about 80%; Lighter uses protocol revenue to buy back LIT, with about $4.85 million in revenue over the past 30 days and OI of about $730 million; LIT rose from about $2.2 in early August to about $5.3 in late September, a gain of about 1.4x. Actual revenue and buybacks provided an anchor for token pricing, and the market was willing to pay for this kind of growth.

At the same time, a batch of newcomers is also squeezing into the space with new approaches and clear airdrop expectations.

Variational adopts a zero-fee request-for-quote (RFQ) model on Arbitrum, incorporating stocks and commodities into contracts, and has announced plans for a Q4 2026 TGE, with daily trading volume of about $3.9 billion, surpassing Aster; Arcus, incubated by dYdX Labs and connected to Robinhood Chain, focuses on 24/7 tokenized stock trading; Extended is sprinting with one final trading competition before its token launch, with a total prize pool of 250,000 USDC.

These new projects still have their points and airdrop incentives ahead of them, while StandX, whose points have already been halved twice, is caught in the middle, lacking both the protocol revenue of first movers and the early-stage mechanism appeal.

This predicament is directly reflected in position data. According to DefiLlama data, as of October 15, the OI of Variational, Arcus, and Extended was approximately $1.03 billion, $99 million, and $100 million respectively, all more than 7 times that of StandX, and growing by about 24%, 462%, and 15% respectively over the past 30 days.

In contrast, StandX's OI was only $13.6 million, down 54% over the same period. Although StandX still had $11.17 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days, higher than Arcus's $8.36 billion and Extended's $6.92 billion, this advantage was mainly supported by high turnover, and its trading volume over the past 24 hours had dropped to about $116 million, less than one-third of Arcus's.

From a product mechanism perspective, StandX is not without its highlights. DUSD yield-bearing margin and SIP-5 permissionless market creation both have some distinctiveness, and the official team also claimed that its daily trading volume in June once entered the top four among Perp DEXs, and that its gold contract depth in August exceeded Hyperliquid's. But the turnover rate tells the real story: Hyperliquid and Aster have average daily turnover of around 1x, most newcomers are at 2 to 3x, while StandX is at about 27x. The platform's trading volume is more driven by points and did not accumulate retained capital.

Before the announcement, the community had already split. On Discord, users holding points were still spamming "stand," urging everyone to ignore FUD; large holders and longtime users kept pressing the team on why it had been absent for so long. There was also a clear information gap between the Chinese and English communities, with English users attributing the rumors to Chinese KOLs stirring the pot, while the Chinese community was spreading refund news.

After the announcement, some users in the comments expressed understanding, saying that "the bar for building projects is getting higher and higher now"; many others expressed dissatisfaction with the official team's earlier suggestive tweets.

StandX stated that the platform had served over 237,000 users cumulatively, with peak TVL exceeding $200 million, and no fund security incidents occurred during operations. AG said that most of the past revenue had been subsidized to users through SIP-2 and SIP-3. According to crypto KOL Sea's account, the project team said StandX was operating at a loss during its operation, with revenue mainly coming from fees contributed by "airdrop farming" users, and costs mainly from team salaries and servers.

According to the announcement, StandX perpetual contracts will switch to reduce-only mode on October 20, remaining positions will be closed at mark price on January 15, 2027, and DUSD redemption and withdrawals will close on January 31. Airdrop queries will open on October 26 at 08:00, with the claiming window from November 1 at 08:00 to December 31 at 16:00, and unclaimed amounts will be considered forfeited.