Public sale buyers haven’t received their tokens yet, and the price has already dropped 97%: Space crashes on opening day
- Core View: The Solana-based leverage prediction market project Space (token: SPC) saw its market cap plummet over 97% from a peak of $83 million after trading launched on April 29. Public sale participants were unable to trade as the project failed to distribute tokens on time, leading to accusations of a “soft rug pull.”
- Key Elements:
- SPC’s market cap hit $83 million at the opening on launch day, then fell to $2.13 million the same day, a drop of over 97%. As of April 30, the market cap was around $5.5 million.
- Public sale participants reported that exchanges began trading before their tokens were distributed, preventing them from selling during the price crash and locking them in at high prices.
- SPC has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, with 51% allocated to the community pool. However, the sell-off after launch primarily came from insiders, market makers, or other groups that received tokens early.
- The project once completed a $3 million seed round, positioning itself as a prediction market on Solana supporting 10x leverage, with 50% of protocol revenue allocated to buybacks and burns.
- The public sale originally planned to raise $2.5 million but ultimately oversubscribed to $20 million, sparking controversy over the undisclosed oversubscription and differential treatment of refund allocations favoring large investors.
- The Token Generation Event (TGE) was postponed from January 2026 to the end of April, with opaque information updates during this period. The community suspects the project’s predecessor was the near-defunct game project UFO Gaming, and no product had been launched.
Original Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On April 29, the Solana-based leveraged prediction market project Space (token: SPC) officially began trading and simultaneously launched on five exchanges: Kraken, KuCoin, MEXC, BitMart, and Bitpanda. Shortly after the opening, its market cap peaked at approximately $83 million, then entered a unilateral decline, hitting a low of $2.13 million the same day—a drop of over 97%.
As of April 30, SPC's market cap stood at around $5.5 million, still down over 93% from its opening high.
Concurrent with the crash, numerous public sale participants reported on X that the project team had not yet distributed tokens to public sale buyers, while exchange trading had already begun, and the price had plummeted before they received their tokens. This effectively locked public sale participants into a high price, watching the price fall from $0.08 to $0.005 without holding any tokens to trade.
One user directly accused the Space project of "taking away $15 million," with the FDV crashing from $70 million to below $8 million. Another user wrote: "Another day another scam... Down 90% in the first hour. Presale buyers couldn't even claim."
Who was selling heavily right at the opening? If public sale buyers hadn't received their tokens, the only parties selling on exchanges must have been insiders, market makers, or other groups that obtained tokens early. Their selling directly triggered the price collapse. Ordinary public sale participants, without having received their tokens, effectively became passive holders with no exit channel.
What is Space?
Space is positioned as the first prediction market platform on Solana to support 10x leverage. Users can trade YES/NO events related to cryptocurrency, politics, sports, etc., with leveraged positions. The platform promises 0% maker fees, and 50% of protocol revenue is used to buy back and burn SPC tokens. In December 2025, Space announced the completion of a $3 million seed funding round, with participants including Morningstar Ventures and Arctic Digital. Additionally, Space received investment from the echo community. Subsequently, it launched a public sale.
Regarding token distribution, the total supply of SPC tokens is 1 billion, with 51% allocated to the community pool.
Oversubscribed 8x, Refund Controversy Began in January
On December 18, 2025, Space announced the launch of its token public sale, accepting USDC, USDT, and SOL. Initially, it aimed to sell $2.5 million worth of tokens at a fixed $50 million FDV. After reaching the target, sales would continue but with a linearly increasing FDV up to a maximum of $99 million. After the sale concluded, each participant would purchase tokens at a calculated uniform price.
On January 21, Space explained the public sale allocation process, stating that it raised over $20 million in total. Of this, $14 million had been allocated, and $6 million would be returned to participants on January 21. Allocated (or partially allocated) participants would receive tokens at a clearing price of $0.069 ($69 million FDV), and partial refunds would be sent to specified wallet addresses on January 21.
However, shortly after, the project drew community skepticism over issues like the scale of fundraising and the team's historical background. Several community members suggested that the team's predecessor was likely the gaming project UFO Gaming, whose token price had already plummeted nearly 95% from its all-time high.
The community accused Space of pivoting to a prediction market after its old project failed to gain traction, without releasing any public or beta version. Instead, it allegedly prioritized preparing Hyperliquid perpetual contract code, leading to suspicions of a cash grab. Furthermore, the community expressed dissatisfaction that the project increased the public sale quota without prior notice after oversubscription, and pointed out that some large refund addresses were newly created with no transaction history.
According to an official explanation, the project decided to refund over $7.3 million in excess funds. It explained that some refund address changes were made by participants for security reasons. The raised funds were primarily intended for the leverage pool, initial liquidity building, security audits, team expansion, and CEX listing fees. Regarding the fundraising amount controversy, Space explained that the previously mentioned $2.5 million was a soft cap, not a hard cap, and that expanding the fundraising amount was intended to support liquidity for the leverage market and multi-year R&D to ensure the project's long-term competitiveness.
However, community skepticism did not subside, focusing on whether the possibility of oversubscription was not fully disclosed in advance and whether large and small investors were treated differently during the refund process. Some users considered this a "soft rug."
Four Months of Waiting Resulted in a Crash
According to the earliest official information, Space's TGE for the SPC token was originally planned for around January 2026 but was actually delayed until late April. The over three-month wait exhausted the community's patience. From the oversubscription controversy in January to the TGE in late April, buyers experienced a complete chain of opaque refunds, repeated schedule delays, and insufficient information updates. When the token began trading on April 29, and many public sale buyers found they hadn't received their tokens, months of accumulated distrust exploded simultaneously with the post-listing selling pressure, causing the price to spiral out of control within hours.
As of press time, the project team has not yet issued an official statement regarding the April 29 price crash and the failure to distribute tokens.
