The "unlocking" was explained only after a sharp drop. Did the AEVO team stage a manipulation drama?

Original title: "A self-directed and self-acted control drama? Interpretation of the story of AEVO's two-month launch"

Original author: Nan Zhi, Odaily Planet Daily

Last week, AEVO's market value was only $140 million, and the rumor that AEVO was about to "unlock" tokens worth up to $1 billion intensified in the market. In this regard, neither Aevo officials nor related data websites have made any explanation. When the "unlock" event expired, AEVO fell 16% in one hour. After the decline, Aevo began to explain and clarify the "unlock" and made a lock-up commitment. With this announcement, AEVO began to rise rapidly again. Odaily Planet Daily will interpret the event in this article.

Origin of AEVO Token

In April 2023, the Aevo mainnet of the options trading platform was officially launched. The platform was launched by the on-chain structured product Ribbon Finance. Before the launch of the AEVO token, the platform had no native token, and Ribbon Finance had previously issued the token RBN.

When the product was launched, Aevo mentioned in the white paper that it would launch the token AEVO, and AEVO did not come out of thin air, but was a rebranding of Aevo's previous governance token RBN.

Most of the RBN tokens are deposited in the DAO Treasury and are difficult to use. Therefore, Aevo proposed in the AGP-1 proposal to make a more dynamic and functional allocation of the treasury. The tokens of the treasury will be converted into AEVO at the TGE, which will be used for airdrops, liquidity, community growth, and DAO expenditures.

In March 2024, the AEVO token was officially launched and listed on Binance Launchpool, with a total of 1 billion tokens and an initial circulation of 110 million. RBN holders can convert their RBN to AEVO at a 1:1 exchange rate, but a 2-month lock-up period is required (i.e. unlocking in May). Private investors (seed round and A round), teams and other ordinary RBN holders can all convert in May. After the conversion is opened, the circulation of AEVO will rise to about 950 million.

RBN price difference and AEVO roller coaster market

Before the announcement of the listing on Binance Launchpool on March 6, the price of RBN was about 0.79 USDT. It began to rise after the announcement and hit a high of 1.83 USDT on March 13.

After AEVO went online, there was a price difference of 90%-100% between AEVO and RBN, which was not visible until this month. Especially in the early days of the launch, the price difference between the two was too large. Some users in the market chose to buy RBN spot and open short positions in the contract market for hedging, so that AEVO had a round of short positions at the end of March. After the short position, the price remained high for about 10 days, and then it began to fall ahead of the market.

A huge amount of tokens unlocked?

Before the conversion from RBN to AEVO was launched, users could check the token unlocking website token.unlocks and found that AEVO would unlock tokens worth 1.06 billion US dollars on May 15, which was 770% of the circulating market value. The market also began to circulate corresponding panic dumping remarks.

However, as mentioned above, this conversion is only to convert the circulating market value of RBN to the circulating market value of AEVO, which can be understood as the merger of the market values of the two tokens. The conventional sense of unlocking should be the conversion of the token from the "unsaleable" state to the "saleable" state, but before the conversion, RBN itself was in a large circulation state and could be traded freely.

Clarification after the decline

Aevo did not make a clear clarification on the rumors of huge unlocking in the market, but instead provided users with relevant content on how to convert RBN. When the "unlocking" event expired on May 15, AEVO fell 16% in one hour. However, today, May 16, Aevo issued a statement to explain the “unlocking”. The original text is: “(This round of) ‘unlocking’ is not a typical insider/VC/team unlocking, it is RBN holders (obtaining) the ability to migrate their RBN to AEVO tokens.”

Under the clarification tweet, the Aevo team stated: “To demonstrate the long-term commitment to making Aevo the number one derivatives DEX on Ethereum, the team and supporters will voluntarily re-lock approximately 15% of the supply by the end of 2024.” After this explanation, the AEVO token began to rebound rapidly, rising as high as more than 10% in three hours.

Conclusion

It is true that Aevo has taken on the historical burden from the Ribbon Finance period at a low cost, but the token price difference of up to 100%, the huge amount of market-smashing power when "converting" instead of "unlocking", and the abnormal situation of making clarification announcements only after the market-smashing may mean that there is a self-directed and self-acted road to market control behind it.

However, all related events have come to an end, and AEVO tokens have entered a state of near full circulation. Whether the team that has completed the historical debt can continue to develop through its business will be tested by the market.

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