Listia Raised $15M With Its XNK ICO. Now It is Ditching the Token for Props

Listia is discontinuing work on the Ink protocol, a cryptocurrency constructed for marketplaces, CoinDesk has realized.

The undertaking was funded with a $15 million token sale for the XNK ERC-20 token, which introduced ends in January 2018. Listia, a used-goods market, is now shifting totally to the props network, created by Union Sq. Ventures–backed startup YouNow.

“We aren’t shutting down something just like the staff, operations or any of the brand new tech that we’ve constructed, however sure we’ve determined to maneuver our apps and tech on prime of Props,” Gee Chuang, Listia CEO advised CoinDesk in an e-mail.

XNK’s design “nonetheless has not been capable of fulfill all of the issues we got down to obtain,” Chuang wrote. After engaged on the know-how extensively, the corporate started talks with Props PBC about making the change. Chuang advised CoinDesk that Listia finally noticed a bonus in props’ bigger neighborhood and extra superior performance. Moreover, every thing constructed for XNK will work with props, he mentioned.

“We imagine a staking token like Props may very well be more practical in empowering our customers in contrast with a medium of alternate token like XNK, and that the Props setup and scale may very well be helpful,” Chuang added.

The XNK token sale was backed by ConsenSys Ventures and Tetras Capital, amongst others. Listia is a venture-backed firm with traders together with SV Angel, Founders Collective, Common Catalyst and the Andreessen Horowitz Seed Fund, in accordance with Chuang. XNK was listed on Coinbase Pockets in August 2018.

This locations XNK originally of what could also be an rising development of ICO tasks winding down.

Digix DAO, a tokenized treasured metals undertaking, voted to liquidate its $64 million treasury earlier this month.

“All XNK customers will be capable to convert their XNK to Props throughout the app as a part of the mixing,” Chuang advised CoinDesk in an e-mail, including that it “must be fairly seamless for customers.”

The conversion price can be 114 XNK for one props token. At present costs for XNK, that values props at about $0.068 per token‬. “They’re giving us a bunch of props to make use of,” Chuang mentioned of his cope with YouNow. 

Listia may even be exchanging the XNK held in its reserve on the identical conversion price, utilizing the pool of props it acquired from YouNow. According to the Ink white paper, 66 p.c of tokens from the era occasion have been retained by Listia to fund community progress.

XNK is most actively traded on the Bibox crypto alternate, in accordance with CoinMarketCap, in addition to Upbit, IDEX and over the Bancor protocol. Props is just not but tracked by Messari or CoinMarketCap as a result of it has not but been listed on exchanges.

There may be little or no ETH remaining from the XNK token sale, in USD phrases, in accordance with Chuang. The sale was carried out on the market peak in late 2017. “We’re enormous believers in the entire ecosystem,” Chuang mentioned. “We have been holding all the best way down,” aside from when it was essential to promote to fund enterprise operations, he mentioned.

Up to now, XNK has been used on Listia and one other website the corporate created known as Replin. Chuang mentioned the cryptocurrency was additionally built-in with one other e-commerce website, On a regular basis Carry.

“Utilizing Props, I feel we are able to notice the purpose of spreading our tech and token utilization to extra outdoors companions and apps way more shortly than we’ve been capable of,” Chuang wrote.