Binance has announced its next initial exchange offering (IEO), and it’s the Band Protocol. This time around, investors will have to have held BNB for an average of 30 days prior to the IEO. However, given that the last launch held on the platform, Perlin, brought insignificant returns, it may not be worth holding BNB in order to participate in future IEOs.
The Band Protocol is intended to be a layer-2 protocol for public blockchains. According to the announcement, Band Protocol has a unique multi-token model as well as a staking mechanism that guarantees that information is entirely free of manipulation. It purportedly makes data readily available on-chain and offers faster and cheaper solutions compared to existing protocols.
Binance’s holding requirement has been raised to 30 days, so people will now have to have held BNB in their accounts for 30 days prior to the IEO date. Interestingly enough, Binance has once again changed the maximum investment allowed for a winning ticket. It was $500 for Perlin, and it has been reduced to $300.
The allocation of the winning tickets is pretty much the same as before. If you hold over 500 BNB for an average of 30 days, you will receive 10 lottery tickets. The total number of winning tickets will be 19,500, which is more than the previous IEO. The lottery draw is scheduled for the 17th of September, and we will probably see the tokens be made available for trading the next day.
Binance Launchpad’s most recent IEO was Perlin. It required people to hold BNB for 15 days prior to the launch date. During those two weeks, the BNB price dropped about 10 percent.
So let’s walk through the following scenario. You wanted to get 10 tickets, so you would have to hold 500 BNB for an average of 15 days.
On August 8, the first date of the holding period, BNB was worth around $30, which means you’d have to invest around $15,000 in order to qualify for 10 lottery tickets. At the end of the preparation period, you’d have lost around $1,500. If you didn’t win any tickets, as was the case for the majority of investors because only 5% of them won, you’d be down $1,500.
Even if you did win, the average return was about 5x, meaning that you’d have earned $2,500 per ticket. When you discount the investment amount of $500, you’d have made $2,000 per winning ticket. And when you count the $1,500 loss from the decrease in BNB’s price, your return was almost minimal.
Of course, it’s unknown whether Band Protocol’s IEO will bring the same returns, but given the disappointing results of the past couple of launches, it’s questionable if investors are sufficiently incentivized to hold large amounts of BNB for such a long period.