The highly anticipated launch of SEI, a layer-1 blockchain powered by the Cosmos technology, saw its native SEI token obtain over $1 billion in trading volume after being listed on exchanges such as Gate.io and Binance. Sei Labs, the project’s co-founder Jay Jog, stated that the solution to faster performance of decentralized trading applications was a fundamental rewrite of the underlying infrastructure, which was made possible by the $30 million investment from Jump Crypto and Multicoin Capital. Despite some optimistic predictions of a market capitalization of around $500 million, the SEI token was valued at $343 million after some first-day fluctuations.
Questions and complaints were raised by early adopters who were expecting a direct airdrop of rewards tokens, which the Sei Foundation declined to comment on. When the airdrop did eventually begin, the SEI value plummeted 31% as recipients sold the tokens on the market, with numerous complaints flooding X (formerly known as Twitter) about the allocation size.
