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

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

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

“We’re not shutting down something just like the staff, operations or any of the brand new tech that we’ve got constructed however, sure, we’ve got determined to maneuver our apps and tech on prime of Props,” Gee Chuang, Listia CEO advised CoinDesk in an electronic 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 group and extra superior performance. Moreover, every thing constructed for XNK will work with props, he stated.

“We imagine a staking token like Props might be more practical in empowering our customers in contrast with a medium of change token like XNK, and that the Props setup and scale might be useful,” Chuang added.

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

This locations XNK firstly of what could also be an rising pattern of ICO initiatives winding down.

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

“All XNK customers will have the ability to convert their XNK to Props throughout the app as a part of the combination,” Chuang advised CoinDesk in an electronic mail, including that it “needs to be fairly seamless for customers.”

The conversion price might 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 stated of his cope with YouNow. 

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

XNK is most actively traded on the Bibox crypto change, 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’s 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 stated. “We have been holding all the best way down,” apart from when it was essential to promote to fund enterprise operations, he stated.

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

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