WHUF founder said in a post on X that WHUF is trading below its ICO price and that the project’s price protection mechanism is working as designed. Redeemed WHUF will be burned and permanently removed from circulation.
The founder said the team had expected the mechanism to reduce selling near $3.57, but 23% of the original purchase volume did not receive coverage during the protection window. That portion is now the biggest source of outflows.
Liquidity setup and early selling pressure
According to the post, the team focused its liquidity efforts on Coinbase, hired two market makers, and allocated 175 basis points of liquidity to centralized exchanges. On-chain liquidity was about 25 basis points.
At launch, the pool held about 20,000 WHUF and less than $100,000 in USDC. In the first hour after unlock, auction buyers sold about 101,000 WHUF. The founder also said a single $10,000 sell order could move the price by nearly 20%.
Out of 1,402 auction wallets, 298 sold tokens, and 92% of those sales happened in the first three hours. The team said it refused to pay for exchange listings, while +/-2% order book depth on exchanges was at times only $10,000 to $40,000.
Funds reserved for protection and redemption process
The founder said $7.14 million from the ICO proceeds was reserved for price protection. If the auction were to be redesigned, the team would choose Uniswap CCA and use Sonar platform fees to add liquidity.
Redemptions require sanctions screening. Sumsub has flagged five people as failed, with reasons including terrorism and crime, according to the founder. For users who are not sanctioned, redemptions have been automated. The team will return USDC in batches and burn the corresponding WHUF, a process expected to take at least several days.
Token sale structure
The project sold 20% of total supply at issuance, mainly to the community, and offered protocol usage rewards as well as ICO price protection.