Squid’s token launch turned dramatic: funding, a hack three days later, and a Binance Alpha debut 74 days after
Cross-chain routing protocol Squid took an unusual path to token issuance. The project had already been running on mainnet for three and a half years, routing more than $6 billion in volume, before introducing its native token, QUID, in 2026. On May 22, Squid announced a $6 million strategic funding round led by North Island Ventures with participation from Ripple, bringing total funding to $13.5 million. Three days later, on May 25, a third-party Gnosis Safe module tied to the Squid name was exploited, with losses reported at roughly $3 million in the article’s headline framing and about $3.2 million to $4 million in the detailed account. The core routing contracts, according to Squid, were not affected.
QUID’s public sale opened from June 30 to July 3 on Legion and Kraken at $0.045 per token, with a $2.25 million hard cap. The sale drew about $26.66 million in subscriptions, or around 11.9 times oversubscribed, from 3,542 participants across 78 countries. On Aug. 4 at 13:00 UTC, QUID held its token generation event and debuted first on Binance Alpha, followed by Kraken, Bitget, Upbit, Bithumb, MEXC, and later LBank, BingX, and XT. The token rose from its public sale price to a peak of $0.14 and was trading around $0.09 to $0.11 as of Aug. 7.
