Coinbase’s public token sale for Monad’s native token MON started strong, raising around $50 million just 45 minutes after launching on Monday.

But around 12 hours into the sale, all early momentum had fizzled, with only $95 million raised against the $187 million worth of USDC the blockchain is looking to raise.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Monad’s token sale was widely anticipated as it marked the first major U.S.-regulated public token sale since 2018. It offered 7.5 billion MON tokens at $0.025 each, representing 7.5% of the total supply, with team and investor allocations locked for at least a year to limit early sell-offs.

Coinbase, however, excluded several jurisdictions from participating in the sale for regulatory and compliance reasons. 

Some market participants attributed the lacklustre performance to Monad’s decision to list on Coinbase, sizing up the token sale against the massively oversubscribed MegaETH token sale late last month.

“Nobody wants to deposit into their Coinbase account just to use it for on-chain stuff, and normies couldn’t care less about Monad. After 12 hours it’s still 50% undersubscribed,” wrote X user @Deroidz. 

“MegaETH was, and still is, the clear winner. They simply let us deposit directly into a contract, and they raised almost $1.5B in three days.”