Why are acquisitions of cryptocurrency projects now avoiding tokens?

This article is reposted from Chaincatcher.

In the early hours of the day before yesterday, the Interop Labs team (the initial developers of Axelar Network) announced its acquisition by Circle to accelerate the development of its multi-chain infrastructure Arc and CCTP.

Logically, being acquired is a good thing. However, further details provided by the Interop Labs team in the same tweet caused an uproar. They stated that the Axelar network, the foundation, and the AXL token would continue to operate independently, with development work being taken over by CommonPrefix.

In other words, the core of this transaction is that “the team is integrated into Circle” to promote the application of USDC in the fields of privacy computing and compliant payments, rather than an overall acquisition of the Axelar network or its token system. The team and technology have been acquired by Circle. Your original project, Circle is not concerned with.

After the acquisition news was announced, the price of the Axelar token $AXL initially surged slightly before starting to decline, currently down about 15%.

This arrangement quickly sparked intense discussions in the community about “token vs equity.” Several investors questioned that Circle, by acquiring the team and intellectual property, effectively obtained core assets while bypassing the rights of AXL token holders.

“If you are a founder and want to issue a token, treat it like equity, or get lost.”

In the past year, similar cases of “wanting the team, wanting technology, but not the tokens” have repeatedly occurred in the crypto space, causing serious harm to retail investors.

In July, the foundation of Kraken’s Layer 2 network Ink acquired the decentralized trading platform Vertex Protocol based on Arbitrum, taking over its engineering team and trading technology architecture, including synchronized order books, perpetual contract engines, and money market code. After the acquisition, Vertex shut down its services on nine EVM chains, while the token $VRTX was abandoned. Following the announcement, $VRTX plummeted over 75% on the same day, and gradually “went to zero” (currently with a market cap of only $73,000).

However, $VRTX holders at least had a slight consolation, as they would receive a 1% airdrop during the Ink TGE (the snapshot has ended). Next, there were even worse cases where tokens were directly invalidated without any compensation.

In October, pump.fun announced the acquisition of the trading terminal Padre. When the news of acquiring Padre was announced, pump.fun also stated that the Padre token would no longer be used on the platform and directly indicated that there were no future plans for the token. Due to the declaration of token invalidation in the last reply of the thread, the token briefly doubled before sharply declining, and currently, $PADRE has only $100,000 in market cap.

In November, Coinbase announced the acquisition of the Solana trading terminal Vector.fun built by Tensor Labs. Coinbase integrated Vector’s technology into its DEX infrastructure but did not involve the Tensor NFT market itself or the rights of $TNSR, with some members of the Tensor Labs team transitioning to Coinbase or other projects.

The price movement of $TNSR is relatively stable among several examples, experiencing a rise and fall, currently returning to a level appropriate for an NFT market token, and still above the low point before the acquisition news.

In Web2, small companies are legally acquired by large enterprises in a manner described as “acquihire,” where the focus is on acquiring teams and technical intellectual property without taking equity. Particularly in the tech industry, “acquihire” allows large companies to quickly integrate excellent teams and technologies, avoiding the lengthy process of hiring from scratch or internal development, thereby accelerating product development, entering new markets, or enhancing competitiveness. Although this is detrimental to small shareholders, it stimulates overall economic growth and technological innovation.

Nevertheless, “acquihire” must also adhere to the principle of “acting in the best interest of the company.” The reason these examples in the crypto space have caused such anger in the community is that the “small shareholders” as token holders completely disagree that the project parties are “acting in the best interest of the company” for the better development of the project. Project parties often dream of listing on the US stock market when they can make big money from the project, while at the same time issuing tokens to make money when everything is just starting or nearing its end (the most typical example being OpenSea). When these project parties make money from tokens, they turn around and look for their next opportunity, leaving past projects only in their resumes.

So, must retail investors in the crypto space always swallow their grievances? Just the day before yesterday, former Aave Labs CTO Ernesto released a governance proposal titled “$AAVE Alignment Phase 1: Ownership,” firing a shot in defense of token rights in the crypto space.

The proposal advocates that Aave DAO and Aave token holders should explicitly control core rights such as protocol IP, branding, equity, and revenue. Aave service provider representative Marc Zeller and others publicly endorsed the proposal, calling it “one of the most influential proposals in Aave governance history.”

In the proposal, Ernesto mentioned, “Due to some past events, previous posts and comments have held strong hostility towards Aave Labs, but this proposal seeks to remain neutral. This proposal does not imply that Aave Labs should not be a contributor to the DAO or lacks legitimacy or capability in its contributions, but the decisions should be made by Aave DAO.”

According to crypto KOL @cmdefi’s interpretation, the conflict arose when Aave Labs replaced the front-end integration of ParaSwap with CoW Swap, resulting in the generated fees flowing to Aave Labs’ private address. Correspondingly, Aave DAO supporters believe this is a form of plunder, as with the existence of AAVE governance tokens, all benefits should prioritize AAVE holders or remain in the treasury to be decided by DAO votes. Additionally, previously, ParaSwap’s revenue would continuously flow into the DAO, and the new CoW Swap integration changed this status, further leading the DAO to perceive it as a form of plunder.

This directly reflects a contradiction similar to “shareholders vs management” and again highlights the awkward positioning of token rights in the crypto industry. In the early days of the industry, many projects promoted the “value capture” of tokens (such as earning rewards through staking or directly sharing profits). However, starting in 2020, the SEC‘s enforcement actions (such as lawsuits against Ripple and Telegram) forced the industry to shift towards “utility tokens” or “governance tokens,” which emphasize usage rights rather than economic rights. The result is that token holders often cannot directly share in project profits—project revenues may flow to teams or equity held by VCs, while token holders are left like small shareholders who contribute without any return.

As seen in the examples mentioned above, project parties often sell teams, technical resources, or equity to VCs or large enterprises while selling tokens to retail investors, resulting in a situation where resource and equity holders profit first, while token holders are marginalized or receive nothing. This is because tokens do not possess legal investor rights.

To avoid the regulation that “tokens cannot be securities,” tokens are increasingly designed to be “useless.” By circumventing regulation, retail investors find themselves in a very passive and unprotected position. The various cases that have occurred this year have, in a sense, reminded us that the current “narrative failure” in the crypto space may not be that people no longer believe in narratives—narratives are still good, and profits are still decent, but when we purchase tokens, what exactly can we expect?

Disclaimer: This article is reposted content and reflects the opinions of the original author. This content is for educational and reference purposes only and does not constitute any investment advice. Digital asset investments carry high risk. Please evaluate carefully and assume full responsibility for your own decisions.