Author | Asher(@Asher_ 0210)
Yesterday, Infinex founder Kain Warwick posted on X platform, stating that due to feedback indicating the pricing was too high, the valuation for the Sonar token sale conducted by Infinex on Echo has been lowered from the initially set $300 million to $99.99 million, while the lock-up period remains unchanged at one year, to better adapt to the current market environment.
Affected by the FDV reduction, the overall allocation quota for the Sonar sale has decreased, making it impossible to guarantee the priority allocation arrangements for the original Patron NFT holders. The floor price of Infinex Patrons NFT dropped nearly 10% in 24 hours, temporarily reported at 1.387 ETH.
Below, Odaily Planet Daily takes you through the Infinex project, the new token sale rules, and community sentiment.
Infinex: Full-Stack DeFi Services
Infinex is a decentralized finance platform launched by Synthetix founder Kain Warwick in April 2024. Its goal is to provide a product form close to the experience of a centralized exchange under the premise of decentralization, thereby narrowing the usability gap between CeFi and DeFi. While maintaining non-custodial assets and on-chain security, the platform focuses on optimizing the interaction process and user experience.
From a product positioning perspective, Infinex is not a single-function application, but rather closer to a full-stack DeFi service entry point. Its core capabilities include: acting as a non-custodial wallet covering multiple chains to host user assets; serving as a unified interface, aggregating and integrating various on-chain DeFi protocols and services; and simultaneously, through highly abstract interaction design, hiding complex concepts such as address management, cross-chain bridging, seed phrases, and Gas fees in the background. This allows users to complete interactions with DeFi applications without needing to understand the underlying mechanisms, making the overall user experience closer to CeFi products.
To date, Infinex has supported 15 blockchain networks including Ethereum, Solana, and Base. The integrated DeFi functions cover cross-chain trading (Swidge), perpetual contracts (Perp), liquid staking, and other yield-generating services (Earn), among others.
Infinex Token Sale New Regulations
According to the official Infinex documentation, the updated details of the Infinex token sale are as follows:
- INX Token Sale Account Registration Date: Starting December 27th;
- INX Token Official Sale Date: January 3rd to January 6th, 2026;
- Infinex TGE Date: Planned for late January 2026;
- Sale Quantity: 5% of the total token supply;
- FDV: Valuation lowered from the initially set $300 million to $99.99 million;
- Lock-up Situation: Locked for one year;
- Purchase Quantity: Minimum amount is $200, maximum amount is $2500. If the token sale is oversubscribed, the chance of obtaining an allocation can be increased by sharing participation details on X. Regular users can get a 3x multiplier by sharing on X, while Patreon NFT holders can get a 10x multiplier.
Additionally, the INX tokens in this sale offer an early unlock option. If early unlock is chosen, the corresponding valuation at TGE is a $300 million FDV, with a single token price of $0.03. Thereafter, this valuation will be linearly reduced over the following year, finally settling at a $99.99 million FDV, corresponding to a single token price of $0.0099.
Community Sentiment: Negative Voices Dominate, Patron NFT Holders Particularly Dissatisfied
"A $300 million valuation allows for full unlock at TGE, so what does that make the Patron NFT I bought at an implied $500 million valuation worth?" This is the most direct question raised by many Patron NFT holders after the announcement of the new rules. According to the previous sale expectations, participants could join the token sale at a $300 million FDV. If they wished to unlock at TGE, they would need to correspond to a higher valuation threshold, approximately a $1 billion FDV. It was under this expectation that some users chose to purchase Patron NFTs at a higher implied valuation to secure more certain allocation rights and earlier liquidity.
However, after the adjustment of the new plan, the valuation threshold for early unlock was significantly reduced to a $300 million FDV, noticeably weakening the Patron mechanism which originally relied on a high valuation to exchange for unlock rights and priority. This means that the premium paid by Patron NFT holders previously for "certainty" and "early unlock" is no longer valid, and some holders have turned to a state of negative returns both on paper and in expectation.
In response to this controversy, Kain Warwick stated that the purpose of the new plan is to promote broader distribution of the token and increase overall participation and market heat before TGE. However, in the view of some Patron holders, this explanation hardly covers their core losses and fails to fully address the expectation gap suffered by early supporters due to the mechanism change, thus not completely quelling the controversy.
Furthermore, the unchanged 1-year lock-up period remains the biggest pain point in community discussions. Although the significant reduction in FDV has somewhat alleviated market criticism of the high valuation, it has not changed the strong dissatisfaction of most community members towards the "1-year lock-up period," which they believe is almost equivalent to a "death sentence in advance" in the current market environment.
