Space public offering sparks controversy: $2.5 million target actually oversubscribed by 8 times, team attempts to retain tens of millions of dollars themselves

On January 22, the decentralized leverage prediction market Space sparked controversy in its latest ICO round. The project initially disclosed a fundraising target of $2.5 million, but the actual amount raised reached $20 million. The project team later responded that the $2.5 million was a “soft cap” rather than a “hard cap,” and that this wording was in line with industry practices on Launchpad, allowing for an increase in fundraising when market demand was strong. The team stated that $2.5 million could only support “a few months of initial development” and was insufficient to fund the infrastructure for a multi-year leverage prediction market. According to the team, they plan to retain approximately $13 million of oversubscription funds out of a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of about $69 million, with the remaining funds allocated for liquidity, ecosystem, and market-related purposes. However, this explanation did not quell the skepticism. Ethos CEO Serpin Taxt stated that the behavior of “nominally raising $2.5 million but actually raising $20 million and reserving about $14 million” constitutes malicious manipulation, comparing it to the previously controversial Trove project. Community discussions believe this incident once again exposes structural issues in some ICOs regarding information disclosure, fundraising cap design, and transparency in fund usage.