Space Financing Controversy: 2.5 Million vs 20 Million, Another Breach of ICO Information Disclosure?

【Blockchain Rhythm】Recently, the Space decentralized leveraged prediction market project has made some moves again. Here’s what happened: the project initially announced a fundraising target of $2.5 million, but shortly after, the fundraising scale skyrocketed to $20 million. Isn’t that a pretty big contrast?

The team later responded, saying that the $2.5 million is actually a “soft cap,” not a “hard cap.” Their logic is as follows: this is a common practice in Launchpad projects, and when market demand is strong, fundraising can indeed be expanded. Moreover, $2.5 million can only support a few months of initial development, which is far from enough. Building infrastructure for a long-term leveraged prediction market requires a completely different level of funding.

According to the team, at a valuation of $69 million FDV, they reserved about $13 million in oversubscription funds, with the remaining used for liquidity, ecosystem, and marketing. It sounds logically consistent.

However, this explanation clearly hasn’t eased community concerns. Ethos CEO Serpin Taxt directly criticized, saying that Space’s operation of “nominally raising $2.5 million, actually raising $20 million, and still reserving $14 million” is malicious. He even compared this incident to the previous controversy surrounding the Trove project.

Looking deeper, this actually reflects a common problem in the current ICO market. Lack of transparency in information disclosure, ambiguous design of fundraising caps, and lack of constraints on fund usage… These structural issues keep recurring, each time damaging investor trust. Although Space has its own explanation for this wave, this kind of “state a number first and then double it” tactic indeed makes people feel uneasy.