Crypto ICO Metronome Raises $12 Million in Unconventional Auction

Metronome supporters waited until the very end to buy the last available tokens.

As opposed to traditional ICOs, which have sought to reward early buyers, Metronome's sale, completed Tuesday, was notable for seeking to sell its tokens at a progressively lower price each minute for up to seven days. Buyers let the auction run 6 days, 23 hours and 40 minutes, according to a post-mortem post by the team.

In total, the project sold 8 million MET tokens for 26,502.21 ETH – which the post valued at $12.1 million (approximately $10 million at time of writing) – from 1,443 different wallet addresses, making an average purchase of $3,623-worth of tokens each.

In its review of the sale, Metronome acknowledged that the timing proved to be a challenge for raising a large amount from the sale.

The team writes:

"Metronome's Initial Supply Auction took place during one of the deepest dips of an already stubborn bear market for cryptocurrencies as a whole in 2018."

This, they believe, dampened market appetite to use ETH to buy a new token, particularly if buyers' ETH were well below the price they had initially paid for them. Still, those involved emphasized that the technical process underlying the sale went smooth.

"The functionality of Metronome on a technical level works as designed, its Initial Supply Auction operated as intended, and that all users still had the same access to the auction opportunities," the post reads.

As we previously reported, Metronome – created by Jeff Garzik's Bloq – is built for longevity, being a token that can easily move on and off multiple blockchains, allowing a choice of rule sets and governance models that, in theory, should facilitate smooth running.

Garzik told CoinDesk last October, "It's sort of a best-of-all-worlds cryptocurrency," a "boxcar" that can ride on any compatible blockchain.

Metronome image via Shutterstock