This proposal outlines a comprehensive plan to address three critical challenges facing the FUEL ecosystem:
Continuous selling pressure from linear vesting schedules
Insufficient market liquidity
Declining community sentiment
Background
FUEL Network has raised capital through multiple rounds:
Strategic Round (Sep 2022): $80M at $1B valuation ($0.10 per token)
Early Rounds (2020-2022): Various prices
Recent Community Rounds (Dec 2024): $9.4M at $0.02 per token
Community Round Strategy and Impact
The recent ICO/IDO rounds were designed with a specific strategy:
Intentionally priced at $0.02 (80% discount to strategic round)
Primary goal was community building, not fundraising
Intended to create excitement and align community interests
Project had sufficient runway; focus was on community engagement
However, this strategy has unintentionally created additional challenges:
Instead of feeling privileged with a discount, community members are underwater
Market timing worked against the intended momentum
Daily vesting schedule creates constant reminder of losses
Community sentiment has inverted from excitement to concern
Only early seed investors (2021) potentially remain in profit
Current market conditions:
Current Price: $0.01435
VWAP on CEXs (Bitget/Bybit): $0.047
Market Cap: $58.4M
FDV: $144.2M
Average CEX traders: ~69% underwater (from VWAP)
Strategic investors: ~86% underwater (from $0.10)
Community round participants: ~28% underwater (from $0.02)
Severe liquidity constraints limiting price discovery and execution
Proposal Components
1. Immediate Vesting of Purchaser Tokens
Action: Immediately vest all 3.31B tokens allocated to purchasers
Rationale:
Eliminates 24 months of psychological overhang from daily unlocks
Allows market to find natural equilibrium more quickly
Gives purchasers autonomy over their investment decisions
Removes constant reminder of vesting schedule from community discourse
Enables focus on development and adoption rather than token mechanics
2. Price Floor Implementation
Action: Deploy $4.7M (50% of ICO funds) as buy wall at $0.010 via Cowswap limit orders
Implementation:
Full deployment through Cowswap limit order mechanism at $0.010
Capable of absorbing up to 470M FUEL tokens
All FUEL tokens acquired through this price floor will be added to the Ecosystem and R&D allocation
Rationale:
Creates clear price floor at psychologically important level
Provides sufficient liquidity to absorb entire ICO/IDO allocation if needed
Demonstrates project commitment to token stability
Helps restore confidence in token price mechanics
Provides clear exit liquidity for distressed holders
Returned tokens to Ecosystem and R&D strengthen long-term token distribution
3. Enhanced Liquidity Provision
Action: Deploy remaining $4.7M paired with FUEL tokens from Ecosystem and R&D allocation into full-range liquidity pools
Implementation:
Source FUEL tokens from regular Ecosystem and R&D allocation (1.55B pool)
Split liquidity equally between:
ETH mainnet (Uniswap V2-style)
Mira on Fuel Ignition
FUEL token contribution scaled to market price:
At $0.01: 470M FUEL (~30.3% of E&R allocation)
At $0.015: 313.33M FUEL (~20.2% of E&R allocation)
At $0.02: 235M FUEL (~15.2% of E&R allocation)
Rationale:
Addresses critical liquidity shortage
Creates deep, sustainable liquidity across key venues
Demonstrates commitment to both ETH and native ecosystems
Enables efficient price discovery
Reduces slippage for larger transactions
Supports future market making initiatives
Expected Benefits
Improved Market Mechanics:
Enhanced liquidity across multiple venues
Reduced slippage for traders
More efficient price discovery
Clear floor price mechanism
Community Restoration:
Removal of vesting uncertainty
Demonstrated commitment to token stability
Clear path forward for price recovery
Renewed focus on development milestones
Strategic Alignment:
Better positioned for market recovery
Enhanced attractiveness to new investors
Improved foundation for future growth
Clearer value proposition
Success Metrics
Liquidity depth improvement
Reduced price impact for standard trade sizes
Community sentiment improvement
Development milestone focus
Market making effectiveness
Conclusion
This proposal represents a comprehensive approach to addressing current market challenges while setting a strong foundation for future growth. By implementing these measures, FUEL Network can overcome current market difficulties and refocus community attention on technological development and adoption.
I look forward to discussing this further with you all!
Lack of liquidity on DEXs is a huge issue for FUEL. Deploying $4.7M into ETH/Mira LPs could be a game-changer, creating deep liquidity and reducing slippage (I’d certainly buy more)
With most holders underwater and unfavorable market conditions, addressing these issues is urgent. The proposed plan seems like a step in the right direction to restore confidence and get FUEL back on track.
I was explicitly told that the ICO rounds weren’t for the purpose of raising additional funding… Fuel is very well capitalized.
The whole idea was a revolt against the disgusting norms that have grasped our industry… like all price discovery happening in private / promising projects listing at 10b fdv etc.
We have seen other teams like MegaEth do cheap rounds for community as well.
As i mentioned in my proposal, the community round for Fuel was done at the absolute worst time possible… it’s not Fuel’s fault no one knew the entire alt market was about to go to goblin town.
What was supposed to be a great thing has become a terrible thing… a curse… this proposal lifts that curse.
I’ve already commented on this proposal in Discord, but I’d like to share my thoughts here as well.
First of all, it’s a bit disheartening that the team doesn’t see any issues with the current situation and isn’t taking steps to resolve it.
Most of the measures proposed here should have been implemented ASAP, especially those concerning liquidity.
Overall, I fully support the proposal—except for the part calling for a complete unlock of the vesting schedule. This would likely trigger a cascade of liquidations on lending protocols, and the current purchase wall at 0.01 wouldn’t be able to support the price. I would advocate for a temporary pause on vesting so that the token price can stabilize and show some performance to attract investors again.
Some might argue that this approach isn’t fair to early investors, but it’s equally unfair to unlock all tokens for ICO participants and retail buyers.
We’ve already seen precedents where pausing or delaying vesting had a positive long-term effect, as in the DYDX and WLD projects.
Thanks for popping into the forums to continue our discussion!
IMO this doesn’t have to be all or nothing… I do agree that we should have further discussion around going ahead and fully unlocking everyone. I do think it would be nice to rip the band-aid off so to speak, but there definitely are implications to discuss and consider first.
Maybe we could take a hybrid approach where we only vest those who paid above a certain price per token? Or we could vest half? I don’t have all the answers here… I’d prefer to just get it over with but looking forward to other’s thoughts.
As far as the liquidity / bleeding is concerned… Thanks for the support. We need to patch this hole immediately.
Due to unreliability issues with Mira & lack of Diesel DEX’s launch, my previous recommendation to the team based on discussions were along similar lines, except a key difference :
Enable fast L2<>L2 bridging for allowing liquidity to move in and out of the chain seamlessly (focus on protocols such Relay.link, Hyperlane before Union Protocol launch)
Seeding FUEL/USDC, FUEL/WETH POL liquidity on Aerodrome on BASE, thereby earning AERO emissions in process - creating strategic alignment with other networks.
AFAIK, a couple of bridging solutions are currently in the auditing process, hence - the solution was still ways down the road.
Otherwise - I am in full alignment for change in vesting schedule & allowing a threshold floor to be established for absorbing sell pressure to retain confidence.
I do believe fast bridging is coming… Nick has hinted at 2s native bridging from arbitrum, base, and sol (and back).
I’m not sure I agree with aerodrome… I do think adding liquidity on uni v3 or just in a full range uni v2 style position to eth mainnet is an absolute must.
Mira UX has gotten substantially better recently, but still lacks a concentrated liquidity product. I don’t see any harm in supporting the eco as is / deploying into mira LP as well… if there are security concerns maybe we could alter the split from 50/50 eth / ignition to like 80/20?
Of course, the entire proposal only addresses one of the issues here…
I do think we all need to have a discussion about new community moderation / management soon as well. I’m consistently surprised at the lack of knowledge from moderators / the lack of a community manager type… who’s in charge of building this community? Who’s in charge of communicating with the community? Who’s in charge of telling the story of Fuel? Building the lore?
One step at a time, but my next proposal will be to address this.
The consideration was with Slipstream V2 launch in mind & mostly rooted in maximising interoperability, ease of access for consumers wherever they were.
I say this with the utmost respect for Fuel ecosystem teams at heart, but Mira pools have been exploited once post mainnet launch & there are no credible options or alternatives out there.
1-2M pool still makes sense if it’s Fuel native pools, otherwise - I concur with your assessment on the situation.
I am not fully aware about the capitalisation situation for Fuel team, however - this recent announcement certainly piques my interest.
It appears that the ecosystem fund, R&D fund allocation for the protocol were earning sequencer staking reward emissions via delegation, which appears to have been reduced recently…to “reward” more community members with a higher APY.
It’ll be great if Fuel team provide insights whether the portion of staking rewards are retained by the Foundation, or have been sold off the market - ensuring adequate transparency within the ecosystem (& a stark departure from precedent setup by teams like Celestia, Story…in the space)
This is essential to improve investor confidence, as any further sharp decline in mark-to-market value will further hinder the ability of Fuel team to incentivise ongoing ecosystem initiatives & enable protocol growth. Their input will be appreciated.
It’s my understanding that the team were staking a portion of the eco fund to increase cryptoeconomic security of network / the rewards from this were diverted to the eco fund for future use. They pulled back some of their delegation after users complained about a lack of quality dapps to use / wanted good / safe native apr for the time being.
I do think they are hoping the higher native apr encourages more people to stake their tokens.
Yes, I also thought about hybrid model, that if team unlock 50% of the vesting tokens for those who bought at a price of 0.1 and pause vesting for one year, it might work well. Their original vesting schedule wouldn’t change—investors would still receive all tokens over two years—but we could ease the pressure on the price and improve the overall sentiment. Additionally, if only 50% is unlocked, the purchase wall set at 0.01 would likely be able to hold.
Over the course of the year, the project will have enough time to develop the ecosystem and shift investor sentiment to a more positive outlook.
I’ve been thinking about this as well. At the moment, the community isn’t experiencing growth—there’s not even stagnation. There’s no adequate feedback, community development, or events; it’s all missing. The best you get from the moderators and community managers are dry answers to questions. There’s no positive atmosphere in the community.
With the current management, there’s hardly any community left. And this isn’t just about Fuel—it applies to all ecosystem projects. The overall atmosphere is very toxic.
I understand that the project has advanced technologies, but it seems the team has forgotten that without a community, no one will use these technologies.