At 19:00 on August 15th, Sei Network officially released its token and got listed on major exchanges. However, this listing has sparked controversy due to the project’s failure to deliver the promised airdrop before the listing. It wasn’t until the morning of August 17th, a day after the listing, that Sei Network opened the Airdrop portal for the community.
However, claiming the airdrop turned out to be quite challenging. Users could only access the airdrop link via a web browser and needed to download the Compass wallet. Moreover, despite completing several testnet tasks, the airdrop amount received by users amounted to just a few tens of USD.
Despite facing criticism, the price of SEI has recently surged by 50%, and its value has seen fluctuations across different exchanges. Specifically, on the afternoon of August 15th, the value of SEI on Upbit reached $0.52 USD. In contrast, the value of SEI on Binance was $0.23 USD. However, the price gap between these two platforms narrowed on the afternoon of August 16th.
Besides Upbit, the price of SEI on Coinbase also significantly differs from other exchanges, reaching nearly $1 USD, four times higher than its price on Binance.
According to Jeff Mei, the CEO of BTSE exchange, this situation might be attributed to the market maker’s activities causing uneven liquidity distribution. As a result, many investors quickly seized the opportunity to profit from trading the price discrepancy of SEI on different exchanges, leading to speculative buying of SEI on exchanges with lower prices.
Prior to the airdrop distribution, the project didn’t experience significant sell pressure, thus maintaining a stable price. However, now that Sei has officially launched the airdrop distribution and users can claim their tokens, there’s a likelihood that the price will become more volatile from this point onwards.