• RioDeFi, the self-proclaimed ‘Next Frontier of Finance,’ has released an update on its RFUEL Token Community Crowdsale.
• RioDeFi reserved a pre-sale round to stakers of OM, the native token of MANTRA DAO.

According to a Medium post dated September 6, the crowdsale registration has been a runaway success with over 12,000 individual sign-ups since the whitelisting portal first opened a fortnight ago. There has also been over $58 million pledged.

A decentralized finance (defi) project that aims to address existing flaws in the sector – namely eye-watering fees, unaudited smart contracts, faux decentralization and poor interoperability – RioDeFi reserved a pre-sale round to stakers of OM, the native token of MANTRA DAO. The first decentralized application (dApp) to be hosted on RioChain, the community-governed MANTRA is likely to be a proving ground for RioDeFi in its bid to shake up the defi space. The presale got underway on September 7, with the price set at £0.06 and a minimum/maximum cap of $1,000/5,000.

Saluting the loyal Sherpas

RioDeFi paid credit to MANTRA DAO’s Sherpas for pledging to contribute “more than three times the total funding target” for the RFUEL crowdsale, indicating that their intention with the presale was to reward those who have been staking OM on exchanges in recent weeks. Spot trading of OM against USDT and ETH went live on OKEx exchange on August 25.

Although keen to reward MANTRA’s community members, Rio has imposed a cap that will limit the amount of RFUEL each contributor can purchase. Purchase power will not depend on the amount of OM staked to date.

Built on Rio’s Parity Substrate-based blockchain for the Polkadot ecosystem, MANTRA DAO will initially support non-custodial staking services using Polkadot ecosystem assets such as KSM (Kusama) and DOT (Polkadot). MANTRA users, meanwhile, can earn extra interest in OM tokens, and support for a selection of stablecoins is expected to be confirmed in the near future.

RioDeFi: Harnessing Polkadot to build better Defi

With MANTRA’s OM having already seen lift-off, the success of the RFUEL token launch is sure to follow suit. RioChain is a leading parachain of Polkadot, whose native DOT token recently entered the top five rankings by market cap. An ambitious interoperable protocol that seeks to connect multiple specialized blockchains into a single unified network, Polkadot aims to capture defi projects that have been priced out by exorbitant fees on Ethereum.

It’s a busy period for RioDeFi, with RFUEL set to debut on Uniswap on September 17, carrying a starting price of $0.20. The pre-sale will also be followed by a pair of public sales, details of which are due to be released in due course.

While there’s a long way to go for RioDeFi (and MANTRA and Polkadot for that matter), there are worse ways to generate FOMO than with an oversubscribed crowdsale. CEO James Anderson and the RioDeFi team will be hoping the runaway train keeps rolling.