Contango’s TANGO Token Launch: Seed-Level Access + Big Potential

Contango has announced its token launch for October 21st at 12:00 UTC, on Fjord.

Up to $3M of TANGO will be up for grabs, at a $45M valuation, with no cliff or vesting.

This sale is quite unique because:

• It’s at the same valuation as seed investors (including myself).

• There’ll be no unlock at TGE for the Contango team, nor for seed investors.

• The TANGO airdrop happening after the sale will occur through the oTANGO mechanism, which offers a 0% discount to users selling it under the $45M valuation.

This basically means that, as an investor, you get access to the same valuation as those of us in the private seed round, and after the sale there’s no added selling pressure coming from other players.

If this is the first time you read about Contango, here’s some key details to know!

Contango is a DeFi protocol that lets you loop anything on-chain, meaning you can:

• Lever up on yield for liquid staking and restaking assets, such as stETH or eBTC.

• Lever up on the fixed yield of Pendle’s PTs.

• Create leveraged positions similar to perps, but with the cheapest funding in crypto.

• Arbitrage rate differentials on stablecoins.

• Farm rewards, airdrops, and points on leverage.

So what’s TANGO utility? TANGOnomics initially aims at deepening TANGO liquidity and incentivizing growth by rewarding both stakers and traders, the main players of the Contango ecosystem:

• Stakers can provide liquidity on the TANGO/ETH Balancer pool (seeded after the sale) and lock LP tokens on Contango, to be rewarded with 100% of protocol fees

• Traders accrue points when trading on Contango, which entitles them to a share of TANGO rewards, up to 2% of the total supply per year.

This simple design allows anyone to join the Contango ecosystem and earn by being either a trader, a staker, or both. Full TANGOnomics here.

Having invested in Contango in 2022, my personal view is that their team is absolutely based. They have a fintech background along with years of experience now building trading infra for both TradFi and CeFi, and they remain a small lean core team of just 6 people.

Regarding the product, the numbers speak for themselves:

The project found a strong product-market fit in less than a year, with volumes recently passing the $3.5B mark, and OI hovering at $300M. Their charts are up and to the right. They have more than 18,000 unique users, which is still an impressive number, especially in these choppy market conditions. More stats on their Dune and see one of my many recent tweets shining a lot on the killer yields they offer.

With fair access, zero unlocks, and rewarding opportunities for both traders and stakers, the TANGO sale offers a unique entry point into Contango’s growing ecosystem, but please remember to DYOR before you dive in.

And btws, here’s a great podcast to get acquainted with the core concept behind Contango looping, albeit one from just a year ago.

As always, if you are thinking about taking part in the TANGO sale, please DYOR and read their docs. This is not a recommendation or endorsement to buy any token(s). Please be aware DeFi Dad is a seed investor in Contango since 2022.