Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

I was wondering if we would be getting another CoinList crowdsale in the near future... after all, these sorts of crowdsales tend not to happen with quite as much frequency during perceived "bear" markets... although, I would not be calling any of this bear market territory if you can remember where things were about a year or two ago! Anyway, CoinList tends to offer quite reputable teams and sales with some solid products on offer... so, they don't tend to get affected so much by market cycles. The less reputable parts of the on-chain and CEX sales are where projects will go to collect and cash in some of the euphoria money!

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

So, what is Axelar (AXL)? It is another piece of boring infrastructure development that really gets me quite excited! As I understand it, it is a network that abstracts away the network switching problems that we have... allowing dApps to present a unified and seamless user experience by giving the developers the tool and security to make cross-chain calls and messaging.

Now, if you have ever played around on more than one EVM or smart contract chain... you will know the pain of constantly switching between different networks. It is annoying and not a great user experience. In addition, there are many projects that will have wrapped or pegged tokens on one cheaper network... but all the functionality is on a different more secure network. Which means that it can be a right pain in the arse (in addition to being expensive) to bridge and actually harness the utility behind the tokens.

Hopefully, Axelar will do away with all these cross-chain borders and pain points... leading to a cross-chain user experience that is just as fluid as what we have come to expect from the internet in its current form. Smart contracts offered us composibility of tokens across different decentralised protocols on the same chain, and this could give us that same composibility across different chains! Yes, please!

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

Like other CoinList crowdsales, Axelar comes to the sale with a working demo and a test network that is already connecting chains and seeing usage. This isn't your regular vapourware scam that you might see in the wilds of the crypto ecosystem. You can already see everything as it stands via the emo and block explorers.

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

Annoyingly, this is another single round sale.... plus, it is a poop time for my new home in Australia. It will mean that I have an early morning/middle of the night alarm to set to take part in the sale. Hopefully, my existing karma will net me another priority queue ticket... but these things aren't really guaranteed any more. However, it does look like there are no priority tickets for existing users of the Axelar ecosystem, so that puts me in with a pretty good chance! However, if I don't net a priority ticket... I might just not bother and keep sleeping instead. Those queues for Coinlist are pretty stupidly long for the regular queue... and likely you aren't really in with a chance unless you net something in the top 50,0000 places.

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

The AXL token that is being sold is on the Ethereum blockchain (ERC20), and it will be swappable for the native AXL coin via the various front ends that interact with the Axelar blockchain. AXL is a pretty stand dPOS token, with voting, staking, security and governance uses, but it also has utility in that it used for transaction fees that harness the cross-chain tools on Axelar.

I'm always more keen on utility tokens rather than straight up staking and governance tokens. I'm still not really sold on governance tokens without utility... at a minimum, they need to have some profit sharing or underlying protocol treasury to give them some real value.... and lets be honest, the power concentration in these voting/governance tokens are pretty heavily skewed. You get less value from voting than you get from holding tokens that OTHER people want to vote with!

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

So... the Coinlist crowdsale is the last round of early sales. Three VC and private rounds have already gone beforehand... so, this is definitely something to keep an eye out for. It is good that big VCs think that this is a project that has potential... but they are mercenary and will not hesitate to dump on retail either! They have much deeper pockets and wider portfolios than most retail investors... and so, their loyalty is only really in making a profit.

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

... speaking of the private and VC backers. Here are the friendly sounding names that will dump on you...

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

This team does look pretty nerdily cool! No flashy marketers at the core of the team... but two heavily nerdily credentialed founders. This is what I really like to see! Lets hope that the project remains focussed on this sort of pointy end of development and research, and not on sales...

Coinlist Crowdsale: Axelar (AXL)

... but of course, these days, sales and marketing mean everything. Some social metrics... for those who place some value in those things.

So... wrapping up! I really think that cross-chain tooling is definitely needed to make for a seamless user and developer experience given that we are likely to be facing a future with multiple smart contract blockchains. I do think that we should have multiple blockchains that are smart contracts based... but even jumping between Ethereum main-net and all the myriad of L2s, sidechains and EVM compatible chains is a real nightmare! If Axelar can tie it all together and make it better and easier to use... I think that they could be on a winner here!

Definitely going to try and get some of these tokens in this round!

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Kucoin: My second choice in exchanges, many tokens listed here that you can't get on Binance!
FTX: Regulated US-based exchange with some pretty interesting and useful discounts on trading and withdrawal fees for FTT holders. Decent fiat on-ramp as well!
MXC: Listings of lots of interesting tokens that are usually only available on DEXs. Avoid high gas prices!
Huobi: One of the largest exchanges in the world, some very interesting listings and early access sales through Primelist.
Gate.io: If you are after some of the weirdest and strangest tokens, this is one of the easiest off-chain places to get them!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
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CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
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