There’s clear interest in the upcoming token for the Saga layer-1 blockchain network, just days ahead of next week’s listing. In fact, Binance customers have already broken a record for the most cryptocurrency staked to earn SAGA token rewards via the crypto exchange’s Launchpool campaign platform.
Binance users have staked more than $13.1 billion worth of Binance Coin (BNB) and the FDUSD stablecoin to earn a share of the 45 million SAGA tokens being offered up through the platform, or half of the token’s initial circulating supply.
Saga declared the earlier $13 billion mark a record on Twitter Friday, and based on Decrypt’s own analysis of past Launchpool campaigns, that does appear to be the case. Recent Launchpool campaigns for tokens like ENA and ETHFI have come close to the $13 billion mark, but Saga appears to have be the first to break that barrier based on the value of BNB at the time.
Another gaming token, Portal (PORTAL), had previously set a record of $8.6 billion on Binance Launchpool in February. But thanks to the rising price of BNB, every token launch since then has handily surpassed that tally.
Decrypt reached out to Binance to confirm whether Saga is indeed the top Launchpool campaign to date based on its internal data but did not immediately receive a response. Binance will list the SAGA token on April 9, and in the meantime, nearly 370,000 users of the exchange are staking varying amounts of crypto to earn SAGA at launch.
Saga is a layer-1 blockchain that’s designed as a “chain to launch chains.” Multiple such “chainlets” can be used in parallel to power decentralized apps (dapps), plus they can be used to support apps that were deployed on other blockchain networks.
While not exclusively limited to gaming, Saga has embraced gaming in the run-up to its expected mainnet launch this month. The chain held numerous play-to-airdrop gaming competitions and rewarded winners with allotments of SAGA tokens, and about 80% of projects building on the Saga testnet are related to gaming. Saga is also launching an in-house game publisher called Saga Origins.
Given that Saga already doled out SAGA tokens to gamers, DeFi stakers across various chains, and owners of certain prominent NFT projects, why offer up such a sizable chunk of the initial circulating supply for Binance customers to earn?
According to Saga co-founder and CEO Rebecca Liao, it was about courting a potentially much wider audience for the chain as its token takes flight.
“The thing about Binance is that it’s a very broad retail user base,” she told Decrypt’s GG on Friday. “For us, the community airdrop that we had designed was geared towards the people that we already know—our key technology partners, and also the games and the people involved in our ecosystem from early on.”
Even with the aim of landing a much larger audience of SAGA holders, Liao said her team was completely floored by the record-breaking reaction thus far.
“It’s pretty nuts,” she said. “We were not anticipating this at all.”
