Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, said Friday it will support the much-awaited merger of AI tokens Fetch.ai (FET), SingularityNet (Agix) and Ocean Protocol (Ocean) into ASI. It comes just days after the three decentralized AI companies announced a one-month delay to the planned tie-up due to logistical and technical issues at the exchange level.
Also read: Merger of AI Tokens FET, Agix and Ocean pushed back to July
The merger was first revealed in March and passed a community vote in early April. It will lead to the creation of a new token called ‘Artificial Superintelligence,’ or ASI. All three tokens – FET, Agix, and Ocean, will combine under the ticker ASI. The token renaming was initially slated for June 11 followed by the merger two days later. Both events have now been rescheduled to July 15.
Binance suspends FET, Agix, Ocean transactions
In a blog post, Binance said that all deposits and withdrawals of FET, Agix and Ocean cryptocurrency tokens will be suspended starting July 1, 2024, to make way for the merger and the subsequent ASI token. Spot trades will also be halted on this date while futures will end earlier, on June 25.
The exchange urged token holders to “leave sufficient time” for deposits to be processed before the suspension. It said it will let users know when they can start making deposits and withdrawals of the new ASI token once the merger is finalized.
Any transactions involving FET, Agix and Ocean after the fact will not be supported, Binance warned. People with positions in Binance’s so-called ‘locked products’, a type of fixed earnings account, will have their FET converted to ASI at 1:1. Otherwise, they can opt out of the conversion, in which case the tokens will be sent back to their spot wallets.
The exchange said it “will handle all technical requirements for users who are involved in this event.”
Meanwhile, all three AI tokens fell sharply after the news. The drop is also consistent with the wider crypto market decline. FET crashed 9% to $1.45, Agix lost 8% to $0.61 and Ocean fell 8.5% to $0.62.
Alliance says merger delay is ‘temporary’
On Tuesday, the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, the organization born out of the merger of Fetch.ai’s open network for AI agents, Ocean Protocol’s data sharing and SingularityNet’s decentralized marketplace, pushed back the tie-up to July 15 from June 13.
Also read: A new crypto alliance: 3 decentralized AI tokens set to merge
The Alliance said the delay was necessary to “ensure that the token merger is carried out with accuracy and efficiency.” It said exchanges, validators and the wider ecosystem needed more time to sort out their “logistical requirements and technical dependencies”.
“The preparation phase for the token merger involves managing complex integrations, careful coordination, and attention to numerous moving parts,” explained the Alliance.
Under the terms of the merger, the FET token will function as the base currency of the Alliance. A total of 2.631 billion ASI tokens will be distributed, replacing the existing FET, Agix, and Ocean tokens. All the tokens could be converted into ASI at fixed exchange rates.
FET can be swapped one-to-one into ASI. For example, if you hold 100 FET tokens, you will be able to swap them for 100 ASI. Additional ASI tokens will be minted to allocate 867 million to Agix holders and 611 million to Ocean tokenholders at a fixed rate.
Cryptopolitan Reporting by Jeffrey Gogo
