Flying Tulip by Andre Cronje attracts over $1.36 billion in commitments for token sales

Flying Tulip, a new DeFi platform developed by the “DeFi godfather” Andre Cronje and his team, has raised additional funds through a combination of private and public token sales.

In the private token sale Series A round, the project raised $25.5 million from Amber Group, Fasanara Digital, and Paper Ventures, with the fully diluted valuation (FDV) remaining at $1 billion — the same as the previous seed round, according to Cronje’s sharing with The Block. Previously, Flying Tulip had raised $200 million in a seed round in September last year, bringing the total institutional funding to $225.5 million.

In addition to institutional funding, Flying Tulip has also attracted significant interest from individual investors through ongoing and upcoming public token sales. Cronje said the project has raised $50 million via Curated — a DeFi fundraising platform operated by Impossible Finance — as part of a $200 million allocation package for Impossible.

Furthermore, a separate $200 million allocation package has been set aside for CoinList, with the sale expected to start next week. After these allocations, Flying Tulip plans to open additional whitelist rounds to reach a total fundraising goal of $1 billion, according to Cronje.

Currently, the total soft commitments have reached approximately $1.36 billion, but only about $400 million remains available, assuming allocations for Impossible Finance and CoinList are fully filled. Cronje stated that both platforms have already recorded interest levels reaching into the billions of dollars, indicating that the remaining quota could be quickly filled once public access is granted.

All funding rounds for Flying Tulip are structured at the same price of $0.10 per FT token and a FDV valuation of $1 billion. Notably, all rounds — both private and public — include full onchain redemption rights.

This redemption mechanism, called “perpetual put” by Flying Tulip, allows investors to burn FT tokens at any time to redeem up to their original contribution in the initial asset, such as ETH. Cronje previously mentioned that this model aims to provide a downside risk protection layer while maintaining growth potential.

He also emphasized that due to the existence of the “perpetual put” mechanism, these funds technically cannot be considered immediately usable capital. Instead, the plan is to deploy up to $1 billion of potential capital into onchain strategies through protocols like Aave, Ethena, and Spark. With an expected yield of around 4% annually, this fund could generate approximately $40 million per year to support ecosystem growth, incentive programs, and token buyback activities.

Flying Tulip is developing an onchain exchange integrating multiple DeFi functions within a single system. The platform combines spot trading, perpetual futures, lending, and a native stablecoin called ftUSD, with plans to add insurance and options in the future. According to Cronje, the system is designed to automatically adjust trading and lending parameters based on real-time data on liquidity, volatility, and utilization, rather than relying on fixed rules — part of an adaptive onchain risk management approach.

The core components of the platform are expected to launch after the Flying Tulip token generation event (TGE), which is anticipated to occur after the completion of the pending public token sales.

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