Over the past two years, the performance of this public fundraising project has been quite bleak—

With a total funding goal of $5 million, only $1.54 million has been raised since the launch on the 3rd, and there are only 3 days left until the project ends. To ease the funding pressure, the project team has made multiple adjustments to the fundraising rules: the funding cap was lowered from an initial $15 million to $5 million, and the project valuation was simultaneously reduced from $300 million to $100 million. A more aggressive change was the removal of the individual investment limit of $2,500, as well as the abolition of the previous random allocation mechanism.

Despite these concessions, the funding downturn has not been reversed. The market’s true feedback is cold and unfeeling—the design of the 1-year lock-up period ultimately became the last straw crushing investor participation. This kind of design is especially prone to trigger hesitation in a bear market, causing many potential participants to hold back.