Flying Tulip Raises $200M, Launches Onchain Exchange with Redemption Rights

The $200 million private funding round announced on September 29th, 2025, attracted participation from a who’s who of global crypto investors, including Brevan Howard Digital, CoinFund, DWF, FalconX, Hypersphere, Lemniscap, Nascent, Republic Digital, Selini, Sigil Fund, Susquehanna Crypto, Tioga Capital, and Virtuals Protocol. This substantial institutional backing signals strong confidence in Flying Tulip’s vision to create institutional-grade market structure with onchain guarantees. The company is targeting up to $1 billion in total funding across both private and public phases, with the upcoming public sale occurring at the same $200 million valuation as the private round.

According to Andre Cronje, founder of Flying Tulip, the platform’s mission is to provide “institutional-grade market structure with onchain guarantees and clear alignment between users, investors, and the team.” The diverse participation from both traditional finance heavyweights like Brevan Howard and specialized crypto funds like CoinFund and Nascent demonstrates broad market appeal for the platform’s integrated approach to onchain finance.

A groundbreaking feature of Flying Tulip’s token economics is the onchain redemption right, described as a “perpetual put” option. Both private and public sale participants receive the right to burn their $FT tokens at any time and redeem up to their original principal in the asset they contributed, such as ETH. This programmatic redemption mechanism is settled from a segregated onchain redemption reserve that’s seeded from the capital raised, creating a built-in safety net for investors.

The redemption right design represents a significant innovation in tokenomics, seeking to protect against downside risk while preserving unlimited upside potential. This structure addresses one of the primary concerns in crypto investing – catastrophic loss of value – by providing a floor price mechanism tied directly to the original investment amount. The programmatic nature of these redemptions, limited only by onchain reserves and protocol parameters, ensures transparency and automatic execution without requiring manual intervention or third-party guarantees.

Flying Tulip positions itself as a full-stack onchain exchange that integrates a native stablecoin, money market, spot trading, derivatives, options, and onchain insurance within a single cross-margin, volatility-aware system. This comprehensive approach is designed specifically for capital efficiency, allowing users to access multiple financial products through a unified interface with optimized margin requirements. The platform’s architecture emphasizes transparent risk management and long-term sustainability, addressing key concerns in the decentralized finance space.

Perhaps most notably, the team receives no initial token allocation, breaking from traditional crypto project structures. Instead, team exposure accrues exclusively through open-market buybacks funded by a share of protocol revenues, following a transparent schedule. This alignment mechanism ensures that team incentives are tied directly to real usage and long-term performance rather than short-term token price appreciation. From day one, the economic model prioritizes platform utility and sustainable growth over speculative dynamics.

The upcoming onchain public sale for the $FT token will be hosted across multiple chains, with supported assets, initial circulating supply, sale mechanics, and official smart-contract addresses to be announced ahead of launch. This multi-chain approach reflects the platform’s commitment to accessibility and interoperability within the broader crypto ecosystem, while the emphasis on publishing official addresses only through the flyingtulip.com website addresses security concerns that have plagued previous token launches.