---
type: source
title: "Hurupay ICO Failure: MetaDAO Minimum-Miss Mechanism Works, But Context Reveals Platform Stress"
author: "Phemex News / Coincu"
url: https://phemex.com/news/article/metadaos-hurupay-ico-fails-to-meet-3m-target-raises-203m-59219
date: 2026-02-07
domain: internet-finance
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
priority: medium
tags: [metadao, futarchy, ico, mechanism-design, hurupay, capital-formation]
---

## Content

Hurupay, a fintech/onchain neobank, set a $3M minimum raise on MetaDAO starting February 3, 2026. It raised $2,003,593 (67% of minimum) before closing February 7, 2026. Under MetaDAO's "Unruggable ICO" mechanics, all committed capital was fully refunded — no tokens were issued, no forced listing occurred, the project received nothing.

Project metrics at time of ICO:
- $7.2M/month transaction volume
- $500K+ in monthly revenue
- Legitimate operating business

Reasons for failure per contemporaneous reporting:
1. Valuation concerns — investors perceived overvaluation
2. Market cooling after Ranger Finance and Trove Markets damaged MetaDAO's reputation
3. Unclear team backgrounds
4. Last-minute fundraising term changes

A Polymarket event tracked Hurupay commitments in real time — meta-speculation on the ICO itself.

Secondary source: https://coincu.com/news/solana-launchpad-metadao-falters-hurupay-ico-misses-3m-min/

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The minimum-miss refund mechanism worked exactly as designed. This is evidence FOR the futarchy mechanism. But the ambiguity is important: the failure reason is unclear. Was this:
(A) Correct market rejection of an overvalued deal (mechanism working well), or
(B) Market sentiment contamination from Trove/Ranger failures (mechanism producing noise, not signal)?
Both interpretations are consistent with the data. Without a control (what would a non-futarchy selection process have said about Hurupay?), we can't distinguish.

**What surprised me:** A project with $7.2M/month transaction volume and $500K+ revenue failed to raise $3M. If the market's "no" was based on valuation rather than quality, the mechanism is working. But if it was based on platform contagion from Trove/Ranger, this is a mechanism failure dressed as mechanism success.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Data on whether Hurupay's valuation was genuinely out of line with comparable projects. Would help distinguish (A) from (B).

**KB connections:** Evidence relevant to futarchy as information aggregation mechanism. The question of whether market rejection signals quality assessment or sentiment contagion is directly relevant to the "markets beat votes" keystone belief.

**Extraction hints:**
1. "MetaDAO minimum-miss refund mechanism successfully returned capital in Hurupay ICO" — operational confirmation
2. "The futarchy selection signal is ambiguous: quality rejection vs. sentiment contagion indistinguishable without controls" — methodological limitation claim
3. Challenge to overconfident futarchy selection claims — this is a test case where interpretation is genuinely contested

**Context:** First failed ICO on MetaDAO platform (prior to this, all ICOs that ran had hit minimum). Follows two troubled ICOs (Trove crash, Ranger decline). Platform reputation was under stress at the time.

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: futarchy selection mechanism claims (mechanism design in internet-finance domain)
WHY ARCHIVED: Documents the first minimum-miss on MetaDAO; raises the sentiment-contamination vs. quality-rejection ambiguity problem
EXTRACTION HINT: The extractor should focus on the interpretive ambiguity — this source supports BOTH pro-futarchy and anti-futarchy readings, which makes it valuable for calibrating the confidence level on selection claims
