Menese Protocol SNS announcement

Developers SNS Framework
1

Menese Protocol: Our Intent to Launch an SNS

TL;DR

Menese Protocol intends to decentralize into an SNS DAO. We are proposing a decentralization swap with a minimum raise of 100,000 ICP, a maximum of 500,000 ICP, and a minimum of 200 participants. Token distribution follows our published tokenomics, unchanged. The raise is directed at specific, named outcomes: a tier-1 launchpad listing, a tier-1 exchange listing, marketing, and infrastructure. At the maximum, a portion goes directly into protocol cross chain liquidity pools.

We built first. We are raising second.

What Menese is

Menese is a sovereign cross-chain OSand DeFi protocol on the Internet Computer. Transactions are built and signed on-chain through threshold cryptography and broadcast to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Litecoin, and beyond.

A distributed brain, not a distributed key.

One year of building

Menese started in July 2025. The team is part of the Mercatura Forum founder-in-residence program, which backs researchers and entrepreneurs, and it has invested considerable resources in the project since day one. By our own accounting, the team has put more into Menese, in time and contributions, than the minimum we are now asking the community for.

What that year produced:

• 16 production canisters live on mainnet: the wallet backend, threshold signing, cross-chain swap rails, an ICRC-2 ledger, staking, two AMMs, and a concentrated-liquidity pool.

• To our knowledge, the largest actively maintained Motoko codebase on the Internet Computer, with close to 300 Motoko source files in the backend alone. We intend to open-source it after the SNS launch: the protocol itself, the new libraries built along the way, and the optimization techniques that made it possible.

• Open-source contributions already shipped to the ecosystem, including our work on ICRC-ME and a Litecoin node for the IC.

• Active research groups under Menese working on FHE and ZK: a privacy-preserving ledger is in development, alongside the Menese 2-of-2 signing protocol, which brings cross-chain signing to trading speeds. Cross-chain trading is only real at trading speeds; that is the problem this protocol exists to solve.

Traction

We did a small pre-sale for the community. It raised around 27,000 ICP at $0.035 per MENES. Since then, secondary investors have joined through the open MENES/ICP pool, and the price has held roughly 100% above the pre-sale level; MENES trades today at about 0.0315 ICP (roughly $0.07). That level was not held by promises. It was held by protocol buybacks, funded by integrations.

The rest of the traction is equally concrete:

• Nearly 1,000 retail users on the platform today.

• Our SDK and custom-built canisters already support three ecosystem projects and an outside enterprise. Signing through the Menese SDK is hosted entirely on the Internet Computer and costs about 3.5 cents per signature. Every integration brings real business to the network.

• We contributed to the development of CloakCoin, a blockchain running since 2015, and brought its community over to the Internet Computer. They are Menese users now; Menese gives them a better way to access their own assets.

• All of this on limited funding. Our marketing spend has been small, yet our campaigns have reached over one million people and produced inbound clients asking to integrate the SDK.

Full figures, including live pool state, are on the tokenomics page ( https://cqby3-2qaaa-aaaad-aczdq-cai.icp0.io/tokenomics ).

Why we are raising

We are honest about what we lack: distribution. The strongest marketing in this industry is not advertising; it is a tier-1 launchpad ICO and a tier-1 exchange listing. That is the single highest-leverage step available to us, and it is exactly what the minimum raise is scoped to cover, together with the marketing and infrastructure costs around it.

At the maximum raise, additional funds go directly into protocol liquidity.

What the raise does not pay for: salaries. Our team of more than 12 contributors is paid through our pre-seed VC funding. Every ICP raised in this swap works for the protocol and its community, not for payroll.

Token distribution

The distribution is our existing published tokenomics, with a fixed supply of 100M MENES. Nothing is being redesigned for this launch:
Allocation
Amount
Terms
Treasury & Liquidity
27.5M
DAO treasury
SNS Sale
20M
Split below
Team
18M
18-month cliff, 36-month vesting
Mercatura Forum
10M
Same vesting as team
Tjati Council
9M
Reserved in treasury for future DAO-approved raises
Staking Emissions
7M
Treasury earmark funding staking rewards
Community
5M
Treasury earmark
Early Public Sale
3.5M
Sold at $0.035

One structural note, disclosed here plainly: the 20M SNS Sale allocation is split. Roughly 10M goes through the decentralization swap itself; roughly 10M sits in the DAO treasury at genesis, earmarked for the exchange listing, and can only be released by a treasury proposal that the DAO votes on. The same applies to every other earmark above. Treasury tokens carry zero voting power; only staked neurons vote.

Existing MENES holders and stakers carry over 1:1. Positions, balances, and accrued staking interest are preserved through the launch.

What the DAO will control

The SNS takes control of the Menese canisters: the wallet backend, the cross-chain pool canisters, the frontend, the ledger, the sale and staking canister, and the treasury. The canisters that hold and move user value are exactly the ones the DAO governs. Upgrades become proposals. Treasury spending becomes proposals. Future raises from the Tjati Council reserve become proposals.

Swap parameters

• Minimum raise: 100,000 ICP

• Maximum raise: 500,000 ICP

• Minimum participants: 200

Final parameters, the canister list, and verification instructions will be published with the NNS proposal.

Closing

We strongly believe this launch is good for the community. The protocol is live. The users are real. The integrations are paying for buybacks today, not in a roadmap. We are not raising to find out whether Menese works; we are raising to put a working protocol in front of the market it deserves.

Decentralization as an earned milestone, not a launch trick and we have updated everyone along the way with our progress https://forum.dfinity.org/t/menese-protocol-on-icp/61621/155

The Menese Team

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I do not think it is the right time for it. (as per current market conditions and state of the SNS)

Good luck with that.

3

I think our private raise in our own baby platform 5 months ago raised 30% of that, surely the community and SNS can show up and do better, back then we had half what we have now, and did not even have revenues coming in plus we are targeting launchpads and CEX in October-November…also this allows us to scale we don’t want custody of user funds in pools we have used the funding to fund the pool still do, but for user funds we don’t have a custody license hence SNS would help us scale our already tested pools

4

I like it when a project comes out to do SNS its been long since we have had any sns(we need to create some news) yet dfinity is nolonger funding projects with grants its good for the community to support such projects when they come out.

5

doing an sns is okay even in the bare(what if the conditions dont change) most of us hold ICP right? i think what they need is to reduce the minimum icp raised to about 50,000 ICP but if they have enough faith and willing to pull some LPs from outside the ecosystem(which would work for us) its okay. Other wise @DoxaFoundation is open to support

We need to look the config file, the source code, the team(who is behind)

And lastly for @MeneseProtocol team to give an Assurance that they we be accountable with the funds and build post the SNS and not to just have an exit to compersate early builders and funders.(many early sns projects projects were very irresponsible with community funds we lost money including me that today when actually real projects like yours @meneseProtocol, @icpp @doxausedoxause come out to do sns they are facing mistrust issues with the community thinking it will be the same issue.

For The ICP community we need to support our own project, If we don’t no one will, not even the foundation, Lets give them an opportunity to grow as we wait for traction with caffeine.

6

The minimum is designed around support launchpads and CEX launches for visibility outside of the ecosystem.

7

Could the timing be wrong for an SNS?
Summer tends to slow things down.

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True, but it’s also a good time to negotiate and lock down deals with launchpads and cexes, ideally we want to SNS beginning of August, negotiate good terms and launch in October and November when market picks up

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Regarding trust, the team does not get its tokens, this is all very regulated btw, founders are all known, they are backed by a proper VC fund that is known and contributes to the ecosystem, our initial investors even booked profits, initial raise kept funding cross chain pool for 5 months straight while we rolled out expensive production marketing and ads. There are 12 contributors already so I don’t think the raise is near enough for anyone to exit

10

Man me I support every project and builder that comes out on icp, things are tight and building is harder than ever before without community grants and now couple it with the bare that seems not to be changing. Things were left in our own hands as builders to prove what we can offer :But its also a time for the community to support project in doing sns otherwise in the next future we won’t have new projects on #ICP apart from may be caffeine projects which still early and cloud engines which are yet to materialise

11

A requirement for decentralisation sale SNS launches are that the canisters being decentralised are open source (else people have absolutely no way to verify what they’re putting funds into owning). A general rule that was established a while back is that there’s a syndication period where the source code should be open sourced at least 2 weeks before the launch proposal (it takes a considerable time to review source code).

Are all of the canisters being decentralised reproducibly buildable? The canisters should have reproducible builds, or participants have now way to verify that those canisters are indeed running the advertised source code. More importantly, a community cannot govern canisters that they can’t verify upgrades for.

Do you have an init_yaml file so that the community can inspect the proposed parameters (this is also meant to be available well in advance of any launch proposal, as it takes time to review).

Could you also give a summary of what the incentive is to hold/stake the governance token?

12

Hey @Lorimer thank you for the feedback, we are proponents of keeping the code closed source until SNS launch, however, any community reviewer or anyone competent can gain access to the code base for verification purposes, yes canisters will be reproducible. That being said we will release some canister components before hand like our shielded ledger design totally public. Rationale for this is governed by a business we don’t want to compete once the source is out with more resourceful actors.

We intend the launch to be first week of August we will share the parameter two weeks in advance for review it will give us time to sort out our canisters because we have some in RnD that will be transitioned and others that will be retired and grouped.

Regarding the tokencomics, Menese is a utility token with limited supply 100m, subscriptions, trading fees, swap fees, SDK fees all burn the limited supply

13

I like what you guys do, but I’m afraid I’ll be rejecting if the code isn’t open sourced upfront (for the reasons mentioned). I think you’ll find it very likely that DFINITY will either reject or abstain. For a recent failed launch (based on similar issues) take a look at Yusan.

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Releasing the source code is a risk without a successful SNS we end up giving a moat that would enable more resourceful competitors. We owe it our community and investors to keep our strategy tight until the project can stand on its feet otherwise the business can fail, while we understand the rationale of being open and we will satisfy it post a successful launch I think the community and dfinity need to understand the reality of operating under business constraints

15

I’m afraid you’re describing a project that isn’t suitable for decentralisation at this stage (because people cannot govern what they cannot see, what they cannot verify, and what they have to blindly trust is provided as advertised by a minority who actually have the control that was supposed to be decentralised at genesis - not afterwards).

I’ll leave it at that. But bear in mind that a launch of this sort is almost certain to be rejected by the NNS (it does fly in the face of what an SNS has been required to be).

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It is indeed a trade off, perhaps the SNS needs some tweaking to meet business realities to interact with actual businesses so far its experience and what it had attracted has not been that. We will take our chances regardless and hope people do understand and we do encourage those who are competent and want to verify to get in touch and access the code base, it’s not a no access zone, but a regulated zone, as you would expect from businesses right

17

Are the canisters reproducibly buildable? If so then I’d like to request access to the code base and will aim to perform at least those checks.

Also just to add, if you weren’t looking to use the SNS launch pad to raise funds then a launch of this kind may have a better chance of getting through. Particularly because you have existing token holders (as I understand it) who would later swap their tokens for the governance token? Is that right?

If that is the case then a decentralisation sale creates a tension. Either existing holders dump and then jump into the decentralisation sale to get a better deal, or nobody takes part in the decentralisation sale and they buy from the market instead. Thanks for clarifying regarding staked holders. Looking forward to checking out the code to verify this.

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Yes we will give you full code base access would be happy to have you check it out send us your GitHub details and will add you. Holders are staked at the moment for 8 months and 1 year and the other stakers were bought out and some restaked we have a very robust model and we have already maintained liquidity ready for exits at 100% the initial price

19

We invited you to the external reviewers repo with the active production canisters, full code base access

20

Best to finish SNS sale before November, just my observation.